Paedophile doctor clues missed by colleagues.

A paedophile doctor was able to abuse young cancer patients without being discovered after clues about his behaviour were missed by colleagues, an independent investigation has found.

Myles Bradbury was jailed for 22 years in 2014, which was later reduced on appeal, after admitting abusing 18 victims at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.

The investigation report by Verita, a consultancy which specialises in public sector investigations, has found that Bradbury manipulated the system to perform "criminal, intimate examinations.”

Although staff noticed that Bradbury was seeing patients out-of-hours, they presumed he was doing it to help them out. Even though the hospital had a rule that a chaperone should be present for these examinations, it was often ignored.

A doctor confronted Bradbury, 42, from Herringswell, Suffolk, when she noticed he was seeing a boy on his own, but he said it was at the patient's request.

He told families it was "essential for him to see their child alone" and they should learn to trust doctors, the independent investigation found.

Bradbury, who used a "spy pen" to secretly capture pictures of his partially-clothed victims, was arrested in December 2013. He admitted 25 offences dating between 2009 and 2013, including sexual assault, voyeurism and possessing more than 16,000 indecent images.

However, the report found there had been several clues to his offending prior to this.

The blood cancer specialist, who worked at the hospital for five years, phoned families on his personal number to make appointments.

The report says that Bradbury saw some children more often than necessary but failed to record these consultations.

Other key points from the report, commissioned by Addenbrooke's, included:

* One nurse thought Bradbury was "bending over backwards" to be flexible when he saw patients out-of-hours.

* He went on holiday with one of his former patients and the boy's mother. When a consultant confronted him, he agreed he could no longer be his doctor.

* Following Bradbury's arrest, a registrar noticed from records that he seemed to be "awfully focused" on puberty.

* He used excessive puberty checks as an excuse to assault patients, while their parents sat unaware the other side of the curtain

* One mother watched Bradbury slip his hand under her daughter's top without warning, but she did not want to question his professionalism

*  Doctors said that Bradbury spent a lot of time "ingratiating himself" into families' affections and his office wall was covered in letters from children.

The trust’s medical director, Dr Jag Ahluwalia, told the investigation his staff were also "duped" by Bradbury.

He said: "To a degree I have beaten myself up over it, and so have his paediatric oncology colleagues, but I think they were all groomed along the way," he told the investigation.