A couple of in 10 sexual harassment complaints in opposition to medical doctors aren’t investigated by the Common Medical Council due to an “arbitary” rule, the Observer can reveal.
In line with knowledge obtained beneath the Freedom of Data Act, 13% of sexual misconduct complaints made between the years 2017-18 and 2021-22 have been closed with out investigation as a result of the GMC is prevented from contemplating alleged incidents greater than 5 years after the occasion.
As a part of the council’s remit to guard affected person security and enhance medical schooling and observe throughout the UK it investigates any form of grievance in opposition to medical doctors.
The figures present the GMC refused to research 170 complaints referring to sexual assault, tried rape, and rape within the interval analysed. In 22 of these instances the five-year rule was cited. It acquired 566 sexual harassment complaints in the identical interval.
Anthony Omo, the GMC’s common counsel and director of health to practise, informed the Observer: “We are able to and do waive the five-year rule the place there are grave allegations involving sexual assault or rape. In lots of instances involving sexual allegations, the GMC’s place will probably be that such severe misconduct is incompatible with continued registration.”
A authorities session in February heard that the five-year-rule was “arbitrary” and “a barrier to public safety” because it allowed medical doctors who could also be responsible of inappropriate behaviour to proceed practising. Nonetheless, regardless of commitments from the Division of Well being and Social Care to scrap the limitation as a “high precedence”, no date has been set.
Liberal Democrat well being spokesperson Daisy Cooper wrote to Sajid Javid – then well being secretary – in Might 2022, criticising the five-year rule for ignoring how “susceptible sufferers will typically want months or years to get better medically earlier than they’ve the power to report allegations or pursue any motion”.
Cooper informed the Observer: “It’s unacceptable that an arbitrary reporting time restrict is permitting doubtlessly harmful and predatory medical professionals to proceed to practise, placing sufferers’ sexual security in danger. Ministers should cease dragging their heels and scrap the medical regulator’s five-year rule with none additional delay.”
The findings comply with renewed debate about why girls delay reporting sexual misconduct, after the Metropolitan police launched an investigation into allegations of “non-recent” sexual offences in opposition to Russell Model. “Disgrace and a concern of not being believed are the most typical causes survivors inform us they don’t report, and these emotions can take a few years to beat,” Anne Stebbings, chief government of Better Manchester Rape Disaster, stated. “When the perpetrator is a colleague, the sufferer or survivor is conscious that any allegation might influence on her profession or future profession. These issues can forestall victims from reporting.”
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Police have not named Brand and there have been no arrests. He has denied previous allegations by a TV programme and newspaper.
For Rose (not her real name), complaining to the GMC was an attempt to prevent her alleged abuser from harming other vulnerable patients. She alleges she was groomed by her consultant more than 20 years ago, while undergoing breast cancer treatment. She claims he was “flirtatious” and that examinations became “increasingly sexualised”, before he tried to make her perform a sex act during an appointment.
“I felt toxic and full of shame,” Rose told the Observer. The consultant later wrote her a letter to say he was “deeply sorry” for his behaviour, and Rose received a compensatory payout. But a disciplinary hearing – which she describes as “traumatic” and where she was made to “feel as if I was mad, that I was a liar” – found in his favour. In the years since, Rose has continued to pursue justice through the GMC. The process has caused her post-traumatic stress, nightmares, and lack of sleep. Complaints she made in 2007 and 2015 about her treatment were not taken forward.
“It’s as if they are saying that what happened to me does not matter,” Rose says. “My life has been upended by professional sexual misconduct of the most abusive kind.”
The FOI request also revealed that 102 complaints were not investigated by the GMC as “issues could not be identified”. In these cases, Omo said, “we will write to the complainant to let them know what information we would need in order to investigate”.
Omo added: “There is no place for any form of sexual assault, harassment or discrimination in the medical profession.
“Our updated professional standards are clear that acting in a sexual way towards patients or colleagues is unacceptable, and set out our zero tolerance of sexual misconduct.”
