Doctor jailed for ‘unnecessary genital exams’ on teenage patients

A former GP has been jailed for conducting unnecessary genital exams on men and teenage boys when they just had coughs and headaches.

Gregory Manson, 56, ‘camouflaged sexual abuse in the context of medical examinations’ over nearly two decades, Canterbury Crown Court heard.

Some of his nine victims said the doctor also pulled down their underwear without asking permission.

One victim said he was so traumatised from the abuse he was unable to visit the GP.

Manson, who qualified as a GP in 1998 and worked in Canterbury before being dismissed in 2017, was sentenced at Canterbury Crown Court on Friday to seven years’ imprisonment for 16 offences.

Judge Simon Taylor KC said the former doctor ‘abused his patients trust’.

He 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 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.’

Manson, of Tower Way, Canterbury, denied 18 offences of sexual assault and six of indecent assault in respect of nine victims.

He was found guilty on Thursday of 12 sexual assaults and four indecent assaults against nine men.

In a victim statement read out in court, one of Manson’s victims 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 directly, he said: ‘You taught me that help isn’t always safe, that authority can betray, and trust can be dangerous.’

The prosecution argued during the trial that the GP examinations were not justified.

‘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.

Manson’s earliest two victims were brothers, and he was their doctor before and after they were 16, the court heard.

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.

‘Manson never explained to the patients what he was doing and why, failing to offer them the opportunity to have a chaperone and not even recording the examinations he had undertaken or any findings from them in the patient notes.

‘This is not what patients should expect from their GPs.’

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