Harley Street dentist banned for affair with patient

Banned from practising: Dr Parag Patel

30 June 2016

A former Harley Street dentist who urged his patient to give up Christianity and leave her husband during an 18-month-long affair has been kicked out of the profession.

Dr Parag Patel, 53, had sex with the woman around 50 times in hotels and her home, and told her to divorce her husband, saying: “You just leave and then I will enter.”

The married dentist gave her a mobile phone and an iPad so they could be in contact secretly, and told her it was not an affair but a “soulmate relationship” and sex with simply “nourishment”.

Patel also urged her to stop going to church, claiming her religion was a “load of rubbish”, and once confessed that he did not like treating Jewish patients, a General Dental Council misconduct hearing was told.

The woman, referred to only as Patient 1, said in evidence: “We had sex on roughly 50 separate occasions, in hotels, my house and other locations. I was willingly going along with it, heavily persuaded by the fact that he was telling me I was his soul mate.

“I tried to tell myself everything was okay, but my heart was telling me different. I was being persuaded with his very powerful words all the while.

“I felt that I could not really tell him that I no longer wished to continue, as I thought he would be angry and upset.

“He told me that what we were doing was not an affair; instead, it was a ‘soulmate relationship’. He said that sex was not about sex, but rather about nourishment. He would often twist and use manipulative words.”

Patel, who qualified as a dentist in 1985 and previously ran a surgery in world-famous Harley Street, started the affair in mid-2013, giving the woman free treatment in exchange for hugs and kisses.

She insisted on paying for the dental work at the Facial Wellness clinic in Wimpole Street, central London, but Patel refused, saying she was a “special patient”.

They started meeting for walks in Regents Park, which he recorded as “lab days”, and in July 2013 he first asked her for sex.

“I was driving Dr Patel to the station when he suddenly told me that he would like to have sex with me”, she said. “I was stunned when he said this.

“He told me that he had booked us a hotel room in St Albans. I felt like I had to do it as I felt indebted to him for the overwhelming kindness he persisted in showing me, and so I agreed.

“I felt terrible afterwards and never wanted to do it again.”

When she told him about her visits to church, Patel told her to “get out of that place” – she told the hearing: “He began telling me that I was not to go to Church because it was ‘a load of rubbish’.

“I would have to make excuses to my husband as to why I could not go, but Dr Patel would tell me he did not want me making ‘excuses’; instead he wanted me to say that I hated the church.’

The dentist also made the woman, a mother of four, photocopy her passport, driving licence, will and marriage certificates in preparation for divorcing her husband, but he refused to guarantee he would also leave his own wife.

He also encouraged her to send a message to her father from a bogus email address announcing the separation, the hearing was told.

When the woman broke off the affair, Patel sat outside her house in his car and then followed her as she took her children to school.

The GDC misconduct panel this week struck Patel’s name off the professional register, banning him from working as a dentist.

In its ruling, it said Patel was guilty of "deplorable" actions, which also included a string of professional misconduct and bogus claims about his abilities.

"Breaching professional boundaries, providing free treatment whilst encouraging physical contact and engaging in a long term sexual relationship with a patient represented a wholesale departure from the standards expected of a dental professional.

"By encouraging Patient 1 to leave her religion and her husband, visiting her in her home, giving her gifts, creating a false email address to send an email to her father, and following her in his car after she had her ended the relationship, Mr Patel was behaving in a manner which would be considered deplorable by fellow practitioners."

Patel, who was trained at the Royal Dental School, did not attend the central London hearing.

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