A woman who was the first person to be sexually abused by disgraced paediatrician Myles Bradbury has been awarded a five-figure payout from the NHS.
Dr Myles Bradbury told the teenage victim to remove her clothing for what was an “unnecessary physical examination” and then proceeded to assault her.
She is the first female to claim she was abused by the doctor and the first to say the abuse happened at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
Bradbury was jailed in December 2014 for abusing 18 boys – aged between 10 and 16 – at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.
The offences were carried out on boys who suffered from serious illnesses such as cancer while Bradbury was working as a paediatric consultant haematologist.
The doctor was described by Judge Gareth Hawkesworth as “the worst paedophile he had ever seen” when he sentenced Bradbury to 22 years in jail in 2014.
He was placed on the sex offenders register for life, received a sexual offences prevention order and banned from working as a doctor again.
Bradbury previously admitted committing 25 offences between 2009 and 2013, including sexual assault, voyeurism and possessing more than 16,000 indecent images.
Now, a legal investigation into allegations made against him from his time in Birmingham has seen Birmingham Women and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust agreeing to pay the woman a five-figure damages settlement.
The assault took place when Bradbury was working at Birmingham Children’s Hospital between October 2007 and November 2008.
The woman, now 26, said she decided to come forward after careful consideration having written to by the hospital following Bradbury’s arrest.
The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: “When the letter arrived from the hospital I thought back to when I had seen Bradbury and how inappropriate my examination had been.
“When you are young and naive you don’t have a full understanding of what has happened.
“It was difficult to come forward, but I am glad I did. I hope that by me coming forward, if there are other boys and girls who were abused by him, they will come forward too.
“I have come forward not just for my sake but for the sake of all patients seen by this man, wherever he worked.
“He preyed on young and naive people, so I truly believe there may be more like me.
“You try and convince yourself that something like this has not affected you, but it does. I have lost my trust in health professionals.
“My 18-month-old daughter had to go to A&E recently and it was a male doctor, and I wasn’t comfortable with that.
“I haven’t heard of any other girls coming forward, and have seen that all his convictions were against boys, but I don’t believe that I was the only girl to have been hurt in this way.”
The woman was represented by solicitor Renu Daly, of Hudgell Solicitors, a specialist in supporting victims of abuse.
Ms Daly welcomed the settlement from the Trust and said it now posed a serious question over Bradbury’s conduct during his time at the hospital.
She said: “This has been a case of great concern as the allegations pre-date all convictions relating to Bradbury’s time at Addenbrooke’s.
“We know from his admitted offending that Bradbury abused his position and created opportunities for himself to be alone with young children to sexually assault them, and that his offending was frequent.
“This lady has been extremely brave in coming forward to make these very serious allegations which has resulted in a significant damages settlement being offered and accepted.
“It opens his time at Birmingham up to greater scrutiny and could well prove the catalyst for more people to question their treatment at his hands now they are adults.
“We know from experience that many who are abused at a young age try to bury it in the past, but it can continues to impact on them in their day to day life, as it did our client in this case.”
Bradbury was able to continue sexually abusing child patients for 16 months because of police failings, a watchdog ruled in 2016.
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) was first alerted to Bradbury and 2,000 other suspected paedophiles by Canadian police in July 2012.
However this was ignored and only came to light when the National Crime Agency took over running the CEOP in November 2013.
Bradbury, of Herringswell, Suffolk, was arrested a month later.