Doctor gets 12 years for sex abuse of patients

A family doctor who was a member of a "paedophile gang of professionals" was jailed for 12 years yesterday for sexually abusing his male patients.

Timothy Healy, 57, drugged some of his victims before filming himself committing sex attacks on their unconscious bodies. The victims – two as young as 11, others in their teens and 20s at the time – never knew they had been targets until police tracked them down last year after an anonymous tip-off.

Southwark Crown Court was told the victims had been mentally scarred by what had happened to them, invariably speaking of their "anger", "disgust" and "degradation" over what they had suffered. One attempted suicide.

Others featured on the video footage seized by police have not been identified.

Some of those who have been traced and were not drugged included teenagers he had met while a medical officer in the army cadets. But they were either too embarrassed to come forward or feared they would not be believed, and so kept their ordeals secret until contacted by Scotland Yard's paedophile unit.

The GP, described by detectives in the case as "completely arrogant", began the attacks in 1978, but was only arrested at Gatwick airport in May last year as he returned from a holiday in Tunisia.

Healy, a bachelor from East Finchley, north London, pleaded guilty to a total of 30 offences. They included 15 indecent assaults – five of them involving schoolchildren, six of administering a "stupefying or overpowering" drug to commit sex attacks, four of taking indecent photographs and another five of possessing them.

A further 12 charges, which he denied, were left on the file and will not be proceeded with. They concern allegations of indecent assault, offences of administering a drug – and one of "doing an act tending or intended to pervert the course of justice".

With 11 of his victims in court, Healy showed no emotion as Judge Rivlin passed sentence.

Requesting those in court to refrain from outbursts despite the "very difficult matters" involved, the judge said Healy's 10 years of offending, which ended in 1988, amounted to a gross breach of trust featuring a number of very serious aggravating features. "You repeatedly took advantage of your victims' helplessness while in a heavily sedated state induced by you," Judge Rivlin said.