A 71-year-old doctor has been jailed for 10 and a half years for sexually assaulting 15 patients, including children, over a 20 year period. 

Former GP Alan Tutin, from Tonbridge, Kent, groped women and girls who had booked appointments for minor illnesses, including a sore throat, a mole and for the contraceptive pill.

He targeted a 12-year-old girl, looking for help with a cold, who was only unaccompanied because her mother had died just a few months earlier.

He also gave one 22-year-old patient a breast examination – in which he “squeezed them as if he was weighing them” – after she only wanted to get the warts on her feet looked at.

Jailing Tutin at the Old Bailey on Friday, a judge said: “There cannot be a more serious abuse of trust that these courts have to deal with, than that of a doctor and a patient.”

The court heard some of his colleagues had been concerned when it emerged he had been downloading pornography and using sex chat lines during surgery hours.

During his career at the Merrow Practice in Guildford, Surrey, Tutin was accused of molesting 25 females as young as nine years old for his own sexual gratification.

The father-of-four denied indecent assaults between 1981 and 2004 – but after 42 hours of deliberation, a jury found him guilty on 15 counts against 15 women.

Tutin was found not guilty on six counts of indecent assault and one of assault by penetration, and was acquitted of a further count on the directions of the judge mid-way through the trial.

In a series of statements, his victims described feeling “dirty” after he touched them and stupid for not stopping him or immediately complaining about it.

One victim, who was 19 at the time, said: “I was just becoming independent and starting to progress into adulthood. If I had been a few years older I would have been able to challenge him.”

Louise Sweet QC, for the former GP said: “Dr Tutin is now a man in his 70s. Prison is hard for a man of no experience, let alone a man of his years.”

An NSPCC spokesperson said: “Tutin’s patients went to him in good faith, seeking his wisdom and reassurance. Instead he used his position for his own depravity over two decades, targeting vulnerable women and young girls.”

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