A once-trusted doctor who practiced in WA’s South West will now spend two decades in jail after being convicted of the vile sexual exploitation, rape and abuse of eight vulnerable young girls over a three-year period.
The case of 63-year-old Douglas McCarthy was described as a “sorry and sordid tale” by the sentencing judge in Perth District Court on Friday.
Douglas McCarthy was found guilty dozens of child sex abuse charges.Credit: Instagram
Judge Wendy Gillan told the court how a man once seen as a trusted member of the community asked girls as young as 14 to send him sexually explicit photographs of themselves for money, paid them to strip at his house while he massaged them, and enticed them into sexual acts.
All the while, McCarthy plied them with alcohol and drugs and filmed the abuse for his later gratification.
The girls – all vulnerable because of their age and disadvantaged lives – were “groomed”, the court heard, and enticed with large sums of money, sometimes thousands of dollars. One girl was paid $80,000 over the course of the abuse.
Douglas McCarthy outside court during an earlier appearance.Credit: Nine News Perth
McCarthy tried to insist he was paying them for babysitting his daughter who he shared custody of, and pleaded not guilty to a raft of the charges, meaning his traumatised victims were dragged to court to relive the abuse.
Over a four-week trial, a jury was also forced to watch multiple videos McCarthy had made of himself raping the girls.
Partway through the trial, the doctor pleaded guilty to four of the 14 charges he was facing, but was ultimately found guilty of the rest last week.
After his arrest, police found hundreds of child exploitation videos and photos of the girls at McCarthy’s home.
At one stage, McCarthy contracted chlamydia, which he blamed on one of the girls, despite the fact he was engaging in multiple sexual relationships at the time. He prescribed them all medication for the infection.
McCarthy also took some of the girls with him to stay in hotels in rural towns where he was working as a locum doctor. There, he would give them nitrous oxide – or “nangs” – alcohol and other drugs before abusing them when he returned to the room.
He gave them money to buy MDMA and cannabis and even drove them to the houses of drug dealers to purchase the drugs.
The court was told that when gossip spread about what McCarthy was doing with the girls, one demanded more money in return for not going to the police.
He responded by saying blackmail was a serious offence.
“Well you did f--- a bunch of teenagers,” the girl replied.
The girls all told the court they were emotionally scarred from the offending, and Gillan said McCarthy “should absolutely have known better given your age, intelligence and education”.
Gillan jailed McCarthy for a total of 20 years with a non-parole period of 18.
He will be 81 before he is eligible for release.
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