I was lonely because I worked in dark, says sex pest radiographer
AN NHS radiographer who illegally accessed personal records of more than 200 female patients before pestering them for dates has claimed his job made him lonely.
Andrew Stewart worked at hospitals in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, dealing with hundreds of patients.
He used his position to look up files of women he had been treating, before hounding them with messages on Facebook and WhatsApp in a desperate bid to strike up relationships with them.
The 32-year-old used fake names to protect his identity, calling various women ‘hot’ and ‘gorgeous’.
During an earlier hearing at Hamilton Sheriff Court, Stewart, of Fenwick, Ayrshire, pleaded guilty to two charges of obtaining personal data of 32 named women and others without a clinical or medical reason to do so. He also pleaded guilty to 16 charges of acting in a threatening and abusive manner to women he had contacted between March 2013 and August 2018.
Stewart, a married father of one, denied getting any sexual gratification from contacting the women and claimed he was ‘lonely’. But at a special hearing on Monday, Sheriff Thomas Millar rejected his claim and ruled that the offences were sexually motivated.
Stewart had told the court: ‘The job I was doing was quite isolated, working in the dark, so it could be quite a lonely place at times.
‘It was a pattern of behaviour that I completely regret now and it was just stupidity.
‘I felt lonely at times and I am completely ashamed of myself. I was not getting any sexual gratification from the messages and they all came from when I had been taking a drink. There was no sexual urges but I can see it coming across like that.’
Sheriff Millar said Stewart now faces being placed on the sex offenders’ register when he is sentenced next month.
The court previously heard his crimes were uncovered when a woman he had been messaging recognised him at Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock and reported him.
An NHS probe led to hundreds of patients receiving letters saying that their data had been breached. Stewart, who also worked at Hairmyres Hospital in East Kilbride, had illegally accessed around 220 patient files.