AN EMINENT doctor posed as a teenage girl called “Katie” to swap photographs and sexually explicit messages with children in internet chat rooms, the General Medical Council was told yesterday.

Dr Thomas Dent, 42, of Newbury, Berkshire, was highly regarded as a senior director at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which advises the Government on patient care.

But he is accused of accessing sensitive websites pretending to be 13-year-old “Katie Beckinsale” to exchange e-mails with, and sexually groom, 26 teenagers using indecent language about sex and underwear.

He accessed porn websites and exchanged photographs with children while talking to them in chatrooms about masturbation and orgasms.

He e-mailed one girl: “You look so good in that bikini. It is so cool you are into panties too. I am horny again now.” To another, named Julia, he wrote: “Just sat here speaking to you makes me tingle.”

Dr Dent’s activities came to light only by chance in May 2004 when an off-duty special constable spotted him on a train e-mailing a teenager called Emma on his laptop.

Craig Sephton, counsel for the GMC, said: “On May 10, 2004 he was seated on the train next to a special constable who witnessed him sending e-mail correspondence to a girl called Emma. It is possible an indecent photograph was sent.

“He was asked for his identification, but gave an incomplete name and false address.”

Officers found the sexually graphic e-mails on his hard drive, including images of him lying on a bed wearing a thong. He was arrested on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children and grooming children.

He resigned as programme director for interventional procedures for NICE and was subsequently served with a risk of sexual harm order by magistrates.

He faces 13 charges of misconduct before the GMC fitness-to-practise panel sitting in Manchester. If found guilty he can be struck off.

Mr Sephton said: “It is our case that Mr Dent used his work computers to access the e-mail, chat rooms and pornographic sites purporting to be a young girl. He gave misleading statements to police.”

He said that it was also the prosecution’s case that Dr Dent behaved irresponsibly and was sexually motivated. At some point he disposed of his desktop computer, Mr Sephton said.

The panel was told that Dr Dent tried to mislead police by claiming he only corresponded with two girls and one boy, insisting he was trying to counsel them about urinary incontinence, which he claimed to have suffered as a child.

Dr Dent was appointed the programme director for interventional procedures at NICE in July 2002. He worked previously as a consultant in public health medicine at a health authority and primary care trust in Hampshire. He is a visiting senior lecturer at the National Co-ordinating Centre for Health Technology Assessment at the University of Southampton.

In a statement Dr Dent, who was not present at the hearing, apologised for bringing his profession into disrepute.

He said: “I should never have become engaged in such activities. I apologise for misleading the GMC. I have been going through therapy to try and understand my actions. Previous to this evidence, I have an unblemished personal life. I was wrong, but not unlawful, otherwise I would have been prosecuted.”

The panel heard that, initially, the Crown Prosecution Service decided to drop the case. Although Dr Dent’s behaviour was thought to be strange and troubling, it did not constitute a criminal offence. “Perhaps to their credit, NICE were not satisfied,” Mr Sephton said. The “gaffe was blown” on his misleading explanation of the e-mails when his work computers were analysed and the true extent of his computer misuse was exposed.

Dr Dent is not contesting the charges by the GMC.

The hearing continues.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating