Co Fermanagh doctor who borrowed £10,000 from vulnerable patient escapes jail

Passing the 12-month suspended sentence at Omagh Crown Court sitting in Downpatrick, Judge Stephen Fowler QC told Dr Michelle Mellotte there “was little the courts can do to punish you more than the public humiliation’’ of her offences being exposed in open court.

The 61-year-old, of Bannagh Road, Kesh, Co Fermanagh, who has since repaid the money in full, had pleaded guilty to a single charge of fraud by abuse of position.

The offence was committed over a period from January 30, 2010, to April 22, 2011 against Michael McGrory.

Crown prosecutor Sam Magee told the court that Mr McGrory, who was in his late 70s or early 80s, had died in December 2012.

“The victim was vulnerable and was in ailing mental and physical health and was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease at the time.”

Judge Fowler QC was told that in February 2010 the GP turned up at his property and told his home help: “I am just going to ask Michael for a favour. I’m in a bit of a ‘diff’.”

The prosecutor added: “She asked Mr McGrory could she borrow some money from him. A cheque was produced in the sum of £10,000. She wrote on the cheque stub the date of 2/2/10 and she would ‘pay him back in the summer of 2010’ and signed it.

“At first blush it seemed she borrowed the money but it would appear that the defendant was in some financial difficulty and that she was in debt to a number of people.’’

The cheque was lodged into her bank account and the money was later withdrawn to pay off her debts to several individuals.

By the summer of 2010, the court heard, the £10,000 had not been paid back to Mr McGrory and when she was asked by the home help Rosemary McElhill why the money had not been paid back as agreed, Dr Mellotte told her she had “put it on the long finger’’.

Said Mr Magee: “Whilst the Crown say this was an arrangement which, from the outset, any reasonable person would have regarded as being dishonest, at the very least, once the terms of the endorsement had expired, it must have been patently obvious to the defendant that others would have regarded her conduct as dishonest.’’

The prosecutor described the arrangement as “improper’’ between a general practitioner and a vulnerable patient, and it was also a “breach of trust”.

The court heard that the General Medical Council and the PSNI subsequently launched investigations into the loan arrangement.

Gary McHugh, defending, said that ahead of any GMC hearing into her professional misconduct, Dr Mellotte had “voluntarily erased herself from the medical register after 40 years’’.

The lawyer told the court that she had committed a “gross error of judgment’’ which had “catastrophic’’ results for her both professionally and on her personal health, and had “besmirched’’ her once good character.

He said that the married woman, who had been suffering from depression prior to the commission of the offence, had got herself into financial difficulty after borrowing money from other people.

Passing sentence, Judge Fowler QC said: “This was a significant breach of trust in respect of the doctor/patient relationship.’’

He said that her career had “come to an end in a publicly inauspicious way’’ and she now faced being struck off the medical register by the GMC.

The judge said that over four decades she had cared for her patients both in and out of practice in a “compassionate and selfless way’’, by supporting them financially, paying for their groceries and paying off rent arrears.

Judge Fowler QC said that Mellotte, who graduated in medicine from Queen’s University in Belfast, did not see anything wrong with this approach which he described as “unorthodox but also inappropriate’’.

He added that as a result of the breach of trust between a doctor and patient, “the impact on the public confidence in a GP is significant and cannot be underestimated’’.

The judge told the court that Mellotte’s offending had a “significant impact on her depression’’ and as a result she was admitted to intensive care in 2011 as a result of a self-harming incident.

He said that if she had contested the charges and been found guilty, the doctor faced a prison sentence of between 18 and 21 months in custody.

“I consider the custody threshold has been met in this case. There is little the courts can do to punish you more than the public humiliation of exposing the significant breach of trust between a doctor and a patient. It is right and proper for such matters to be brought to the courts and exposed in this way.’’

The judge said that Mellotte was “not motivated by greed or lived a lavish lifestyle’’, but while she was concerned for her patients “her professional and practical financial management was inept”.

Stating that the doctor was assessed as a low likelihood of reoffending, he told the court: “Taking into account both the aggravating and mitigating factors, the appropriate sentence is one of 12 months determinate custodial sentence with six months in custody and six months on licence.

“I have weighed up all the matters in this case and given the highly exceptional circumstances, I will suspend the sentence for a period of two years.’’