BUTCHER SURGEON DESTROYED OUR LIVES
Victims tell of their torment as Scots doctor who carried out needless operations is jailed for 15 years
VICTIMS of a disgraced Scots breast surgeon who carried out needless operations told last night how their lives have been left in ruins.
As Ian Paterson was jailed for 15 years, former patients said they were ‘scarred and violated’ – with one revealing she lost her home, marriage, health and job after his unnecessary procedures.
The Glasgow-born doctor was yesterday sentenced for butchering ten patients in the first case of its kind. Moments after Paterson was jailed, Diane Green, 59, led public condemnation of the man with a ‘God complex’ who wrecked hundreds of lives through his bungled or needless surgery. As the surgeon started his prison term:
It emerged that he is likely to be released after serving half his sentence, meaning he could be behind bars for only seven-and-a-half years;
Victims complained nobody had
been held to account over the surgery 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 have come forward since Paterson was convicted;
More than 500 former patients are seeking compensation from Spire, the private healthcare provider he worked for.
Surrounded by other victims, Miss Green – who had two unnecessary double mastectomies, the second after suffering complications in 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 90s and only today I’ve got justice. He took away my youth.’
Miss Green also revealed Paterson had left her infertile after recommending strong chemotherapy, then failing to inform her she could freeze her eggs.
She previously worked as a livein carer for elderly people in sheltered housing, but the 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 stress of the cancer treatments and losing her income, her husband left her. She now lives alone in the Canary Islands.
Miss Green called for a public inquiry into Paterson, Spire hospitals and the 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 from the start, I may well be very happily married with lots of children around me, maybe little grandchildren by now,’ she said. Though ‘satisfied’ Paterson was jailed she added: ‘I just feel that other people need to be looked at now, the medical profession who worked with him and co-conspired to do this. They need to be looked at and stopped.’
A number of NHS officials repeatedly missed chances to stop Paterson over a period of 15 years.
They are yet to be held to account and remained silent last night after he was jailed.
Dozens of victims attended court to see Paterson sentenced but many had to wait outside because the public gallery was too full.
The Bristol University graduate was convicted in April of wounding after his trial heard he carried out mastectomies on ten private patients after inventing or exaggerating their risk of cancer.
The jury was told Paterson carried out ‘extensive, life-changing operations for no medically justifiable reason’ at private hospitals in the West Midlands. The divorced father-of-three had altered medical records to justify the most lucrative surgical options, his trial was told.
But lawyers believe he may have carried out thousands of botched or unnecessary operations over 15 years. Paterson also exaggerated or invented the cancer risk to con- vince patients to have surgery at two private hospitals.
Passing sentence, Judge Jeremy Baker told him he was driven by his ‘own self-aggrandisement and the material rewards it brought from your private practice’.
The judge said: ‘You deliberately played upon their worst fears, either by inventing or deliberately exaggerating the risk they would develop cancer, and thereby gained their trust and confidence to consent to the surgical procedures which you carried out.’
The judge said the victims were left ‘feeling violated and vulnerable’, adding: ‘Some of them have suffered psychological effects including] depression and PTSD. All of them have been left physically scarred.’
Paterson had entered the court wheeling a large black suitcase and clutching a copy of The Times. Even at his sentencing he exhibited no remorse. He shook his head and furrowed his brow in disbelief at many of the judge’s remarks.
When told he would be sentenced to 15 years and serve half of it before being released on licence, he looked relieved.
Outside court, Patricia Welch, 64, who had a mastectomy on the surgeon’s advice, said: ‘We may never know the real reason why he acted in such an evil way. I hope now that there will be a public inquiry into the whole Paterson affair.’ Fellow victim Frances Perks, 57, added: ‘I will never have closure, what that man did will haunt me for the rest of my life.’
During the trial harrowing evidence was given by ten patients treated in the private sector between 1997 and 2011 at Little Aston and Parkway hospitals in the West Midlands. But the jurors were not told the surgeon is at the centre of a medical scandal after carrying out 1,207 ‘experimental’ mastectomies in the NHS.
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 after the case: ‘I’m sure many of the victims will say that 15 years is not nearly long enough for the terrible affliction that he has passed on to them.’
‘Took everything away from me’