GP jailed for carrying out 'medically unjustified' genital exams on patients

A former GPwas todayjailed for seven years after conducting “unnecessary” genital examinations on patients, including two teenage boys.

Gregory Manson, 56, was found guilty of conducting groin exams even when his patients came in with coughs, headaches, back painand knee sprains. Some of his accusers said he pulled down their underwear without asking their permission.

Manson told jurors at CanterburyCrown Court that his medical examinations were “not sexually motivated at all” and were instead based on ruling out rare diseases which he had misdiagnosed in the past. Manson, of Tower Way, Canterbury, denied 18 offences of sexual assault and six of indecent assault in respect of nine victims. But jurors at Canterbury Crown Court returned majority guilty verdicts of 12 sexual assaults and four indecent assaults against nine men which took place over almost two decades. He was found not guilty of six offences, and two others were alternative charges which did not require verdicts.

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Judge Simon Taylor KC told Manson that he had "camouflaged sexual abuse in the context of medical examinations", adding he had committed "nearly two decades' worth of offending". Delivering his sentencing remarks, Judge Taylor added: "For almost the entirety of your medical career you periodically and opportunistically abused male patients. Because you decided to deploy your abuse in a medical fashion, some of these men did not know that you were touching them for your own sexual purposes - it must not be forgotten your actions victimised them."

The judge added: "The abuse of trust here is immense. People trusted you with access to their bodies and you abused that trust for your own sexual gratification. You were able to construct a false defence to justify your sexual assaults because that is something that is very easy for a GP to do. Your exploitative actions betrayed not only patients, but your wider profession."

One of Manson's victims read out a personal impact statement in court today in which he said he "never now visits the GP". The victim added: "What still stuns me is how normal you made all of this seem. It was calculated, it was deliberate and we now know it was abuse. You built a wall of goodwill around yourself and then used it as a shield. You don't get to hide behind your title anymore.

"Your victims are no longer silent, and your legacy is not the doctor who helped people, it's the harm you caused when no-one was watching." Addressing Manson, he said: "You taught me that help isn't always safe, that authority can betray, and trust can be dangerous."

After originally working in South Africa, Manson qualified as a GP in the UK in 1998 and also worked as a GP trainer, programme director of GP training and GP appraiser for the General Medical Council before his dismissal in 2017.

During the trial, the prosecution noted that “many examinations he performed were not medically justified” and that other GPs would not have carried them out. “In truth Dr Manson took frequent opportunities to examine patients’ genitals, not because he needed to but because he wanted to,” said Jennifer Knight KC, prosecuting.

The earliest two victims of the former GP were brothers, and he was their doctor before and after they were 16, the court heard. They both remember being taken to an examination room next to the consultant room before being told to sit on the bed and pull down their trousers and boxer shorts.

The older brother’s medical notes suggests that he was seen 11 times by Manson between the ages of 14 and 19, and he remembered his genitals being examined on “over half” of those visits. Ms Knight said: “The examinations seemed to him (the victim) to be done professionally and as a young teenager, he assumed they were required. As he got older however, he became uncomfortable about these examinations and wondered whether they should be so frequent.”

Their mother told investigators she never met the former GP when they were young teenagers as she would stay in the waiting room. Many of the examinations relate to what the former GP called “well person checks” which were offered to new patients at the surgery he worked for, the court heard.

Giving evidence last week, Manson said: “Part of your work as a GP is disease prevention and health promotion, we do that all the time. You’re looking for any pathology or disease that may be asymptomatic that somebody is not necessarily aware of.”

A professor of forensic medicine and GP, Ian Wall, was “surprised” that Manson considered testicular examination part of a new patient check during his review of Manson’s medical notes, jurors heard during the trial. Manson added: “When I worked in South Africa, particularly in many hospitals that didn’t have facilities to further investigate things, your training was very much in examination and being thorough with examinations. An MRI was not available in Soweto.”

He told the court about his early work as a GP and why losing patients had made him conduct more “thorough” investigations. The former GP said that every doctor remembered their “first death”, and his was a man who had arrived with what was initially thought to be a stomach ulcer but was in fact an abdominal aortic aneurysm.

“When you have experiences like this and you examine an abdomen you are haunted,” said Manson.

Opening the case, Ms Knight told jurors: “Dr Manson performed unnecessary examinations of male patients’ genitals without offering a chaperone or providing any proper explanation to the patients involved of the reason for the examination, and without wearing gloves. “Dr Manson also failed to document in patients’ notes the fact that such examinations had taken place or what his findings if any were.”

Following his conviction, Will Bodiam from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “These patients trusted Manson as he was their GP and he abused that trust in an appalling way, carrying out intimate examinations which were not all medically justified.

“They described their discomfort at what happened to them and some of them actively tried to avoid seeing Manson because of their previous experiences with him.

“On several occasions, the victims were not even given the option to consent to the examinations and had their underwear removed with no warning.”

He added: “This is not what patients should expect from their GPs.”