Central News, Press Room, Central Criminal Court,
Central News, Press Room, Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, LONDON, EC4.
Tel: 020 7236 0116.
General Medical Council/cf
eMail: news@centralnews.
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uk
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centralnews.
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uk
17 November 2000
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Mr Bevan said that his client was an ’eminent’ gynaecologist and obstetrician whose skills ‘were an enormous asset to the profession,’ as shown by some 400 letters of support from former patients.
‘I do appreciate that he would have to be assisted before taking up practice even if this committee decided his name be restored to the register.
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Mr Bevan added that the longer this process took, the more difficult it would be for him to return.
He said Harris met his wife in 1980 while working at University College Hospital, when he was 34 and she was 22.
They married in 1985 but suffered problems as Mrs Harris thought her husband was mean, Mr Bevan said.
When she told him in 1997 that his wife wanted a divorce, Mr Harris became ‘an almost suicidal figure,’ the QC went on.
‘The truth of it was adored his wife and two children.
They were the whole of his life.
Without his family Dr Harris regarded his life as over.
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The divorce request was triggered when the doctor quizzed his wife over a one hour call on his mobile phone bill.
But she had simply refused to discuss her reasons with him for the divorce.
It was only when Harris saw prosecution papers at his Old Bailey trial that it dawned on him she was seeing another man.
‘Mentally he disintegrated to the point where he was clinically ill,’ Mr Bevan went on.
‘On the morning of the killing, Dr Harris did not have a clinic as it had been cancelled.
He had breakfast with the children and kissed them goodbye.
‘When he tried to kiss his wife goodbye he was rebuffed.
‘ She then went to have some coffee on the patio, and Dr Harris decided to break up the path leading to the swimming pool.
‘It was as he walked past her that she made some derogatory remark such as ‘saving money no doubt, by breaking up the stones yourself rather than employing somebody,” Mr Bevan said, adding that it ‘was a barbed remark.
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The QC continued: ‘It produced in Dr Harris an extreme and violent reaction.
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Mr Bevan told the GMC that as the psychiatric reports made clear, Harris had been suffering from what is legally termed ‘an abnormality of mind’.
As such his actions should not be judged against a person of sound mind.
‘When the killing took place he felt divorced from reality and he did what Miss Johnson has explained.
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But he knew he would be caught, the QC added.
‘There can be no question he did attempt to disguise what he had done, although as a doctor he must have known his efforts were futile.
The forensic evidence would demonstrate what happened.
‘It is equally plain that at interview he told lies, no doubt being wholly unable to confront himself with what he had done.
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Finally Harris did reveal his thoughts, using one word – ‘Shame’, Mr Bevan said.
Harris later told police he had suffered ‘feelings of worthlessness and disintegration and how he had effectively been destroyed as an individual.
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The GMC panel are currently considering Harris’s application.
ends
