A pervert doctor who sexually assaulted patients during routine examinations over two decades has been jailed. Gregory Manson was today sentenced to seven years imprisonment after being found guilty of a series of sexual offences committed over a number of years against male patients at the surgery he worked at in Canterbury.
The GP practising at Cossington House Surgery from 1999 to 2017 when he carried out unnecessary examinations of men’s genitals, without offering a chaperone to them or explaining the reasons for the examinations. Two of his victims were teenage boys and his 16 offences included conducting groin exams even when his patients came in with coughs, headaches, back pain and knee sprains. Some of the nine victims of Manson, who qualified as a GP in 1998 and worked in Canterbury before being dismissed in 2017, said he pulled down their underwear without asking their permission.
Manson then failed to put details in the patient notes that these examinations had taken place or set out any findings from them.
The disgraced medic, who denied all the charges, told the jury at Canterbury Crown Court that his medical examinations were “not sexually motivated at all” as he denied 24 offences overall. But the jury saw through his lies and he was convicted by majority verdict of 12 sexual assaults and four indecent assaults against nine males.
He was found not guilty of six offences, and two others were alternative charges which did not require verdicts.
Judge Simon Taylor KC told the doctor he had “camouflaged sexual abuse in the context of medical examinations”, adding he had committed “nearly two decades’ worth of offending”.
Delivering his sentencing remarks, Judge Taylor added: “For almost the entirety of your medical career you periodically and opportunistically abused male patients.
“Because you decided to deploy your abuse in a medical fashion, some of these men did not know that you were touching them for your own sexual purposes – it must not be forgotten your actions victimised them.”
The judge continued: “The abuse of trust here is immense. People trusted you with access to their bodies and you abused that trust for your own sexual gratification.
“You were able to construct a false defence to justify your sexual assaults because that is something that is very easy for a GP to do.
“Your exploitative actions betrayed not only patients, but your wider profession.”
Manson qualified in 1998 and originally worked in South Africa and also worked as a GP trainer, programme director of GP training and GP appraiser for the General Medical Council before his dismissal in 2017.
He was remunerated by the NHS at 90% of his salary following his suspension in 2017. This remuneration then halved in November 2023 and stopped in 2024, the court heard.
One of Manson’s victims read out a personal impact statement in court on Friday in which he said he “never now visits the GP”.
The victim added: “What still stuns me is how normal you made all of this seem.
“It was calculated, it was deliberate and we now know it was abuse. You built a wall of goodwill around yourself and then used it as a shield.
“You don’t get to hide behind your title anymore.
“Your victims are no longer silent, and your legacy is not the doctor who helped people, it’s the harm you caused when no-one was watching.”
Addressing Manson, he said: “You taught me that help isn’t always safe, that authority can betray, and trust can be dangerous.”
During the trial, prosecutor Jennifer Knight KC said “many examinations he performed were not medically justified”.
She added: “In truth Dr Manson took frequent opportunities to examine patients’ genitals, not because he needed to but because he wanted to.”
Manson’s earliest two victims were brothers, and he was their doctor both before and after they were 16, the court heard.
The older brother’s medical notes suggests that he was seen 11 times between the ages of 14 and 19, and he said he remembered his genitals being examined on “over half” of those visits.
The first complaint of sexual assault against Manson was filed in 2017, followed by an NHS England exercise which saw more alleged victims come forward.
Manson told jurors that his motivation was to rule out rare diseases which he had misdiagnosed in the past.
Jurors heard during the trial that Ian Wall, a professor of forensic medicine and GP, was “surprised” that Manson considered testicular examination part of a new patient check.
Manson was found to have taken limited notes on these examinations, which he denied was an attempt to hide his offending.
Will Bodiam from the Crown Prosecution Service said Manson abused the trust between GP and patient “in an appalling way”.
He said: “These patients trusted Manson as he was their GP and he abused that trust in an appalling way, carrying out intimate examinations which were not all medically justified.
“They described their discomfort at what happened to them and some of them actively tried to avoid seeing Manson because of their previous experiences with him.
“On several occasions, the victims were not even given the option to consent to the examinations and had their underwear removed with no warning.
“Manson never explained to the patients what he was doing and why, failing to offer them the opportunity to have a chaperone and not even recording the examinations he had undertaken or any findings from them in the patient notes. This is not what patients should expect from their GPs.”