When Michele Mauger turned up to her
first appointment with the psychiatrist she hoped might help to turn her
life around, there is no doubt she was in a highly vulnerable state.
Michele,
then 38, was suffering from depression after she developed a thyroid
condition and had a botched hysterectomy the previous year.
Married with two children, Michele hoped that meeting Dr Steven Lomax in February 1988 would be the first step towards the recovery she craved.
Psychological scars: Michele Mauger regrets an affair she had with Dr Steven Lomax, right, who has since been struck off
Instead, their encounter was to be
the start of a bitterly destructive 13-year relationship between patient
and doctor, the effects of which Michele still lives with today.
The affair tore apart her 20-year marriage, disrupted her relationship with her children — Annie, then 20, and Richard, nine — and has left Michele with enduring psychological scars.
‘I was in a very vulnerable
state and wanted help,’ she says. ‘What happened destroyed me and my
family. It was as if a grenade had been thrown into our lives. It was
horrendous.’
Michele is
telling her story after the General Medical Council, which regulates
doctors, published new guidance on relationships between doctors and
their patients and former patients.
In
2009, improper relationships with patients overtook clinical issues as
the most common allegations leading doctors to be struck off the medical
register — and experts say the number of cases brought to the GMC’s
attention each year may be just the tip of the iceberg.
Only
this week yet another case of a woman claiming to have been exploited
by her doctor reached the GMC’s Manchester tribunal. The details of the
case are, for women like Michele, depressingly familiar.
Humiliated: Sheila Rorie admits she was also in the wrong when she had an affair with her doctor but he abused his position
The 39-year-old, a
mother-of-one who has not been named, claims that Dr Jonathan Beacon,
66, an orthopedic surgeon, waived his fees for treatment to her injured
knee before beginning a torrid affair with her.
The
two met in 2005 when she attended his surgery in St Albans. They then
allegedly embarked upon a 19-month long affair that only ended when the
woman met another man, to whom she is now married. Dr Beacon has not
commented on the case nor attended the hearing, which is ongoing.
Whatever
the outcome of the case, it is clear that a doctor-patient relationship
that becomes too close can have far-reaching and deeply painful
consequences.
'I was like a rabbit caught in blinding headlights. I was excited by being so very special to a person such as him'
Michele Mauger’s case also reached
the GMC, two years ago — and 23 years after she first met Dr Steven
Lomax in a consulting room at Castel Hospital in Guernsey.
Lomax
was struck off the medical register after details the affair were
revealed. But the tragedy didn’t end there for the Mauger family.
Two months after the hearing in October 2011, Michele’s 32-year-old son killed himself.
Michele
is tortured by the impact her relationship with Lomax had on her
vulnerable son, who was being treated for schizophrenia.
‘I
know it was his illness,’ she says. ‘But Lomax coming into to our lives
and destroying our family was the catalyst.’ Michele moved from
Guernsey to Eastbourne in East Sussex to rebuild her life following the
affair.
She looks back with bitter regret on the relationship she had with Lomax, who was married with three children.
‘I
was like a rabbit caught in blinding headlights,’ she says. ‘I was
excited by being so very special to a person such as him.’
Almost
from the start, she says, Lomax was intimate in his conversations with
her. They would discuss their love of art, poetry and music — subjects
far removed from Michele’s pressing medical issues.
She had been referred to Lomax by her GP for psychotherapy to treat her depression. ‘I felt it was a bit strange,’ she admits. ‘You don’t expect that intimate level of conversation from a doctor. He paid me lots of attention and that’s very seductive when you’re vulnerable,’ Michele says.
Their relationship quickly evolved
into something way beyond doctor and patient. Lomax commented on the
‘sexual tension’ between them, and before long he was driving Michele
home and kissing her. Soon it was a full-blown affair.
‘Afterwards I felt dirty. I felt like the worst, most disgusting person in the whole world,’ Michele says.
Nevertheless,
the relationship flourished, medical consultations became romantic
trysts, and when Lomax confessed to his wife that he was having an
affair, Michele also told her husband.
‘It was terrible,’ she says. ‘He was heartbroken, and the children didn’t know what was going on.’
Michele
moved out of the family home, leaving her son Richard in the care of
his father. Her daughter Annie was away at university by then.
Years of turmoil ensued in what
became an on-again, off-again relationship. Michele, who divorced her
first husband in 1996, followed Lomax from Guernsey to the British
mainland when he moved jobs.
‘But it was never right,’ she says ruefully. ‘ I spent more than 13 years being picked up and dropped.’ The relationship finally collapsed in January 2001, after Lomax said he had fallen out of love and wanted to be alone.
Embarrassed: Jill Tudor believes her GP 'preyed on my vulnerability'
Michele packed her bags and
left their Lancashire home with just two suitcases of belongings to show
for what she regards as 13 wasted years.
She
set up home in Eastbourne, where she began work as a medical
administrator. Michele says: ‘At the time I thought Lomax loved me and I
thought I loved him.
‘My daughter says I didn’t love him, I just needed him. I don’t even know what love is any more.’
Troubling
as Michele’s experience is, it is sadly not a one-off. The Medical
Defence Union says it deals with about 70 cases a year where doctors are
said to have overstepped professional boundaries.
