Harmful healers

SIR – Mick Brown’s brilliant article in the Telegraph Magazine (April 7), highlights two crucial aspects of the appalling mistreatment of vulnerable young people by “healers”, like Anne Craig. The first is the lack of any power available in the criminal law to hold such people to account. The fact that Anne Craig was apparently motivated less by money than by the wish to enslave the minds of Laura and Victoria to satisfy her own psychological needs on “her journey”, only serves to underline that current laws are inapt. Sir Edward Garnier’s Bill remedies this and deserves support on all sides of the parliamentary divide.

The second is the imperative for the medical profession to license all “healers”. The General Medical Council would not countenance the behaviour of a doctor who perpetrated the physical harm to a patient equivalent to the psychological damage done to Laura and Victoria by Anne Craig.

The profession, and if necessary the Government, should act to discourage, and hopefully prevent, the occurrence to other victims of the damage that Anne Craig has inflicted on these two girls and the suffering which she has wilfully caused to their families.

Sir John Nutting QC

London W1