Archive: Cambridge Cancer Doctor Myles Bradbury Charged With Abusing Patients

From the TI archives — originally published September 2014. This story involves child sexual abuse; read with care.

In September 2014, Myles Bradbury — a 41-year-old consultant pediatric hematologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, England — pleaded guilty to sexually abusing 18 child cancer patients, some as young as 10, whom he was supposed to be treating.

The charges covered 25 offenses: sexual assault, voyeurism, and abuse of a position of trust. Children already fighting cancer had been abused by the doctor they depended on. The case came to light when one young patient told his parents.

Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust suspended Bradbury the moment it was alerted and cooperated with police and the NSPCC. The trust's chief executive, Dr. Keith McNeil, issued a statement calling the breach of trust "hard to put into words" — a doctor sickened by a colleague who had violated one of medicine's most sacred bonds.

In December 2014, Bradbury was sentenced to 22 years in prison. An independent review later found the trust had missed chances to stop him sooner, including a 2011 incident that wasn't reported to police. The case prompted new safeguarding rules for how children's hospitals monitor intimate examinations.

The story ran in 2014 as one of medicine's worst betrayals of trust. It remains a reminder that institutions protecting vulnerable children can't afford to assume.