A village doctor who carried out a hate campaign against a vicar has been struck off the medical register.

Desmin O’Callaghan, of Brafield-on-the-Green, Northamptonshire, launched the eight-month campaign because he was upset by his lover’s allegations of an affair with the married rural priest.

The GP’s campaign included written attacks on the vicar — whose name cannot be disclosed for legal reasons — parishioners, his bishop and the local newspaper, which left the victim fearing for his life.

Last September at Northampton Crown Court, Dr O’Callaghan was sentenced to a three-year community rehabilitation order and told to undergo psychiatric treatment, after pleading guilty to harassment, perverting the course of justice and false accounting.

His accomplice and lover Ann Draper was given 200 hours’ community service.

Yesterday, a General Medical Council fitness to practise panel, sitting in Manchester, erased Dr O’Callaghan’s name from the medical register.

The decision came after a three-day hearing, at which the GP was not present.

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