A doctor lied to Qailah by telling her she might get cancer, and sexually abused her during her ‘treatment’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
A surgeon gave a false diagnosis to 12-year-old Qailah, claiming that she had a serious and potentially life-threatening condition.
He used this as a pretext to see her for frequent appointments over the following years, and exploited his position of authority to sexually and psychologically abuse her.
Qailah explains that when she had a health problem, her mother paid for her to have a private consultation with the surgeon, Mr Robinson, and accompanied her daughter to the first appointment.
Mr Robinson diagnosed Qailah with a serious and unusual condition that would require continuing treatment. Because Qailah’s mother could not afford to pay for this privately, he said that he would continue Qailah’s treatment on the NHS at the hospital that employed him.
Qailah says ‘Of course mum was enormously grateful’.
Qailah began attending regular appointments at the NHS hospital – for a time they were weekly, and sometimes monthly. She lived in a big city and she was used to travelling independently to secondary school, so she went on her own. She missed a lot of school because she had to see Mr Robinson so often.
Qailah comments ‘I remember I was always seen in a room alone with him ... I had to completely undress and he would examine me’.
Mr Robinson would remove his surgical gloves and carry out internal ‘examinations’, and ‘examine’ her breasts – which were not related to the condition he claimed she had – saying that he was checking for lumps.
The abuser then made Qailah stand rotating her hips, saying he was checking her skeletal structure.
She says ‘This became routine for every session for [a number of] years…. He said my condition was really serious’. Mr Robinson also claimed that she would need complex surgery which was his area of expertise.
The abuse escalated, with the surgeon claiming that Qailah’s condition could affect her sexual pleasure. He used this as a pretext to ask her intrusive and unnecessary questions about whether she was masturbating, and made her show him what parts of her vulva were most sensitive.
Qailah says ‘I remember feeling very uncomfortable … I never discussed it with anyone – I trusted this was normal behaviour for a doctor … it sounds stupid now but at the time it didn’t occur to me that any of this was not ok. I don’t think I answered these questions at first, but he pressed on and insisted we had to investigate that’.
Once, Mr Robinson took Qailah to the theatre and gave her alcohol. She says ‘Mum thought he was being kind’.
But after Mr Robinson claimed she needed surgery, Qailah’s mother and a relative with medical knowledge intervened and they asked to see Qailah’s medical notes.
Qailah says ‘I’d seen my file in the hospital – it was huge. He refused to show us but when pressed, he gave us a couple of sheets of paper, so mum took me for a second opinion at another hospital’.
There, Qailah saw a specialist in the same field as Mr Robinson, who said there was nothing wrong with Qailah. Throughout the years that he had been sexually abusing Qailah, Mr Robinson repeatedly told her that her condition was likely to develop into cancer.
After getting the second opinion, she never saw Mr Robinson again.
It was not until Qailah was in her 30s that she realised the implications of what had happened to her as a child. She had an appointment with a consultant and was struck that he didn’t ask her to undress or carry out ‘examinations’ in the same way that Mr Robinson had.
She says ‘I started thinking – that wasn’t what he should have been doing. It took a while to remember it all and realise, then I thought “It’s in the past; what’s the point?”’
But after Qailah had children she became more conscious of how she had been abused, and she decided to report it. She contacted the NHS hospital Mr Robinson had worked at.
She relates ‘Basically they said “This is a very old case. We have so many current serious cases, unless there is someone still at the hospital who can verify your allegation not much can be done”. So I decided to let it go’.
Qailah has only recently told her husband that she was sexually abused.
She says that she finds intimacy difficult, and it is hard for her to trust people. She thinks she is very protective of her children. ‘Maybe I’m over the top, but it’s always at the forefront of my mind.’
Qailah adds that she worries about health issues, and thinks this is probably because Mr Robinson had scared her with his false diagnosis and prediction that she was likely to get cancer.
She says ‘I question so much about it now’. The abuse occurred in the 1990s. Qailah thinks there is more care to chaperone patients now, but says that she had all sorts of ‘treatments’ for so long and wonders why no other medical professional reviewed her case and how it was that she was always left alone with Mr Robinson.
‘No one ever walked in when he was with me, he must have been confident that wasn’t going to happen’ Qailah says.
She continues ‘No children should be alone in that situation in a room with an adult’.
Qailah thinks the abuser may have targeted her because of her background. ‘I look back on it now and realise how much control he had and that I was vulnerable. I come from a conservative family; I wouldn’t have gone home and told my mum about being told to take my clothes off and I think he probably knew that.’