A teacher today recalled to a jury (tue) how an os

A teacher today recalled to a jury (tue) how an osteopath probed her intimate areas with his fingers to treat neck pain.

Ian Southcott, 37, first met the pretty blonde 30-year-old in October 1997 after going to her dental clinic, RJ Southcott and Associates.

The woman said Southcott began to give her internal examinations which she thought was odd as she had originally gone in with neck pains.

‘It didn’t seem right to me as I originally went in for treatment of the neck,’ she told the court.

By the end of the treatment which went on for two years between 1997 to 1999, Southcott was beating her bare buttocks initially with his hand, but later with a wooden coat hanger.

He would sometimes deliver the beating using what he called ‘rapid fire’ – a succession of quick strikes – which he claimed was necessary to ‘unblock her nerves’, the court heard.

However, osteopathic experts said this treatment – which Southcott called the Nerve Block Test – is unknown and that it is rare for skin to be bruised while undergoing the bone treatment.

Southcott operated a clinic in the surgery in Bermondsey, south London where his father was a dentist.

She consulted him for injuries she suffered in 1996 after she was knocked off her bicycle and for whiplash from a car smash ten years ago.

A keen sportswoman, she had seen a physiotherapist, but felt that conventional treatment had gone as far as it could go.

After the first consultation in October 1997, Southcott told her that he would be able to treat her within around 10 half-hour sessions.

She decided to go through with the plan of treatment:

‘I thought if I’m going to get this put right I’m going to have to do this off my own back and pay for it.

‘

Southcott would twist her neck from side to side ‘to make it click’ and give her massage and ultrasound treatment, she said.

After attending several weekly sessions, she was told she would need to go twice a week.

And gradually, the focus of the treatment changed.

‘The treatment moved down the body.

I was told unless I had all the spinal treatment the neck pains would never go away.

‘

Told that her hips were ‘imbalanced’ and that she had one leg longer than the other, the woman would be asked to strip for further examination, the court heard.

Before Christmas 1997, Southcott was massaging the woman’s ribs, hips, lower back, spine and her buttocks, the jury heard.

She admitted feeling much better, but Southcott told her:

‘If you want to go on feeling this way you will have to put right the damage you have done through sports.

‘

The amateur long-distance runner who met her current fiancee through windsurfing was eager to participate in sports again to a full extent, the court heard.

However, she was unhappy about the length of time it was taking – her initial weekly 10 half-hour sessions were becoming one hour sessions.

By the end of treatment two years later she would have undergone 160 osteopathy sessions.

‘At first he said we’ll be finished by Christmas.

Then he said: ‘You didn’t make it, so we’ll need a few more weeks.

‘

‘I felt everything was OK but I was told if I wanted to keep feeling OK I would have to have all this other work done.

The treatment just went on and on.

‘The treatment got more and more intense in more areas and more variety of treatment was used.

It seemed to grow and grow,’ she told the court.

In December 1997, Southcott banned her from doing sports, telling her: ‘If you go on the way you are you’ll end up in a wheelchair by the time you are 40.

‘

He also told her she ‘had a body of a woman twice her age’ – resulting from scarred tissue at the base of her spine, caused by running on roads.

Southcott’s investigation began to focus on the woman’s groin area – declaring her pelvic floor to be uneven.

‘He said that part of my pelvis wasn’t balanced, and my hips weren’t balanced, and my pelvic floor wasn’t balanced and it was necessary to do an internal examination.

‘

Southcott began placing his fingers ‘either side of her vagina’ but said ‘the only way to reach the problem area was to reach inside.

‘

During the first examination which Southcott – called PV Latin for ‘per vaginam’ the woman was asked to keep her panties on, but on later occasions was told to remove them.

‘It didn’t seem right to me.

As I originally went in for treatment of the neck, and now I’m going to have internal treatment,’ she told the court.

Quietly she revealed that she had been abused as a child, and had confided in her osteopath.

‘He knew I wasn’t comfortable with the internal examinations.

‘ But Southcott encouraged her to open up about her past, encouraging her to get counselling.

Still worried about the need for internal work, she wrote to the General Council of Registered Osteopaths who sent her a leaflet that discussed ‘PV’ work.

‘It was written for someone who understands medical terms and Latin, but looking at the booklet it suggested the kind of treatment offered to me was standard osteopathic-type treatment,’ she said.

She then described his ‘internal work’ while lying in what Southcott called a ‘gynaecological’ position on his treatment platform.

‘He would insert his finger, first of all he would just insert it, pushing, but also with the thumb on the outside.

That was the first kind of internal treatment I had.

‘But maybe the next time he would also apply pressure on the top of the pelvic bone with his thumb.

He explained it’s like a clamp.

‘

Southcott would use this clamping action for around half a minute, while Miss X had a shawl around her middle, the court heard.

During the treatment, Southcott would tell her that he was ‘getting nearer’ to flattening her pelvic floor.

‘I would come nearer, but maybe next time it would be out again.

It didn’t seem to be a stable thing.

‘

By the end of Christmas 1997, the woman said that Southcott encouraged her to undergo ‘PR’ – Latin for ‘Per rectum’ treatment, as the PV treatment had not been really successful.

Southcott, of (69) Princes Plain, Bromley Common, south-east London denies seven charges of indecent assault and two charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm between May 1 1998 and 11 October 1999.

The case continues.

ends

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