A doctor barred Warren’s parents from his examination room so he could sexually abuse his 13-year-old patient
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
For over 35 years Warren has felt a ‘black cloud’ permanently over him as a result of the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of a doctor.
Warren’s parents had a troubled relationship. His father was violent to him and his mother and by the time he was 12 years old his parents communicated with each other only through him.
He went to live with an aunt, whom he felt loved and protected him. When she heard about the physical abuse he had suffered at home she took him to the family doctor. However, the doctor refused to believe Warren. He argued that his father was a war veteran and called Warren ‘a juvenile delinquent’. He referred Warren to another doctor.
He was driven to the second doctor’s house. After some general ‘chit chat’ the doctor took Warren to another room. Warren had suffered from stomach pains all his life. He now recognises that this is related to stress but when he was a child doctors often thought it may have been appendicitis. The doctor began to examine his stomach in the usual medical way but then ‘descended down there … He tried to get me to have an erection. I remember him giving me oral sex.’
Warren considered this doctor as ‘ok’, and ‘gentle’ but he then referred Waren to a third doctor, the one he specifically wanted to tell the Truth Project about.
When he was 13 years old his parents took him to see this third doctor. Warren remembers him as an arrogant man who dismissed the suggestion of his parents coming into the appointment with him. He recalls a bare examination room with only a telephone and a brown consulting bench.
The doctor began to examine him very abruptly, starting with his stomach and asking about the pain he felt. He then undid Warren’s belt and started to ‘play’ with him. Warren was not sexually active and recalls not being sure what the doctor was doing.
The doctor then put Warren’s penis in his mouth and after a short time started screaming abuse at him, telling him he was dirty and unclean. In his confusion, Warren explained to the doctor that they only had baths once a week in his house and that he hadn’t expected the doctor to be doing this. The doctor continued being abusive and Warren recalls how this made him feel really awful.
He began to heavily manipulate Warren’s testes and suddenly Warren was in an ‘unbelievable’ level of pain. He says he remembers thinking that he was only 13 and ‘this man is going to finish me off’. Warren also remembers the doctor being angry and shouting at him and recall the doctor saying ‘we can’t have another one like you. We need to stamp out this line’.
When he returned to his parents, Warren says he was so embarrassed he could not talk. He says he became ‘like a turtle in a shell I was so introverted’. He did not speak on the long journey back home. The following week he lied to his parents about having stomach pains, so he did not have to go to school.
Warren describes how the abuse has had a major impact on the rest of his life and how he has spent most of his life in fear. As an adult he learnt that he is infertile, and he believes this is a result of what his abuser did to him. Following the death of his parents he became deeply depressed and received intensive therapy. He tried to disclose his childhood sexual abuse to the therapist, but this was not a helpful experience.
Warren did report the abuse to the police. Although he feels he had an empathetic response initially, he was told by a police officer he should think of the doctor’s family, warning that they may sue him, and questioning why he should want to ‘drag all this up’ as the doctor was dead. Warren says this left him feeling ‘depressed, distressed, angry and frustrated’.
More recently he was put in touch with a support agency which he says has provided him with some invaluable support. He says when he heard about the Truth Project, he felt it was his duty to come forward. He wants the NHS to know that abuse happens on their premises and to prevent others going through similar experiences.
Warren stated that the incident had a big impact on the rest of his life. ‘I’ve spent most of my life in fear. It’s only in the last year I’ve been able to be me.’