By Oprah Flash - BBC News - 05.09.2024 - [ENGLAND] -[Huw Glover]
A GP who shared fantasies about child sex abuse with an undercover police officer has been struck off.
Posing as a 44-year-old woman, Huw Glover joined a social media group for people with interest in paedophilia and incest, where he spoke to someone he thought was a fellow paedophile in August 2019, a tribunal heard.
He was convicted of attempting to publish an obscene article in 2023.
Following a three-day Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing on Thursday, his name was erased from the medical register and he was suspended.
Warning: This story contains distressing details
Glover qualified as a doctor in 1988 and at the time his crimes unfolded he was practising as a GP partner at the Featherstone Family Health Centre in Featherstone.
An undercover officer was deployed online on 29 August 2019 as part of a Metropolitan Police investigation into the internet use of people with a sexual interest in children.
The officer joined a messenger group of more than 43 members and received a private message from Glover, who was using the profile name Sara Hotwife, the tribunal heard.
Pretending to be a mother-of-three, he claimed to “live within a sexually open family, which included being nude together” and expressed a willingness to share his fictional teenage daughter to be abused by adults.
The former doctor was arrested at his Shropshire home on 3 September 2019 and his property and work address were both searched by police.
During his police interview, he answered no comment and initially denied the offences. He later changed his plea during his trial when he admitted the crime, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
He was sentenced on 9 November 2023 to a two-year community order for one count of attempting to publish an obscene article and ordered to complete 80 hours of unpaid work and 35 rehabilitation activity requirement days.
As the medical tribunal unfolded, Ms Hughes, of the General Medical Council, said Glover’s conviction “represents a significant departure from the standards expected of a doctor”.
'Risk to public safety'
The hearing was also told that although there was no evidence that his conviction caused direct harm to children, his conviction had the potential to cause serious harm.
The tribunal determined that Glover “brought the profession into disrepute and breached fundamental tenets of the profession, specifically relating to acting within the law”.
His fitness to practise was deemed “impaired” and there was no evidence to suggest his guilty plea was based on remorse or contrition.
The tribunal also determined that due to the very serious nature of the offences, he did “pose a real risk to public safety”.
Ms Hughes submitted that an immediate order of suspension was necessary in order to protect members of the public and otherwise in the public interest.
A risk of repetition, lack of insight and remediation, was also highlighted.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article and were abused in state run medical and health facilities, you can contact Dignity4Patients, whose helpline is open Monday to Thursday 10am to 4pm.