A paedophile paramedic had no remorse after he was caught with almost 800 indecent images of children and convicted of child sex offences.
Julian Maher, 55, was given a 10-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, in February this year, after he pleaded guilty to four offences at Sheffield Crown Court. He was convicted in January of making 132 Category A indecent photographs of children, 143 category B pictures and 512 category C photos, Yorkshire Live reports.
Category A images are considered the most serious and depict a child being raped. Maher, of Doncaster, was sentenced to ten months imprisonment concurrent on all four counts, suspended for two years, 40 days’ rehabilitation activity, 200 hours of unpaid work, a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for ten years and a notification requirement of ten years under the Sexual Offences Act.
Maher worked for Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust as an acting clinical supervisor and paramedic but has now been kicked out of the medical profession following a hearing by the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service (HCPC). A Health & Care Professions Tribunal Service (HCPTS) panel was told Maher's offences dated from 2005 to 2017 and that his offences only came to light in 2017.
The tribunal also heard that Maher attempted to blame his offences on another person for the entire duration of the police investigation, before spectacularly doing a u-turn and pleading guilty at trial. The tribunal was incensed and sacked Maher, saying Maher: "provided the Panel with no evidence of insight, remorse or remediation.
“Given the long period of the offending behaviour and the lack of any remediation, there was a significant risk of repetition and of future harm. A conviction for the offences of making or possessing indecent photographs of children is an extremely serious matter, as ultimately it involves the exploitation and abuse of vulnerable children."
"These offences are not victimless crimes: they involve the abuse and exploitation of vulnerable children and perpetuate the market for illegal indecent material. Members of the public would be horrified to learn that that a practising paramedic with access to vulnerable patients held a such a conviction and that public confidence in the profession, and in the HCPC as its regulator, would be undermined.
“He has breached a fundamental tenet of the profession, the requirement to be honest and trustworthy. He has acted in such a way that his integrity can no longer be relied upon.”
Defending Maher at the criminal trial, his lawyers had attempted to depict him as a saviour, bringing up the fact that he personally delivered around 15 babies, who would have died without his intervention. His lawyers said Maher “saved a lot of lives as a paramedic for fifteen years” and that “he’s delivered, he thinks, fifteen babies that might not have been safely delivered without him. He’s helped a lot of people, to put it frankly, that would have died if it hadn’t been for him."
The HCPTS panel said despite Maher's "positive" professional history the nature of the offences was "grave" and involved "the exploitation and abuse of vulnerable children". They also raised concerns that it was "not an isolated incident but was a pattern of behaviour which extended over 12 years".
In reaching its conclusion the panel said "only a striking off order would be sufficient to protect the public, to maintain public confidence in the profession and in the regulatory process, and to declare and uphold proper standards of conduct in the paramedic profession".
