Former GP jailed for sex offences after performing unnecessary genital exams on patients including two teenage boys
4 July 2025, 14:25
A former GP has been jailed for sex offences after conducting unnecessary genital examinations on male patients including two teenage boys - even when patients come in for unrelated ailments.
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Gregory Manson, 56, was sentenced to seven years in jail for 16 offences including conducting groin exams even when his patients came in with coughs, headaches, back pain and knee sprains.
Some of the nine victims of Manson said he pulled down their underwear without asking their permission. He qualified as a GP in 1998 and worked in Canterbury before being dismissed in 2017.
Judge Simon Taylor KC told Manson that 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 at Canterbury Crown Court on Friday, Judge Taylor added: "For almost the entirety of your medical career you periodically and opportunistically abused male patients.
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"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 added: "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 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.
Manson, of Tower Way, Canterbury, denied 18 offences of sexual assault and six of indecent assault in respect of nine victims.
He was convicted on Thursday of 12 sexual assaults and four indecent assaults against nine men which took place over almost two decades.
He was found not guilty of six offences, and two others were alternative charges which did not require verdicts.
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, the prosecution noted that "many examinations he performed were not medically justified" and that other GPs would not have carried them out.
"In truth Dr Manson took frequent opportunities to examine patients' genitals, not because he needed to but because he wanted to," said Jennifer Knight KC, prosecuting.
The earliest two victims of the former GP were brothers, and he was their doctor before and after they were 16, the court heard.
Will Bodiam from the Crown Prosecution Service 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."
