Warning: This story contains graphic content.
A 63-year-old GP sat passively in the dock of a Perth courtroom on Tuesday as confronting details of his alleged abuse of eight girls were revealed by prosecutors at the start of a trial into allegations he paid for sex and photos of the teenagers over a three-year period.
Douglas William McCarthy faces dozens of charges including indecent dealing of a child under 16, sexual penetration of a child under 16, procuring a child under 16 to engage in sexual behaviour, persistently engaging in sexual conduct with a child, and possessing child exploitation material. He has pleaded not guilty.
Douglas McCarthy faces dozens of child sex abuse charges.Credit: Instagram
McCarthy’s trial began in Perth District Court on Tuesday and is expected to last four weeks, with prosecutor Sean Stocks warning the jury that “by the end of this trial you would have watched Mr McCarthy have sex with children”.
Stocks detailed how the doctor, who lived and worked in a suburb south of Perth, allegedly paid 14 and 15-year-old girls to send him explicit photos of themselves, paid them to lie on a massage table either naked or in underwear while he massaged them, and paid them for sex.
“You’ll hear about the drugs, the alcohol, the gifts, the hotels, the parties, the abuse of children and the stealing of their childhood,” Stocks told the jury.
“You’ll hear him asking to be called a ‘good boy’.
“You will listen to that as it happens.”
McCarthy also allegedly paid more for sex with the girls if they were virgins, Stocks said, and accused the doctor of keeping “a video and photo library of his exploits”.
Stocks told the jury McCarthy allegedly bribed some of the girls to “keep quiet or to say they were 16” after police began to investigate him in 2022.
The allegations against the doctor also include that he took some of the girls with him when he was seconded to work in regional hospitals, housing them in the staff accommodation where he allegedly continued his abuse.
“You will see his messages to the girls offering buying them clothes, paying for hotels,” Stocks said.
Stocks also alleged that McCarthy prescribed medications to the girls “for the sexually transmitted diseases he gave them or might have given them”.
The prosecutor told the jury the gratuitous details he had given them would not “come close to the graphic material you will see” during the trial.
“This trial is determined by the facts; the law. Not emotion,” he said.
“This is a disturbing account of the depravity and corruption of vulnerable children.”
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