A psychologist who had worked at the NHS’s notorious and now discredited Tavistock clinic for ‘transgender children’ is still on the medical register despite a conviction for approaching boys for sex, it is reported.
Dr Ross Canade, a former lead psychologist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust was handed a 12 month suspended sentence for ‘attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming’ and six months suspended for ‘attempting to engage in sexual conversation with a child’ earlier this year. Yet despite the nature of the convictions and his professional work bringing him into contact with children, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph claims Thursday he is still a registered psychologist who can “practice without any conditions imposed by the regulator”.
Despite the conviction, Dr Canade has not been imprisoned because his two suspended sentences are not enforced unless the convict offends again, at which point the punishment would automatically begin and they would be hauled off to jail.
While Dr Canade had worked at the Tavistock clinic, a spokesman for the trust said they had suspended him at the time of the initial police investigation and later dismissed him.
The paper related that the psychologist fell for fake profiles on the ‘dating’ app Grindr, which were run to emulate teenage boys. The court had heard how Dr Canade arranged to take a fake 15-year-old boy out for a meal and then have sex in a park. He was then intercepted by vigilantes, known as “paedophile hunters” who had run the accounts to intercept potential sex offenders.
The age of consent in the United Kingdom is 16. The age of consent for consenting males in gay relationships had been 21, before being progressively reduced to 18 and then 16-years-old by 2001.
The UK government’s official position is that vigilantism is illegal and to be discouraged, but in practice a large number of prosecutions against sex offenders are actually made possible by vigilante groups.
