I'm looking for input on something I consider to be in the public interest. I've been on Mumsnet for many years but this is my first time starting a thread. I don't want to drip feed, but at the same time I want to keep the detail relevant to the main issue.
When I was 15yrs old (more than 30yrs ago), I was sexually assaulted by a GP. I tried to report it several times over the following years, but there was no clear reporting mechanism back then. In my late 20's I tried again, and about the same time another person had made a similar complaint about the same GP, on behalf of their (minor) child. I was invited to an interview, and the police investigation led to the GP being charged and a jury trial at the Crown court.
From memory, there were about 8-10 people who testified to the jury. Our ages when we were sexually assaulted by the GP varied, but we were all patients, bar one person who had been the defendant's nurse assistant. None of us knew each other, but our accounts of the assaults were very similar. From the ages of the victims (several were minors, as I had been), and from the dates of the assaults, it was apparent the GP's behaviour had spanned at least 15 years by the date of his trial.
The jury returned a verdict of not guilty. After the trial, the General Medical Council wrote to inform me that the GP had been sent leaflets about maintaining professional boundaries. The GP is still practicing, and, at least last time I checked, in the same surgery he assaulted me at. He is also working as a consultant in the hospital where I was born.
I recently contacted the GMC to see whether there had ever been any kind of flag in this doctor's file: perhaps some indication to prompt further investigation if anyone else ever reported an incident. I was told there was no record, and as far as they could see, there never had been. The GMC acknowledged my case was serious, and that standards had changed. However, because the original incident was more than five years old, there was no mechanism to advance a complaint or flag the GP's file.
In retrospect, the trial outcome had been lamentably predictable. I expect in today's post-Saville and 'Me Too' enlightenment, there might be a different result. However, the lack of any remedy or precautionary measure taken by the GMC, or any part of the NHS, seems almost worse. To this day, as far as I can tell, there remains no mechanism to flag abuse to the GMC that dates back more than five years, whereas for me the issue has no time limit. Perhaps this particular GP has reformed, but if so it was not because he was censured in any way at all. I get he was found not guilty, but the burden of proof was beyond reasonable doubt, which as anyone knows, does not mean he wasn't actually guilty. Just that his guilt was not without doubt. In these kinds of situations, and where people in positions of authority and power have access to vulnerable people, I would've thought there should be some kind of warning system. As it stands, should another complainant have ever come forward with a complaint about this particular GP, there would be no way of linking it with any of the previous complaints.
Over the intervening years, I have felt so many emotions about this doctor, and what happened to me and to the other victims. I have tried to forget about it, as I did all I could to bring attention to the abuse all those years ago, but I can't ever seem to let it go completely.
Most of all I have been left deeply frustrated by the thought that, having tried to bring this person to account, he may have been emboldened by having 'gotten away with it' and he might have hurt someone else, or might yet be about to. My vivid memories, and my ongoing concern that others may still be in danger, has not allowed me to let this go.
But I don't know what else to do.