Arrogant and autocratic, a liar who was utterly convinced that only he knew best
FOR just a split- second in a trial that lasted almost two months, Ian Paterson’s mask momentarily slipped.
As Dr Rosemary Platt told the court of the butchery she suffered at his hands, the surgeon could not control himself. ‘Lying bitch,’ he muttered – words that, understandably, stopped her in her tracks. The intervention was all the more extraordinary given that Paterson had been given special treatment by the judge.
The 59-year-old was allowed to sit in the well of the court after his lawyers argued he was too mentally fragile to stand in the dock for his trial.
And it was from there that Dr Platt would hear him direct that deeply offensive slur. While Paterson would try to claim he had said nothing of the sort, the incident was entirely in keeping with the nature of the man.
Autocratic and arrogant, Paterson saw himself as a God-like figure who alone knew what was best. He could not tolerate criticism.
Despite botching an operation in which a woman nearly died, for almost 15 years he worked as a breast surgeon, watched by target- driven hospital bosses and playing on the fears of his mainly female patients.
They ranged in age from their 20s up – wives, mothers and grandmothers, some of whom had lost relatives to breast cancer. All were united by the fear they had the disease. THE
sad truth is that by placing their fate in Paterson’s hands, hundreds may have unknowingly consigned themselves to an early death.
‘You wouldn’t be able to print what I think of him, what I truly think of him and what I would like to see happen to him,’ said Frances Perks, who had an unnecessary mastectomy and multiple other surgical procedures by Paterson. ‘I hope he has a dreadful time in prison and I hope he rots in hell.
‘I hate him with a passion. Why would anybody in their right mind do operations to people knowing that you don’t need them?’
For a hint of the answer it is necessary to travel across the Atlantic to the sun-kissed Tara Plantation Gardens complex in Florida.
There, in 2015, Paterson bought a three-bedroom condominium. With a shared pool and views over a private golf club, it is just the sort of place someone with money to burn and a long, active retire- ment ahead of them might choose. But Paterson’s US bolthole was nothing compared with the former family home in the UK.
Located in Edgbaston, Birmingham’s most upmarket district, the stunning Grade II- listed Georgian mansion was sold in July 2013 for £1.25million.
It boasted eight bedrooms, four reception rooms, a wine cellar and a coach house converted into a gym. The house was conveniently located for the £12,000-ayear King Edward’s School where his son, now a 31-year-old barrister, was privately educated and the King Edward VI High School for Girls, where his twin daughters, now 29, studied.
Paterson had also invested in a number of buy-to-let properties in Manchester and Cardiff.
But it was his patients who paid for it. While his NHS job would have earned him roughly £100,000 a year, his private work would have more than doubled that.
Born in Glasgow, the son of a civil engineer, Paterson studied medicine at Bristol University, graduating in 1981. In 1984, by then a surgical senior houseman at Stepping Hill Hospital in Man-
chester,chester he married wife louise,louise a physiotherapist four years his junior. They had their honeymoon in the Bahamas. After a paid twoyear research spell at Harvard Medical School, Paterson joined Good Hope Hospital in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham in 1993.
It was there that serious questions would be first raised about his competency as a surgeon. In 1996 Gill Dallow nearly died as Paterson performed what should have been a low-risk operation.
No doubt partly to escape that stain on his reputation, Paterson switched hospitals, joining Heart of england NHS Foundation Trust (Heft) as a cancer specialist at Solihull Hospital in 1998. He was by then also working at two private hospitals run by Spire Healthcare – little Aston and Parkway.
When he joined Heft he brought with him a reputation for being a difficult person to work with – a senior manager from his old hospital called his new employers to alert them to his recent suspension. The red flag went unheeded.
His new hospital had serious waiting list problems. Paterson completed in 25 minutes procedures that might take others two hours. In a year he would deal with between 300 and 350 cancer patients. He set about creating a personal fiefdom at the hospital but concerns soon arose. Of particular worry was the amount of tissue left behind when Paterson performed a mastectomy. One patient’s husband was told by him, ‘I leave a little bit of flesh … it is nice for ladies to have a bit of cleavage remaining’.
The remaining tissue increased the possibility that cancer might subsequently recur.
Slowly, far too slowly, statistical evidence started to show significantly higher cancer recurrence rates in those he had treated.
In 2009, Heft recalled only the most high-risk patients – 12 out of the 4,424 he would treat during his time at the NHS hospital. Two more years would pass before they recalled as many of his 1,207 mastectomy patients as they could. BUT
by 2011, 387 of his mastectomy patients had died. By the end of March this year the number was 675. As the scale of the scandal became apparent, Paterson was suspended. Patients sued and over the coming years Heft would settle almost 800 claims, costing it just under £18million.
West Midlands police launched an investigation focusing on Paterson’s private practice. Charges were finally brought against him in late 2015.
The following year, Paterson’s marriage broke down. His divorce was finalised a week before his court case began.
The prosecution’s case was that Paterson intentionally wounded or caused serious bodily harm to ten patients with various unnecessary surgical procedures for financial reasons but also for kudos. This was a man who liked to be the one who could ‘fix things’.
The nine women and one man who gave evidence in court painted a very similar picture of Paterson’s persuasiveness.
Dr Platt, who had a ‘quite unnecessary’ operation to remove her right breast, told the jury: ‘I felt he was a trusted professional, he was a doctor who cared about his patients and he would give me the best advice in this situation.’
Retired pub landlady Carole Johnson had six operations from October 2000, aged 48, to 2007. She said: ‘It was always whatever he said because we trusted Mr Paterson … he was God to us.’
Others told how he had played on their family histories, exaggerating the risk they faced.
In court, he was also seen to mouth the words ‘you’re a liar’ in the direction of another witness.
Unedifying behaviour but perhaps only to be expected from a man who had tried every trick in the book to avoid facing the music. In other words, Paterson was not just a heartless butcher, but a shameless, lying coward as well.