Reform calls after GP abuse scandal

Dr Green was jailed last year for eight years

Health service failures allowed a doctor to continue abusing patients for more than a decade, a report has concluded.

The standards watchdog behind it is now demanding changes to the way complaints are monitored in the NHS.

Weaknesses in the complaints system throughout the 1980s and for most of the 1990s meant that Dr Peter Green's litany of sex assaults on young men was not halted, claims the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI).

Dr Green was jailed in July 2000 for eight years for nine indecent assaults on male patients.

The CHI investigation revealed that, despite concerns raised by staff, patients and the police, a full-scale investigation never followed and Dr Green had been allowed to continue in practice and commit further crimes.

Dr Peter Homa, CHI chairman, said: "Peter Green's patients were failed not only by him but by a system that allowed a credible person to do incredible things to patients to whom he owed a duty of care."

We found a culture that did not listen to patients

Dr Peter Homa, chairman, CHI

The commission has now recommended that a centralised NHS complaints system replace the current fragmented affair, so that warning signals about individual doctors can be picked up earlier.

It would allow all complaints - including those made anonymously, to be logged and tracked.

Dr Homa said: "We found a culture that simply did not listen to patients, and fudged accountability.

"In essence no one pieced together the evidential jigsaw.

"Quite simply, it's not acceptable."

Health minister Lord Hunt also welcomed the report, pointing out that substantial reform of the NHS complaints system was already underway.

Health authorities are to be given new powers to stop doctors suspected of serious crimes from practicing.

He said: "This government has made sure that systems are in place within the NHS to detect any such wrongdoing as early as possible and for action to be taken to prevent it continuing or recurring."

Catalogue of assaults

Many of the assaults took place at Dr Green's former practice in Loughborough.

The other doctors at the Pinfold Gate practice later issued a statement through the Medical Defence Union, saying they were "devastated" when they discovered what had been going on.

Young male patients had been fooled into thinking they were taking part in fertility research, and performed a sex act in front of him.

The offences took place over more than a decade, and Green was investigated by police in both 1985 and 1992, but no further action was taken on both occasions.

I'm very angry that my abuse could have been prevented if other people had spoken out

Victim of Dr Peter Green

CHI investigators spoke to the young patients, who said they felt "powerless" in discussions with the health authority.

One of Dr Green's victims told the BBC that he felt "disgusted" by the inadequacies of the complaints system.

The man, who asked for his name to be withheld, told the BBC: "I'm very angry that my abuse could have been prevented if other people had spoken out."

A spokesman for the General Medical Council, which eventually took action to suspend Green in 1997, said: "We took action as soon as we were made aware of the doctor, however we now have powers that enable us to suspend a doctor much more quickly, as the report recommends."

At Nottingham Crown Court, Mr Justice Astill told Green that his behaviour was a "wicked betrayal" of the trust placed in him by patients.

Hard to catch

The Chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners said it would work with CHI to develop new ways of monitoring GPs, but said it would always be difficult to detect criminal GPs.

The British Medical Association said that it was important that patients who felt they had been abused during intimate examinations felt able to blow the whistle on the doctor involved.

Green was convicted of nine counts of indecent assault, but cleared of a further nine counts of indecent assault on male and female patients.

These included allegations that he had invited couples who were having trouble conceiving to have sex in his surgery while he watched.

In some cases, Green had told young men that they were infertile in order to enrol them in his "research".

This could have severe consequences - in one instance, a patient stopped using contraception in the mistaken belief that he was sterile, then conceived an unwanted child with his girlfriend.

Another man in a similar situation accused his partner of infidelity when she fell pregnant, and divorced her.