A FORMER Yeadon GP has appeared in Court this week accused of indecently assaulting eight women patients over a 17-year period.

Dr Gerald Walmsley, 50, denies ten charges of indecent assault, three of which relate to his time at the Yeadon Health Centre and a further seven at his practice in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

He is alleged to have assaulted two sisters in Yeadon in separate attacks - one a 16-year-old girl who visited him to have a tattoo removed, the other a new mother.

Joanne Glynn, QC, prosecuting, said all the accounts of the attacks were similar and had common features even though none of the victims - except for the sisters from Yorkshire - knew each other.

She told Maidstone Crown Court: "All the victims were vulnerable women who were feeling low, of very young age and invariably very attractive.

"Another feature was they were all deeply embarrassed when they were indecently assaulted and were all naked at the time of attack.

"Some of them could not report it due to the inequality of the doctor-patient relationship or they felt stupid that they allowed it to happen."

Married Dr Walmsley is alleged to have touched the 16-year-old sexually after he removed a tattoo from her buttocks. He is also accused of groping her sister in May 1984 after her daughter was born.

"He asked her about her sex life. One time he said he found her 'desirable and very attractive'," said Miss Glynn. "She thought he was trying to build her confidence. he told her to slip off her clothes and get on the couch."

The prosecution claim that then, Dr Walmsley touched the woman sexually and gave her a 'lingering hug'.

She said she did not report the

incident straight away because she said: "You just do not talk about things like that."

A 25-year-old bank clerk wept as she told the jury of eight women and four men her account of how the GP twice groped her at his Tunbridge Wells practice after telling her he would give her a massage to boost her confidence about scarring to her legs.

But she said she was left 'full of shock and fear' by the massage. The doctor had begun by massaging her legs and gradually moved his hands higher.

In tears, she said he assaulted her a second time on October 9, 1997. She said: "I was just numb. I didn't really think it could have happened."

A second woman, aged 31, told how Dr Walmsley had pulled the lower half of her clothes halfway down her legs after she visited his Tunbridge Wells practice to have a small operation on her finger.

She told the court how she was laid down on the couch and given injections without her permission by Dr Walmsley in her back, buttocks and thigh.

"I felt woozy. I remember being told to relax. I remember Dr Walmsley saying he would like to look at my back. Then I woke up to find the lower half of my clothes were halfway down my legs."

The case continues.

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