By Cally Brooks Dan Warbuton
A former GP has been jailed for seven years after performing “unnecessary” genital examinations on patients. Gregory Manson, 56, was found guilty in court this week of conducting groin exams on patients who came in with coughs, headaches, back pain and knee sprains. Some of his victims said he pulled down their underwear without asking their permission. Manson told jurors 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 originally worked in South Africa, later qualifying as a GP in the UK in 1998. Manson, of Tower Way, Canterbury, denied 18 offences of sexual assault and six of indecent assault in respect of nine victims. He stared at the floor as jurors returned their verdicts after 10 hours and 29 minutes of deliberation. Manson was convicted by majority verdict 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. 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. Two of the GP’s first victims were brothers, and he had been their doctor before and after they turned 16-years-old. They both recalled being taken into an examination room, told to sit on the bed and pull down their trousers and boxer shorts. The older brother’s medical notes show he was seen 11 times by Manson between the ages of 14 and 19, and 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 said she never met the GP 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.” Judge Simon Taylor KC told Manson today 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.” Following Manson’s conviction, 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.”