He’d gotten away with it for close to 20 years
Retired doctor Gregory Manson has been found guilty of unnecessarily conducting intimate exams on patients, and he’ll now serve seven years behind bars.
The 56-year-old originally told Canterbury Crown Court jurors that his medical examinations were “not sexually motivated it all”, despite focussing on the groin area over complaints of knee sprains, back pain, headaches and coughs.
Several of his nine victims, which included two teenage boys, accused Manson of pulling down their underwear without permission.
Of the 24 overall charges – sexual assault and indecent assault among others – the jury returned guilty verdicts for 16 of the cases (per The Mirror).
Speaking today (July 4) at the sentencing, Judge Simon Taylor KC said Manson had “camouflaged sexual abuse in the context of medical examinations”, adding: “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.”
One of the victims was at the scene to confront Manson, revealing he never visits the doctors’ anymore after what they were subjected to.
“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,” they continued. “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.
“You taught me that help isn’t always safe, that authority can betray, and trust can be dangerous.”
Following Manson’s conviction, Will Bodiam from the Crown Prosecution Service commented: “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.
“This is not what patients should expect from their GPs.”
