Great Britain: Child-porn Navy doc 'can keep job'

Manchester Online ^ | November 9, 2004 | Rebecca Camber

[Stoat]

Child-porn Navy doc 'can keep job'

Rebecca Camber

 

A SHAMED Royal Navy doctor who admitted downloading almost 5,000 pornographic pictures of children has been allowed to keep his job.

Dr Stuart Ruthven, 28, from Flixton, had to face the General Medical Council after being convicted at a Manchester Crown Court last September of 12 counts of making indecent photographs of children.

But late last night, after eight hours of deliberation, medical watchdogs gave him a reprieve despite his confession of a "sick desire" for pornographic websites.

At the hearing in Manchester, he said he ended up looking at child pornography after he clicked on a pop-up icon on an adult pornography site which read "click here and see a sick website".

The ex-Manchester Grammar student said his curiosity led him on to the website which was being monitored by the FBI.

Credit card

Ruthven said that the first time he looked at pornographic images of children in 1999 he likened it to doing 40mph in a 30mph zone.

But after joining the navy on a six-year commission in 2001 and spending eight months at sea in a submarine, he logged on to another child porn site and provided his credit card details.

In January 2003, on a short break at his parents' house in Flixton, Ruthven downloaded more indecent images of children. Later that year when he returned to Faslane naval base, he was met by police who had been tipped off by the FBI.

Dr Ruthven said: "I knew it was wrong, but I had seen a lot of pornography and I was desensitised to it. In 2003, me and many of my friends were frequenting strip bars, pornography was fairly widespread."

The panel decided he should be allowed to continue to practise medicine under supervision. He will remain on the sex offenders' register for four years and was barred from working with children under the age of 16.

Ruthven will serve as a medical officer at HMS Drake naval base in Plymouth working under close supervision. He is banned from working privately or as a lone GP for two years.

[GeronL]

EU... they are so scared of being sued they won't even fire this guy. Welcome to our future.

[hellinahandcart]

admitted downloading almost 5,000 pornographic pictures of children

convicted at a Manchester Crown Court last September of 12 counts of making indecent photographs of children.

It's okay, people. He can still be a good doctor to grownups. And collect a Royal Navy pension, when the time comes.

Who pays for that pension? Oh, never mind. It isn't important as being nice...

[HiTech RedNeck]

They sure threw a hard cotton-ball at this fellow.

[Matt32]

Isn't Europe so much more enlightened than us lousy, backwards, Bible-thumping moral-value-trumpeting Americans? </sarcasm>

You know, the conventional wisdom seems to be that the 22% of voters who stressed "moral values" meant abortion and gay marriage, but I believe those are just two parts of a much larger trend towards enormous moral depravity which Americans have been ever so slowly taking notice of. They notice crap like this coming out of Europe, they observe that Europe is moving way over to the "enlightened" left, they realize where a Kerry presidency or DNC majority (driven, at least, by the Soros/MoveOn/anti-war coalition) would take us, and they put 2 and 2 together... that's my theory, anyway.

[clee1]

Naaaaa. We still put child-pornograghers in jail; where "Bubba" deals justly with them.

[Stoat]

Your theory is as good as many and better than most. I agree that it's far more than just a couple of issues as the old media continually says, and I believe you're much more on target. One of many mistakes that the old media and talking heads make is that the "common people" are stupid. we're not...we can see what's going on in the world, oftentimes far more clearly than they can, which is why they are so utterly baffled at the election results. Thank God for Democracy and thank God for President Bush...Kerry would have led us back to Clintonism and we would have a burning city by now if the election had turned out differently.

[AIC]

I agree, and to add to this is our own congress and U.N. people taking trips to places where they have all kinds of indecent parties several times a year.

[Paleo Conservative]

This officer needs to be fragged.

[dennisw]

Your theory is as good as any .....

[Stoat]

Something more painful would be preferable in my view, but I'll settle for a fragging if that's what's available. I feel sorry for his patients, who won't be told what a perverted monster this guy is. They should be allowed the freedom to say no to being touched by someone like this.

[Stoat]

Thanks, but I don't recall putting forth a theory, only agreeing with someone else's :-)

[dennisw]

any, not many .... I checked it on google. Any got 40 hits amd many got none. http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=%22Your+theory+is+as+good+as+any%22

[Stoat]

I'm sorry but I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I intentionally used the word "many" because we have all heard many theories on the reasons why the election went the way it did. I didn't use the word "any" because it's imprecise....to say "any" would mean that I have heard "all" theories on the election. If you could explain a bit more it would help me out quite a bit :-)

[dennisw]

Sorry to make a big deal about it but the common phrase is, "Your theory is as good as any". Not, "Your theory is as good as many". Goggle shows this. You can use any words you want but you deviated from the common phraseology and you piqued my curiosity when you did. So I looked it up for myself as much as for you. That's all.

[Stoat]

Okay, I see now, thank you...I've never been one to use Google searches to evaluate the acceptablility or commonality of different phrases and so you truly baffled me for a moment :-)

I didn't check the context of all of the Google hits, but to use "any" in the context that I did would have been incorrect, regardless of how it is used elsewhere. I haven't heard ALL of the theories on the election (because I haven't interviewed everyone on the planet hehe) and so I couldn't honestly say "any". I have, however, heard "many" theories on the election and so I was being honest when I said that Matt's theory was as good as "many" and better (much better, I should add) than most.
Thank you for spending the time explaining your post to me, but I can't say that I'm motivated to consult Google as to common word usage....Google pages are going to be no more grammatically correct than the grammar in a typical newspaper, and I can usually find several grammar errors on every page of any newspaper I pick up. People are lazy and rely on spell-checkers and grammar-checkers in their word processors these days, which are notoriously inaccurate. Thanks very much for taking the time to explain, though :-)

[dr_who_2]

Gad, he'll just have stick to molesting sailors.

[Stoat]

They are probably going to be WAAAAY too old for him :-(
According to the article, he's still allowed to work with patients as young as 16. I don't know much about British Naval Law, but I would think that if it wasn't the Navy involved, he would be opening up his organization to MASSIVE lawsuits, on par with the Catholic Priest molestation suits. They KNOW that he's a danger to the community, yet they still let him work. Perhaps the Royal Navy has immunity, but if they do they shouldn't.

[dr_who_2]

I heard just recently that 20% of the prison population in France is made up of child molesters. It's a "disease", you know.

[Stoat]

That is so very sad...so many destroyed lives.