AN anaesthetist who infected 55 women with hepatitis C will spend the next decade in prison after a judge condemned his “truly reprehensible” behaviour.
James Latham Peters, 63, was working at a Melbourne abortion clinic when he passed the disease to his patients by injecting himself with syringes of fentanyl before administering the drug to them.
According to The Australian:
James Latham Peters, 63, was working at a Melbourne abortion clinic when he passed the disease to his patients by injecting himself with syringes of fentanyl before administering the drug to them.
He had a long history of drug addiction and was meant to be under constant supervision while working, but regular drug tests did not pick up his fentanyl abuse.
Victorian Supreme Court judge Terry Forrest this morning sentenced Peters to 14 years’ prison, with a minimum of 10 years before parole, and said the anaesthetist’s conduct had breached the great trust that patients place in doctors.
“As an anaesthetist, you must have known that this pernicious illness could be transmitted by the mixing of your blood into the bloodstream of another,” Justice Forrest said. ” I consider your conduct to be truly reprehensible and I view your moral culpability in relation to each offence as very high.”
Justice Forrest said criticisms of the Victorian Medical Board for its failure to supervise Peters were “by and large” justified.
The board was meant to supervise him from 1996, when his registration was temporarily suspended and he received a suspended sentence for forging prescriptions and using a drug of dependence, but it did not learn of his hepatitis until it received a letter from the Department of Health in 2010, after the women had been infected.
“The board relied on your honesty and their urine screening program failed in the way that I have explained,” Justice Forrest said.
“The physical damage caused by your conduct and the associated emotional harm cannot adequately be described by me in words.”
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