Doctor who sent explicit material to alumni is suspended despite asking to be struck off
BMJ 2023; 380 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.p669 (Published 20 March 2023) Cite this as: BMJ 2023;380:p669
A doctor who sent explicit messages and videos to six women who had attended medical school with him has been suspended from the UK medical register despite his own advice that he should be struck off.
“I recognise the harm that this has caused and strongly advise the deciding body to strip me of my medical title,” wrote James White in an email to the General Medical Council (GMC) five months ago. He did not attend his medical practitioners tribunal hearing.
White qualified from the University of East Anglia in 2015. Within months of finishing medical school he sent a video to a female former student that showed him masturbating. She testified, “He followed up this video with a message which read, ‘Oh, I didn’t mean to send you that (laughing face emoji).’”
She immediately blocked him, feeling “shocked and confused,” she told the tribunal. Hers was one of four additional cases unearthed by GMC investigators after two female doctors, both former students at East Anglia, complained about messages from White in early 2019.
White’s crude missives were interspersed with occasional apologies and flashes of self-awareness, said the complainants in their witness statements. In a series of texts sent on one day in 2019 to a female doctor who had already received unsolicited photos from him, he began by writing, “I think I may have massively fucked up and ruined my medical career.”
He later added, “Sorry,” and then, “I don’t want to be that person” and “I’m having treatment.” But then he followed those messages with a text asking, “Do you want to see me erupt?” and a picture of his erect penis.
To another doctor he wrote, “I think I likely need help,” and he went on to describe his sexual fantasies about her, asking, “Is that a bad thing?”
Fitness review
In White’s email to the GMC calling for his own erasure, he wrote, “I will never practise medicine again, not for my genuine love of patients, but for my failures and mistakes in a younger period of my life . . . I loved speaking with patients and have received several letters about my positive impact upon their care and lives, but I don’t want this to distract from the harm I’ve caused to fellow colleagues. There is no turning back from that and I will never forgive myself for my actions.”
He added, “It is with sadness, knowing that everything will be broadcasted, both for myself and my colleagues that I say the only plausible closure (for them more importantly) is that I no longer practise medicine in any clinical capacity. I don’t want to prolong this for the extremely brave people that have spoken against me. They need resolution. That for me is forfeiture of my licence and criminal investigation.”
But the GMC’s lawyer told the tribunal that the regulator was not seeking White’s erasure, since his sexual misconduct was not at the most serious end of the scale and had not involved patients, and there was no evidence of repetition since 2019. The tribunal agreed, instead imposing the next strongest sanction, a 12 month suspension.
The tribunal chair, Alice Moller, said, “There is a public interest in facilitating the safe return to work of an otherwise competent doctor, so complete removal of Dr White’s name from the medical register would not be proportionate. The tribunal did not consider that there is a significant risk of repetition of similar misconduct in view of Dr White’s shame and concern for those impacted.”
Although White avoids erasure for now, he will not be able to resume practice unless he convinces a review hearing of his fitness in a year’s time.