Psychiatrist had sex with patient 'to defuse tension'

A psychiatrist had sex with a female patient and then told her it had to happen to "defuse" the tension between them, the General Medical Council heard today.

The woman said her mental health deteriorated after the alleged encounter with Dr Theodore Soutzos while a hospital in-patient.

She attempted suicide a number of times and felt stressed by his warnings that she must not tell anyone, a fitness to practise panel was told.

Harley Street psychiatrist Dr Soutzos "pressurised" the woman - who was 37 at the time - into a relationship, showering her with compliments, taking her to art galleries and swimming, the hearing was told.

The psychiatrist is accused of having conducted "improper" relationships with three women he was treating between 1999 and 2006 at NHS and private clinics.

He treated Patient A while a specialist registrar at Guy's Hospital in London from January to December 1999 after she was admitted to the Maurice Craig ward.

The woman told the hearing she went to Dr Soutzos's north London flat at his invitation on the evening of March 26.

With candles burning, he started kissing her before taking off her clothes and having sex with her for such a long time she wondered if he had taken Viagra, she told the panel.

"I felt disorientated," she said. "As if I was slipping off into another part of the room.

"I felt very disembodied."

She alleged that while on the bed afterwards, Dr Soutzos spoke of his fantasies and said he was "glad" they had had sex.

When the psychiatrist dropped the woman back at the hospital in the early hours of the morning, they discussed what had happened, the GMC heard.

Patient A said: "We were sitting in the car. I said 'are we in a relationship?'... we had been swimming, we had been to art galleries and we had just had sex.

"He said 'how can we be because I'm your doctor and you're my patient?'

"I said 'what have we been doing for the last two and a half hours?"

His reply, she alleged, was: "We had to defuse the sexual tension that had been building up between us in order to enable us to work together."

The GMC heard the woman, a professional artist, suffered psychiatric problems in the mid-1990s after her ex-husband attempted to kill her.

Drugs prescribed by another psychiatrist resulted in her developing a neurological condition affecting her hand which "effectively ended" her career and she ran into financial problems, the GMC was told.

By the autumn of 1998 she was drinking heavily and had attempted suicide by jumping off Tower Bridge.

In January 1999 she was admitted to hospital where she told the GMC she was diagnosed with "possible borderline personality disorder" and "possible post traumatic stress disorder".

The patient said she feared she was going mad in the weeks after the alleged incident and added she "completely lost the plot".

On one occasion in April, the woman flooded a corridor on the ward with a fire hose and threw a chair at a window which caused the glass to fragment into a "spider's web pattern", prompting her to tell doctors it was the "most creative thing" she had done during her 13 weeks at the hospital and that she no longer wanted to be there.

The woman said: "I talked about every single thing other than what I was upset about."

Asked by Sarah Plaschkes, for the GMC, what that was, she replied: "That I had had sex with Dr Soutzos."

With medical notes reporting her condition deteriorating amid continued suicidal thoughts, the woman told the panel she believed the cause was: "The situation with Dr Soutzos, having sex with him and the pressure I was under to have sex with him and the pressure I was under afterwards."

She alleged Dr Soutzos telephoned in a "paranoid" and "agitated" state at the end of April, fearing people would find out about the relationship.

The psychiatrist told her his mother would "die" if she found out and he would "lose" his career and he urged her to go along with a "complicated" lie, Patient A told the hearing.

"I felt completely responsible for his career and I felt like I had to make sure he didn't lose his career," she said. "I felt a massive weight of responsibility."

She added: "I just felt worse and worse about it as time went on.

"I started to think he had exploited me or just used me for sex but I didn't really want to face it because when I did begin to think about it I felt absolutely terrible."

As the months wore on, the patient alleged she became more unwell and stressed as a result of her experiences with Dr Soutzos and her financial situation.

She said Dr Soutzos appeared to be "erasing" their encounter in the run-up to his departure from the hospital on December 16 to take up a new job as a consultant.

On the same day, the woman told the hearing she went to Borough High Street and jumped in and out of traffic "hoping a car would hit me".

A police car took her to a police station where she said she threw tables and chairs, tried to set fire to a blanket and attempted to strangle herself before officers took her back to the hospital ward.

Earlier the woman told the GMC Dr Soutzos was "annoyed" she had not picked up on his "signals" after a day out together.

Describing the alleged incident on March 21, 1999, she told the panel the psychiatrist dropped her off at the ward following a trip to the Tate in London and after going to see her flat.

The woman told the panel Dr Soutzos said he was "sick of giving me signals and me not responding" before telling her to give him a "really strong signal".

She said: "I knew exactly what he meant. I felt pressurised.

"That's when I put my hand on his crotch and rubbed his crotch for about a minute. I could feel he got an erection. He sat there in silence. I said, 'Is that a good enough signal?', and he said 'yes'.

Patient A said at first she believed the psychiatrist's suggestion she should go to art galleries such as the National Gallery and the Tate was an attempt to help her.

"I wanted to feel that he was trying to get me to reconnect with art," she said.

"All my life art has been the dominant theme in my life, and my identity as a creative person was my identity, and more than anything I wanted to reconnect with that and rebuild my life and rebuild my creative career."

The GMC alleges Dr Soutzos's conduct towards Patient A was "inappropriate" and that he abused his position of trust.

He is also accused of "improper emotional and sexual" relationships with a female patient he met while working at Bowden House Clinic in Harrow between 2003 and 2006 and a third woman he treated at the Priory Hospital in Roehampton in 2006.

Dr Soutzos denies misconduct.

The hearing, which is scheduled to last until next month, was adjourned to tomorrow.