Blood on his hands
Stinging attack on £11m hospital boss who failed to stop butcher surgeon – by victim who went under knife 4 times as a teenager
THE youngest victim of a rogue surgeon said a private hospital chief who made £11million after the scandal was exposed has ‘blood on his hands’.
Jade Edgington said former Spire Healthcare boss Rob Roger should give the money to Ian Paterson’s butchered patients.
Yesterday the Mail revealed Mr Roger received huge sums in bonuses, salary and perks before he stepped down as chief executive last year.
But around 400 of Paterson’s patients at Spire – which was sharply criticised in an independent report into the scandal in 2014 – are yet to receive any compensation and are taking their case to court later this year.
One of those still waiting for damages is bank worker Miss Edgington, who was 16 and studying for A-levels when she found a lump in her breast.
She was introduced to Paterson and by the time she was 19, had had four invasive operations – all of which were later deemed unnecessary.
Now 28, she said yesterday of Mr Roger: ‘This CEO has got blood on his hands and I hope he feels guilty for the rest of his life, but when he is on his yacht he probably doesn’t think about it, does he? It is disgusting. It is quite unbelievable.
‘There are people who have had cancer who have passed away, women who have had cancer which has come back, people who are scarred for life – and it was all unnecessary.
‘The chief executive is obviously not taking any responsibility, he has managed to walk away from the situation very well off, but there are a lot of people who are mentally and physically scarred for the rest of their lives.’
She said Spire bosses such as Mr Roger had been ‘ happily cashing in’ while Paterson was carrying out botched or unnecessary operations.
‘But now they are not taking any responsibility for it,’ she added. ‘ It does not seem right. He [Mr Roger] should give all this money to people whose lives have been affected by this. I don’t understand why he has got anything. It is not morally right.’
Details of Mr Roger’s payout were revealed days after Paterson, 59, was convicted of wounding ten cancer patients he conned into having surgery. He faces a lengthy prison sentence. Lawyers believe he may have carried out thousands of botched or unnecessary operations over 15 years.
Jurors were not told about his 1,207 ‘experimental’ mastectomies in the NHS, or that 675 of his patients have died.
Mr Roger was chief executive of Spire from 2011 to 2016, having been chief financial officer for four years. He received around £11million in pay and bonuses after leading
‘Happily cashing in’
the firm’s float on the stock exchange three years ago.
In 2014, he was paid £6.2million, including a £4.45million bonus, and in 2015 received £1.09million. In its recently published annual report, Spire Healthcare said Mr Roger was paid £320,500 in 2016 – before he left on June 30 that year.
He would also have taken substantial dividends based on shares given to him at the flotation. According to the Mail’s analysis, these pay- ments would have been worth around £3.45million between 2014 and 2016. This gives him a total of £11.06million from those three years alone.
He is now chief executive of the Vero Group, a student accommodation provider.
The keen skier, 56, and wife Sian, 40, regularly update social media followers on their jet-setting lifestyle including a Chamonix holiday home. They live with their two young children in a six-bedroom Surrey home, thought to be worth several million pounds.
Miss Edgington, who is being represented by law firm Slater Gordon, is desperate for Spire to compensate her and other victims, so they can ‘move on’. ‘Patients have been let down right from the beginning,’ she said. ‘There was mistake after mistake … There should a public inquiry and people should be held responsible.’
When the financial adviser’s daughter found a lump in her left breast, she was seen by Paterson thanks to her father’s Bupa health insurance. She had four operations to remove benign growths between 2005 and 2009. All were later judged unnecessary. Paterson told her insurers the lumps were cancerous, but said they were benign in medical notes sent to her GP.
Miss Edgington, of Solihull, West Midlands, said: ‘I count myself one of the luckier ones. I didn’t have cancer … I wish he’d tell us why he did it.’
She added: ‘From a physical point the wounds have healed but I am scarred for the rest of my life. At 16, it was quite a traumatic thing … It is time for Spire to take some responsibility and compensate the people that have been put through hell.’
Mr Roger could not be reached for comment yesterday. A Spire spokesman said: ‘Where compensation is due, compensation will be paid.
‘Spire Healthcare has agreed with lawyers the quickest way to settle the issue of compensation and determine exactly where responsibility for Mr Paterson’s actions lies.
‘Rob was instrumental in initiating the independent report and implementing its recommendations.’