General Osteopathic Council removes Oliver Curties from its Register of osteopaths
20 December 2021
The GOsC’s Professional Conduct Committee (PCC) has found Mr Oliver Curties, of Westbourne, West Sussex, guilty of unacceptable professional conduct and decided that the appropriate sanction would be to remove his name from the Register of osteopaths.
The allegation considered by the PCC was that Mr Curties had behaved in a manner that transgressed professional boundaries and was sexually motivated while treating a patient over a period of four years.
The PCC determined that Mr Curties ‘pursued an intimate relationship with a vulnerable patient’ and that his conduct was ‘a gross abuse of his position of trust’.
In deciding the appropriate and sufficient sanction, the PCC considered that Mr Curties had engaged in a ‘deliberate course of conduct towards Patient A’ and identified several aggravating features in the case. The PCC noted the attitudinal deficiencies, minimal level of insight and lack of relevant reflection by Mr Curties, and that there was no clear expression of regret or acknowledgement of the harmful effects of his conduct on the patient.
The PCC considered that Mr Curties ‘presented a continuing risk to other vulnerable patients’ and that ‘his sexualised conduct and transgression of boundaries’ was, in its view, ‘fundamentally incompatible with his continued registration as an osteopath’.
The PCC therefore determined that Mr Curties’s name should be removed from the Register of osteopaths, which took place with effect from 18 December 2021, and he is now unable to practise as an osteopath.
Mr Curties had a right to appeal the PCC’s decision within 28 days but no appeal was lodged.