GP who travelled 100 miles to rape 10-year-old girl struck off

A GP who travelled 100 miles to rape a 10-year-old girl has been struck off the medical register.

The behaviour of Rupesh Seth, who was jailed for more than three years in March, was ruled to be “fundamentally incompatible with being a doctor”.

A medical tribunal panel said Seth’s actions were “deplorable” – with a ban on working in medicine the only way to “sufficiently protect, promote and maintain the health, safety and wellbeing of the public” and keep up public confidence in the profession.

Seth, 39, from Wareham in Dorset, was arrested in 2020 after travelling to Egham in Surrey to abuse the youngster, police said.

Subsequent searches of his phones uncovered child sexual abuse imagery, the force added.

General Medical Council representative Georgina Goring said the family doctor’s actions “did not involve a single act but related to conduct which took place over a prolonged period, reflecting serious behavioural and attitudinal issues”, Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) documents said.

Seth used encrypted chat programmes to discuss child sex abuse and arranged the girl’s rape with a man he met online, the panel was told.

The man was actually an undercover officer, the PA news agency understands.

The 41 indecent pictures found on Seth’s two mobiles included 27 at the most depraved level of category A, the tribunal also heard.

Seth, who qualified at the University of Birmingham in 2008, told officers he “had developed an addiction to indecent images of children and needed help”, tribunal chairwoman Ogheneruona Iguyovwe said in the panel’s ruling.

Seth was jailed for 39 months after admitting trying to arrange and facilitate the commission of a child sex offence and three counts of making indecent images of children, police said.

The MPTS, which said Seth travelled to Staines, near Egham, from his home and was given a 40-month sentence, said the ban on practising medicine would be immediate.

Detective Constable Andy Grimwood, from Surrey Police, said Seth’s arrest, which led to him being suspended from work, came after a joint investigation between the force’s Paedophile Online Investigations Team and the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit.

He said: “Thankfully, during this investigation, there was never a real-life victim and no children were ever in danger.”

After his sentencing at Guildford Crown Court, NHS Dorset, which opened a dedicated helpline for those with concerns, said Seth, of Filleul Road, “previously worked in a number of health settings across Dorset”, including at “GP practices in and around Bournemouth along with placements at local hospitals before his arrest”.

There was no evidence patients were put at risk, it said.

The trust’s chief nursing officer Debbie Simmons said at the time “every child has the right to grow up safe from harm”, adding: “The actions of Dr Seth are inexcusable.”