One of the NHS’ most senior doctors has been struck off after spying on a 15-year-old girl as she showered.
Jonathan Fielden was once the highest paid chief in NHS England, earning around £225,000 as the health service’s deputy medical director.
However the 55-year-old has since been erased from the medical register after he was convicted of voyeurism for staring at a child without her knowledge as she showered.
An employment tribunal heard Fielden, who was the medical director of University College London Hospitals at the time, had looked down on the child from the loft directly above her shower by peering down a ventilation pipe and through a hole in a light fitting.
He continued to stare for “15 to 20 seconds”, Fielden admitted in Luton crown court last year, before the girl noticed him. His defence added he had been under “particular stresses” and had suffered a “loss of judgement”.
The child, who remains anonymous for her protection, struggled to shower for some time, and eventually the matter was raised with a school councillor who passed the details on to police.
A later search of the doctor’s phone found evidence he had used the device to visit websites featuring young girls and images of child sexual abuse, according to The Times. He has since been ordered to sign the sex offenders register.
Handing down a suspended sentence of five months imprisonment as well as 150 hour of unpaid work, Judge Richard Foster told Fielden in 2019: “It’s tragic to see you, a man of such brilliance in your career — a hardworking man at the pinnacle of your career, responsible for a substantial part of the NHS budget — to fall from grace in the way you have because of what you stupidly did.”
In a hearing conducted behind closed doors by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, which ruled to remove him from the medical register with immediate effect, officials said the doctor had not shown he had fully understood the damage caused by his actions both to his victim, and the reputation of the health service as a whole.
A report on the ruling said that attention was drawn to his claim that the incident was a matter of “poor judgement”, with the tribunal warning his comments were “not conducive to full insight into the effect that this conviction had on [his victim] and the complete inappropriateness of his behaviour”.
The report added: “The Tribunal noted that Dr Fielden held a very senior position in NHS England and was expected to provide leadership and direction.
“Whilst Dr Fielden acknowledged the impact of the loss of his career upon himself the Tribunal considered that he had failed to demonstrate sufficient insight into the impact upon his profession as a whole and those for whom he had responsibility.”
Source: Independent