'We both did it, it was wrong, but yes, I do think it was more wrong in that he was my doctor'
Jonathan Coe, managing director of
the Clinic for Boundaries Studies, a charity supporting victims of abuse
by healthcare workers and which trains doctors in ethics, says: ‘People
get in touch with us every week. It is clear that the levels of
reporting to the regulators are an under-representation.
‘There
is often a lot of shame and guilt, with patients feeling that because
they have not stopped something happening, they have assented to it and
feel a certain responsibility.’
Grandmother Sheila Rorie, 63, is haunted by the humiliation of giving evidence to the GMC.
She
was married when she began an affair with her GP, Michael Rusling, then
48. Rusling was struck off in 2009 after admitting the affair, as well
as a second relationship with a colleague.
His
relationship with Sheila, who had undergone a hysterectomy after being
diagnosed with ovarian cancer, began when she went to the GP’s Hull
surgery in 2006 because she feared the cancer was back.
It wasn’t — but during a medical examination, Rusling slipped his hand inside his patient’s underwear before kissing her.
Sheila,
who had suffered abuse in her traumatic childhood and was feeling
lonely during a ‘bad patch’ in her marriage, didn’t try to stop him. ‘We
talked. It wasn’t all sex,’ she says. ‘He was a nice person, a kind
person.’
Despite the similarities with Michele’s experience, Sheila has far more mixed feelings about her affair.
‘I
can’t really condemn him, can I?’ she asks. ‘We both did it, it was
wrong, but yes, I do think it was more wrong in that he was my doctor.
He knew my faults, he knew my problems.’
The couple had a seven-month sexual affair in September 2006 which only ended when Rusling was suspended after a second patient made a complaint to the police.
Responding to scandals: The GMC have published new guidelines on doctors/patient relations (posed by models)
Sheila subsequently tried to
rebuild her relationship with her husband, but they separated this year.
Sheila says she knows she carries some responsibility for what
happened.
‘It’s not a
case of “poor little me”,’ she says. ‘But I do think he had a
professional duty and he should not have crossed that boundary.’
This sentiment is shared by Jill
Tudor, 51, a mother-of-four who resorted to secretly taping her sex
sessions with married GP Dr Simon Robinson to escape their tangled
relationship.
Robinson
was struck off a year ago after a disciplinary panel said he lied by
claiming Jill’s account of a 16-month affair was a malicious fantasy.
Jill,
who had surgery to remove a brain tumour in 2004, became a patient of
Robinson’s at Cae Glas Surgery in Oswestry, Shropshire, after moving to
the town in 1999.
Jill
ended up confiding in the doctor about the break-up of her marriage. ‘I
thought he was a good doctor and a good listener,’ she says. ‘Some
doctors can make you feel like you’re not on the same level, but he was
quite down to earth.’
Jill
says the relationship changed when she went to see her GP for a
check-up in July 2009. She’d had a long bout of depression and was being
treated for alcoholism.
‘As
I got up to leave, he stood up, came towards the door and said: “As
it’s your birthday tomorrow . . .” and kissed me on the mouth.’
Another
kiss followed, and Jill says she left the surgery ‘on cloud nine’. A
week later, Robinson arrived unannounced at Jill’s home and asked her to
perform a sex act.
She
told the GMC that for the rest of the year, the doctor would call at
her home or ask her to the surgery two to three times a week. She would
perform a sex act on him, but they never had full intercourse.
Wrong medicine
The number of complaints to the General Medical Council about doctors rose by a quarter from 2010 to 2012
‘My life centred on whether he would
call,’ she says. ‘When it first started, I thought it was a
relationship, even though I would ask him why he never made love to me.
He always said that would be crossing the line; it always came back to
the fact he was my doctor. It was crossing the line to have sex, but not
crossing the line to do what he was doing. It sounds bizarre now, but
it made me feel special,’ she says.
‘There
was something flattering about the fact that he was a doctor. But as
time passed, I started to see it differently. It made me feel cheap, and
dirty.
‘He preyed on
my vulnerability. I think I needed loving, but not like that.’ By the
end of 2010, Jill was at her lowest ebb and told her grown-up sons what
was happening.
On
their advice, she recorded two of her encounters with the doctor. These
were subsequently played to a GMC hearing after Jill made an official
complaint.
Robinson
disputed her claims, insisting she had fabricated the story. ‘I had to
put up with being painted as a fantasist,’ she says. ‘But the worst part
was hearing the recording. It was very embarrassing.’
Jill
has been shunned by some neighbours who blame her for the loss of a
popular doctor. Robinson, who was struck off, has maintained that he is
innocent.
As far as
Michele Mauger is concerned, there can never be an appropriate
relationship between a doctor and a patient. ‘If you meet in a bar or at
a party and see someone you like, it’s on an equal level,’ she says.
‘But with a doctor, the patient is in a vulnerable position. The balance
of power is never equal.
‘Everyone
who goes to a health professional is vulnerable, whether emotionally,
physically or mentally. You have to trust that professional to deal with
what’s wrong with you.’
Michele says her trust was abused, and the impact of that is enduring.
‘If you give that trust to someone and they turn it to their advantage, it messes with your head,’ she says.