Indecent assault GP jailed for 22 years

A GP who indecently assaulted women as he carried out routine medical examinations on them has been jailed for 22 years.

Stephen Cox, 65, was last week found guilty of 12 charges on seven patients while working at a practice in Bracknell, Berkshire, between 1988 and 1997.

He was found to have got some of his victims to undress unnecessarily, pressed his body against them and touched their breasts without any medical purpose.

Judge Sarah Campbell said Cox was the “worst kind of sexual predator” and had assaulted vulnerable women he thought would be less likely to complain.

Reading Crown Court previously heard that Cox was “motivated by sexual pleasure” when he assaulted the women at the former Ralphs Ride practice, now the Waterfield Practice.

He also carried out internal examinations on some of the women when they were not needed or without using gloves.

Cox, from near Welshpool, was cleared of another four counts involving one of the victims on Friday following a month-long trial.

Last week, police said they were keeping an “open mind” over other possible assaults. Cox previously worked in Wokingham, Burton-on-Trent, Wolverhampton, Derby, Leicestershire, Telford and West Sussex.

One of Cox’s victims told the court she had been “betrayed in the worst possible way” and that she was still profoundly affected, more than 30 years on.

Another said the assaults in Bracknell took place over a prolonged period.

She said: “I don’t get close to people – physically, especially. I can just be having a cuddle with my partner and [Cox] just comes into my head.

“I’ve lost partners because of it, because it’s really hard to understand. It’s just ruined my life, completely.”

A third woman said she had been driven to addiction by Cox’s actions, while another said she had been “violated” as a result of his “sick fetish”.

Cox watched court proceedings on a video link from HMP Bullingdon while wearing a yellow and green prison-issue jumpsuit.

A jury was discharged in a previous trial, at the same court, when it failed to reach verdicts on seven counts of indecent assaults on women in March 2023. Cox was cleared of another count of indecent assault at that time.

Some of his victims came forward to complain about Cox’s behaviour after hearing or reading about police action against him on the radio and in local newspapers.

The judge said Cox had targeted the women. Some had left abusive partners or got unexpectedly pregnant. Another was grieving a parent.

She said the way the victims did not report Cox immediately after the assaults “will have struck a chord” with many women.

“With no witnesses to the assaults, it was the strength of all the victims’ accounts, which showed a similar pattern in Cox’s behaviour, that helped secure his conviction,” Chris White, from the Crown Prosecution Service, said.

“We would like to thank them for coming forward and we hope today’s sentence gives them some sense of closure.”

Cox was suspended from practising as a doctor for nine months in October 2010 and has now retired.

Regulators found that he had acted inappropriately and in a “sexually motivated” way with two patients and a trainee while working at a practice in Handcross, West Sussex.

Instances included placing a hand inside a patient’s bra during an examination, pushing or thrusting his body against a woman’s bottom and deliberately touching and/or rubbing the medical student’s leg and arm.

At the time, the hearing was told he was “devastated when the complainants came forward”. But a panel found Cox did not show he was “able to empathise with the perspectives of the women concerned”.