March 2015

Married children’s doctor jailed after he was unmasked as a predatory paedophile

A married children’s doctor has been jailed for seven years after being unmasked as a predatory paedophile with an ‘intense’ sexual obsession with young boys.

Paediatric registrar Raza Laskar, who has worked as a locum at Stepping Hill, MRI,North Manchester General and the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary in Wigan, coaxed troubled boys into performing for sex acts after searching the web for an underage ‘sex slave’.

The 32-year-old lured a 15-year-old boy to a hotel for sex and secretly filmed him after grooming him online for months, even helping him with his science homework and showing him his wedding video, Manchester Crown Court heard.

In total a dozen vulnerable victims – as young as 12 – were persuaded to perform sex acts on webcam and covertly recorded by married Laskar, of Ormond Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, who claims he was suffering from stress and depression.

There is no suggestion he abused any patients, but the court heard the depraved doctor boasted of his profession online to youngsters in order to gain their trust.

He even appeared in his medic’s scrubs in indecent images he swapped.

The victims – from the UK, US and Australia- were lured from social networking sites after Laskar posted vile messages stating he was looking for a sex slave.

“Looking for lads who like being told what to do or who want to try out as my slave – the younger the better. (no lower age limits)”, Laskar posted in one message.

A string of youngsters responded to the postings between 2013 and 2014, the court heard, with one boy, just 13, telling him ‘I can be your slave’.

Laskar told the boy he had ‘six regular slaves’, prosecutor Neil Fryman told court, and offered to ‘give him a medical’.

In just three months, another youngster, aged 13, swapped over 3500 WhatsApp messages with him.

The court heard the boys subjected themselves to a string of ‘indignities’ to please twisted Laskar, with one boy seen performing a sex act with the word’s ‘Raz’s Slave’ scrawled on his body.

That boy, 13, was provided with indecent images of ‘younger children’ as ‘currency’ by Laskar, Mr Fryman said.

Apart from the images he collected of the victim, Laskar had a vast collection of nearly 60,000 extreme pornographic and child sex abuse images he had downloaded.

After downloading a file sharing programme which made his content available to others – he says by mistake – he attracted the attention of the National Crime Agency, leading to a raid on his home in May 2014.

By that time he was glad to be caught, his lawyer said, because his behaviour was spiralling out of control. He admitted 31 sex offences including voyeurism, sexual activity with a child, inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, making indecent images, distributing indecent images, possessing indecent images, and inciting child pornography.

Suzanne Goddard QC, defending, said: “Clearly these offences have had a catastrophic effect on this defendant’s career, which has now come to an end. He will never work as a doctor again. He has been suspended by the General Medical Council, asked to be taken off the register, and will undoubtedly be struck off. It’s clear that he felt that working as a doctor was the only thing he did of any use – not being able to go back to that he sees as a lifelong punishment, quite regardless of the inevitable long custodial sentence.

“His offending has had a devastating effect on his family. He is deeply ashamed and disgusted by what he has done and feels deeply sorry for the teenagers he has involved in this offence.”

Miss Goddard went on to say the teenagers were ‘willing’, that Laskar had applied no pressure, but accepted that the teenagers being ‘sexually curious’ made them vulnerable.

Sentencing, Mr Justice Peter Openshaw told him: “Many were unsure about their sexuality and some were obviously troubled – even if they were aware in the abstract of the dangers posed by communicating with strangers on the internet, none, it seems, realised that applied to them.

“Each, it seems to me, was in the circumstances acutely vulnerable and the defendant exploited them.

“Many of these boys spent long hours alone in their rooms on the internet, the defendant gained their trust by posing as someone prepared to listen to them.”

Shamefaced Laskar, who hung his head throughout the hearing as his family listened from the public gallery, must serve an extended licence period for public protection, which places him at risk of being recalled to prison for years after his release