BUTCHER BREAST SURGEON STOLE MY LIFE
As rogue doctor who maimed hundreds is sent to jail for 15 years, one woman tells how she lost her home, health, marriage and job
IN heartbreaking detail, she revealed how rogue breast surgeon Ian Paterson cost her ‘absolutely everything’ in her life.
Diane Green, 59, lost her home, her marriage, her health and her job after he operated on her.
But nothing was going to stop her from having the last word yesterday for the devastating effects of his butchery.
Moments after the disgraced doctor was jailed for 15 years for unnecessary surgery on ten patients, she led public condemnation of a man with a ‘God complex’ who wrecked hundreds of lives. As Paterson started his prison term:
It emerged he is likely to be freed after half his sentence, meaning he could be behind bars for just seven and a half years;
Victims complained that no one had been held to account over the scandal;
Calls intensified for Paterson to be prosecuted for offences he committed in the NHS;
There were growing demands for a public inquiry into the affair;
Lawyers confirmed that 100 new victims had come forward since Paterson was convicted;
More than 500 former patients are seekingthat compensation from Spire the private healthcare provider that employedhim.
Surrounded by other victims, Miss Green – who had two unnecessary double mastectomies, the second following complications with her reconstructed breasts – spoke in harrowing detail about her ordeal at Paterson’s hands.
‘I lost my home, I lost my marriage, I lost my health, I lost my job, I lost absolutely everything,’ she said outside Nottingham Crown Court.
‘He took everything away from me. It’s been going on since the Nineties, and only today I’ve got justice. He took away my youth.’
Miss Green later revealed that Paterson left her infertile after recommending extremely strong chemotherapy, then failing to tell her that she could freeze her eggs. She had been a live-in carer for the elderly in sheltered housing,
but Paterson’s operations left her with a muscle-wasting disorder. She could no longer work and was forced out of her job, which also provided her home. Amid the strain, her husband of 11 years left her. She now lives alone in the Canary Islands. Miss Green called for a public inquiry into Paterson, Spire hospitals and medical professionals who were complicit in his actions. ‘ If Mr Paterson hadn’t been involved in my life, if he’d been honest with me, I may well be very happily married with lots of children around me, maybe little grandchildren by now,’ she said. ‘Other people need to be looked at now – the medical profession who worked with him and co-conspired to do this.’ A number of NHS officials repeat- edly missed chances to stop Paterson over 15 years. They have yet to be held to account and remained silent last night after his jailing.
Paterson was convicted of wounding in April after his trial heard he carried out mastectomies on ten private patients having invented or exaggerated their risk of cancer to convince them to have surgery at two private hospitals. He then butchered them for financial gain.
The jury heard that the father-of-three carried out ‘extensive, lifechanging operations for no medically justifiable reason’ at private hospitals in the West Midlands. He altered medical records to justify the most lucrative surgery.
But lawyers believe he may have carried out thousands of botched or unnecessary operations.
Sentencing the divorcee from Cheshire yesterday, Judge Jeremy Baker told him he was driven by ‘ self- aggrandisement and the material rewards which it brought from your private practice’.
The judge said: ‘You deliberately played upon their worst fears, either by inventing or deliberately exaggerating the risk that they would develop cancer, and thereby gained their trust and confidence to consent to the surgical procedures which you carried out.’
Paterson operated for his ‘ own selfish purposes rather than to monitor the health of the patients’, the judge said, describing this approach as the ‘antithesis of the Hippocratic oath’.
Judge Baker said victims felt ‘violated and vulnerable’, adding: ‘Some of them have suffered psychological effects – depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
‘All of them have been left physically scarred.’
The judge criticised Paterson’s ‘complete lack of remorse’ in court, and said he had ‘ exaggerated symptoms’ of a mental-health disorder to avoid trial. Outside court, Patricia Welch, 64, who had a mastectomy, called for a public inquiry, adding: ‘No amount of prison would compensate for what myself and other people affected have gone through. We may never know why he acted in such an evil way.’
The trial heard evidence from ten of his patients who were treated privately between 1997 and 2011 at Little Aston and Parkway hospitals in the West Midlands.
But jurors were not told he was at the centre of a medical scandal after carrying out 1,207 ‘experimental’ NHS mastectomies.
Nor were they made aware that 675 of those who had his unorthodox ‘cleavage- saving mastectomies’ – in which he failed to remove all breast tissue – have since died.
Detective Chief Inspector Caroline Marsh, of West Midlands Police, said: ‘I’m sure many of the victims will say that 15 years is not nearly long enough.’
‘Antithesis of the Hippocratic oath’