A doctor with convictions for rape has been jailed after getting a GP's job by lying about his past.

Dr Peter de Bruijn raped patients and sexually abused a young child in Holland, but deliberately withheld the information when he applied for an assistant GP post at the Deer Park Medical Centre, Witney.

Dr Peter de BruijnPolice conducted a two-year investigation into the 51-year-old's background and yesterday welcomed his year-long jail sentence for deception. Six months of the sentence has been suspended.

Det Sgt Simon Morton said: "The doctor's deceit was designed to serve his own financial gain and showed a total disregard for others.

"De Bruijn caused a great deal of upset amongst patients in north Oxfordshire. They were entitled to believe they had a doctor they could trust and with whom they could discuss often highly intimate problems. It was therefore a terrible shock to find their doctor had sexual convictions which he had failed to declare.

"It's quite gratifying to know that a man who should never ever have been practising in this country is now behind bars."

Det Sgt Morton said de Bruijn faces arrest and possible extradition when he finishes his sentence.

De Bruijn, who has yet to serve a 20-month jail term in the Netherlands for the rapes and sexual assaults, only told his prospective Witney employers that he had previous drink-drive convictions in the UK.

Sentencing him at Birmingham Crown Court, Judge Alan Taylor said he would serve half the sentence. He said: "It was entirely foolish of you to think you would get away with getting employment in this country without having to disclose your past."

Vivian Walters, prosecuting, had told the hearing that in December 1993, the District Court in Haarlem, Holland, found it was "legally and convincingly proven" that de Bruijn had committed rape and sexual abuse.

He had been sentenced to 24 months in prison with eight months suspended and also barred from practising as a GP for four years.

De Bruijn had already started working in Witney in 1998, when the Dutch Court of Appeal and Supreme Court upheld the convictions, reducing his sentence to 20 months, with five months suspended. He was also barred from practising as a doctor for a year.

He never told Deer Park practice manager Judith Sissons or her GP colleague, Dr Carol Lole-Harris, of the Dutch convictions, despite a clause in his contract obliging him to do so.

Once Dr Lole-Harris discovered de Bruijn's past, she informed police and he was arrested in June 1999.

De Bruijn, formerly of Corn Street, Witney, denied one count of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception by failing to disclose findings of guilt against him in his native country.

In court, he said he had not disclosed the information either to Dr Lole-Harris or the General Medical Council because, under Dutch law, a person was deemed innocent if an appeal was being heard.

He claimed he had not intended to deceive anyone and signed the contract "in good faith".

Neil Flewitt, defending, said de Bruijn would have to go back to Holland to serve his sentence once he had completed the jail term here.

The GMC has suspended him from practising as a doctor in this country but he would still be able to continue medical work in Holland, he added.

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