‘He took away my virginity, my dignity and self-confidence’

THE video camera lingered on the naked body of the young woman as the once-respected Cork doctor, James Barry moved away from behind the recording equipment to go over and stroke his patient’s buttocks before fondling her between her legs.

Only five minutes of the 15-minute pornographic film made by Barry were shown in the courtroom at King’s Inn last month before Mr Justice Peter Charleton called a halt to the screening, questioning the need to see any more.

Mr Justice Charleton observed yesterday that the woman looked “either numb or pained” and was “repelled” by contact with Barry.

Another short video clip showed another female patient being filmed secretly by Barry as she stood fully naked in an upright, sunbed-like piece of equipment in the belief that she was undergoing necessary treatment for a skin condition.

Sordid and pathetic, the video evidence played a key role in yesterday’s ruling by the High Court to dismiss Barry’s appeal against last year’s decision by the Medical Council to strike him off its register of general practitioners.

Following a private hearing last summer, the council’s Fitness to Practice Committee found the 81-year-old medic guilty on 40 counts of professional misconduct in relation to his treatment of eight patients.

Criminal proceedings against Barry were discontinued in March 2006 after the European Court of Human Rights had ruled that delays by the State in bringing a prosecution would violate his human rights. The GP was facing over 200 charges over a 40-year period involving 38 former patients.

Yesterday probably marks the last chapter in a controversy which first came to light in May 1995 when a female patient made a formal complaint to gardaí in Anglesea Street in Cork that she had been sexually assaulted by Barry.

A subsequent search by gardaí of Barry’s former residence in Farrenlea Grove, off the Model Farm Road, discovered the 15-minute tape involving the doctor and the woman, identified only as Patient A, as well as other “hard core” pornographic tapes and recordings of other patients in a floor safe.

Barry, a bachelor with an address at Lauriston Lodge, Glanmire, Co Cork, while legally representing himself during a three-day hearing in February, admitted that he had behaved “rather foolishly”, although he strenuously denied the accusation that he had intended making the video for commercial reasons.

“It was a moment of madness. I made a stupid error of judgment,” he confessed. “I was incorrect and I expected to be admonished for that.” However, it was the only concession that Barry made.

Even yesterday, after Mr Justice Charleton said the porn video constituted “a perverted abuse of the doctor/patient relationship,” Barry protested his innocence.

He also continued to avail of every opportunity to blame ambulance-chasing lawyers and media in Cork for his downfall.

But it was the harrowing evidence of the seven women who came forward to give evidence that was to end Barry’s lingering hope he could reverse the Medical Council’s decision to ban him from practising as a GP.

Each woman recounted how the effect of Barry’s treatment had a devastating effect on their life.

In one instance, a woman sobbed as she recounted how Barry had asked her if she was getting “a thrill” out of his internal examination.

Another woman was subjected to “ridiculous and vulgar language” in an attempt to persuade her to have her hymen, while another women was advised by Barry to have an abortion after remarking that he didn’t know if confirmation of her pregnancy was “cause for champagne or to go into mourning”.

In one particular heart-rending case, a woman known only as Patient C who came to live in Ireland as a result of tragic family circumstances, claimed Barry’s manual penetration of her while under hypnosis as a 16-year-old constituted a rape.

Patient C blamed the abuse she had suffered from her doctor as the enduring cause of an eating disorder. “This man ruined my life because he took away my virginity, my dignity and self-confidence,” she said.

In one of his most damning findings, Mr Justice Charleton said Barry had exploited the condition of Patient C as a vulnerable schoolgirl “for his own personal sexual gratification”.

Although the disgraced GP might have escaped a jail sentence due to the discontinuation of criminal proceedings against him, the reputation which he once so clearly enjoyed as a respected medic now lies utterly in tatters.

The number of former patients, whom he stubbornly maintains still supports him, is likely to have also fallen considerably in the past 24 hours.

Arrogant and defiant to the end, it is impossible to find any sympathy for a once-proud doctor whose career has ended in such ignominy.