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  EXCLUSIVE: THE BUTCHER OF BEGA: Australia’s worst medical disaster? March 2, 2008 Reporter : Ross Coulthart  Watch our report, part one Watch our report, part two The Butcher of Bega - Is this Australia’s worst medical disaster? Reporter: Ross Coulthart Producer: Nick Farrow This week on the SUNDAY program, the latest on our exclusive investigation that has been followed up by media across the World. When we broadcast our story on the so-called ‘Butcher of Bega’ – Graeme Stephen Reeves – two weeks ago we had our suspicions that there were more than the eight victims of whom we knew. But nothing prepared us for the enormity of the response. At least 500 separate complaints from individual victims have now been logged by Lorraine Long’s Medical Error Action Group website – and many more are still flooding in. Many of those alleged victims are now speaking to us and other media and we are following up their disturbing and harrowing allegations. Women allege their genitals were mutilated during surgery by Reeves; that he masturbated them while purporting to do an examination; and that he performed surgery – removing tissue without consent. The scale of what is alleged is mindboggling. “I think it’s the worst medical disaster in Australia,” Lorraine Long tells SUNDAY. As Lorraine tells SUNDAY exclusively in today’s emotional and revealing interview, there are even allegations by more than one woman that Reeves sterilised them without their consent. “Without their knowledge. Months later the patient went back to their doctor and said ‘Oh I haven’t had my periods and we want to have another baby’. So she went to another specialist and went to a fertility clinic where they did an ultrasound and they said ‘You don’t have a womb’,” Lorraine Long says. As Mrs Long comments: “There’s nothing more destroying to a woman than doing that to them.” SUNDAY also reports on the political, bureaucratic and Police response to a scandal in our health system. We also ask – who else knew about Reeves, how many more doctors like him are there, and what can be done to stop this from ever happening again? If you have information on a dodgy doctor whom you would like investigated or if you would like help from Lorraine Long’s Medical Error Action Group then go to their new website at: www.medicalerroraustralia.com TO WATCH OUR EARLIER REPORT ON GRAEME REEVES, 'Who's Watching the doctors', then click here |
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