Paedophile doctor gets 22 years for abusing kids

Myles Bradbury carried out attacks on seriously-ill boys, some while their parents were in the room. Picture: SWNS

Myles Bradbury, 41, from Herringswell, Suffolk, worked as a paediatric consultant haematologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, where he carried out medical examinations on boys “purely for his own sexual gratification”.

All of the victims suffered from leukaemia, haemophilia or other serious conditions. Some have since died.

Bradbury filmed some of them using a spy pen and abused others behind a curtain while their parents were in the room.

He pleaded guilty to 25 offences, including sexual assault against boys aged between 10 and 16, voyeurism and possessing more than 16,000 indecent images.

Bradbury showed little emotion as he was jailed yesterday.

Placing him on the sex offenders register for life and making him subject to a sexual offences prevention order, Judge Gareth Hawkesworth said at Cambridge Crown Court: “I have never come across a more culpable and grave course of sexual criminality which has involved such a gross and grotesque breach and betrayal of your Hippocratic Oath and trust reposed in you by your patients, their families and colleagues.

“There are almost too many aggravating features to enumerate in this prolonged, carefully planned, cruel and persistent campaign of abuse. At the top of this comes the breach of trust. Your colleagues remain guilt-ridden at having been unable to detect your offending earlier and having been successfully manipulated by you into ignorance.

“Your actions have undermined public trust in an already overstretched health service and have caused enormous expense and upheaval in the internal inquiries that inevitably followed your suspension from practice.

CONNECT WITH THE SCOTSMAN

• Subscribe to our daily newsletter (requires registration) and get the latest news, sport and business headlines delivered to your inbox every morning

• You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google +

“All this almost pales into insignificance set against the trauma, fear and distress you have caused to your victims and their families – considerable psychological harm, I have no doubt – which I suspect will linger with them for the rest of their lives.”

The sentence means Bradbury will never see his daughter, born during the police investigation, unsupervised.

He was sacked from his job earlier this year and will never work as a doctor again, the court heard.

Prosecutor John Farmer said the defendant had a “long-standing, unlawful, sexual interest in boys”.

He added: “The defendant, through the trust he had acquired, circumvented the procedures and encouraged a number of young patients to see him alone.

“It was in these circumstance under the guise of legitimate examinations he went entirely beyond the bounds.”

He added: “On some occasions, when he failed to exclude the parent, he simply carried on behind the curtain behind which the boy had gone to remove his clothes.”

The offences took place over four and a half years, beginning within six months of him taking up his post in 2008 and continuing to the day he was suspended.

At some point, he began using a camera pen, above, in an attempt to gain images of the boys when partially clothed, Mr Farmer added.

Police found 170,425 images on this pen but none of these were classed as indecent.

Mr Farmer said that Bradbury was first arrested in December 2013 after police were alerted by Canadian authorities that he had bought a DVD containing indecent images of children, as part of Operation Spade.

At that point, Cambridgeshire Police were already investigating after concerns were raised about his conduct.

Bradbury was described as “a man of great charm and persuasiveness” whom everybody trusted. When one victim raised concerns with his mother, she responded: “He’s a doctor, it must be necessary.”

Mr Farmer said: “That was the very image that really protected him from anything other than the most persistent line of complaint.”

In mitigation, Angela Rafferty said Bradbury’s guilty pleas had spared his victims the ordeal of giving evidence.

She added: “Clearly on a human level something has gone very badly wrong in this man’s life and thought processes.”

She said Bradbury seemed to have repressed homosexual feelings during puberty and this influenced his behaviour.

Ms Rafferty added that he accepted what he did was “repugnant”.

“He knows he will not get any understanding or forgiveness because what he did was unforgivable,” she said.

John Cameron, head of the NSPCC helpline, encouraged anybody affected by Bradbury’s crimes to seek help.

Since July, the charity’s counsellors have supported more than 54 parents and other members of the public concerned about the case.

He said: “At some of the lowest points in their lives, countless families placed their trust and hope in Bradbury.

“His sexual abuse and perverted voyeurism of extremely vulnerable children was a grotesque betrayal of that trust.”

Detectives are working to establish how many more children may have been abused by Bradbury. Detective Superintendent Gary Ridgway, of Cambridgeshire Police, said a “small number” of other possible victims had come forward.

SCOTSMAN TABLET AND IPHONE APPS

• Download your free 30-day trial for our iPad, Android and Kindle apps

• Keep up to date with all aspects of Scottish life with The Scotsman iPhone app, completely free to download and use