Physical and Mental Abuse: The Full Spectrum

My breast surgeon sent me a photo of myself unconscious on the operating table

The Cambridge-educated Frenchman groomed female patients for sex in his consulting room

Lucy Bannerman
Saturday July 15 2023, 12.01am BST, The Times

Hazel* was still groggy from her surgery less than 24 hours earlier, when she received the photo. It was a graphic picture of her naked body from her neck to her belly button which showed her breasts, covered in blood and surgeon’s marker pen, as she lay unconscious on the operating table.

The message from the man she had entrusted to carry out this operation read: “You are perfect all over. I had a peek at your tummy when you were asleep. I so want to kiss your tummy. I didn’t take the liberty to look lower I can assure you. Though I wanted to!”

She had no memory of ever giving consent for photographs to be taken during her surgery. Replying while “still out of it” from heavy pain medication, she expressed surprise that anyone could find her attractive while she was “asleep with a tube down my throat”.

Three years on, Hazel battles tears as she reflects on her sickening experience with Olivier Branford, the disgraced surgeon who was struck off last month for taking sexual advantage of his patients on the premises of the Cadogan Clinic, a private “boutique hospital” in Chelsea, west London, which treats about 20,000 patients a year from its Georgian townhouse near Sloane Square.

“Still to this day I don’t know if something happened to me while I was under,” she told The Times.

Speaking publicly for the first time, she and another of Branford’s victims have revealed how they were sexually exploited by the surgeon at the clinic. Hazel needs corrective surgery but said the experience with Branford left her terrified of going under anaesthetic again.

“People don’t know what a monster he is. It made me feel violated. Never has a surgeon said they would be taking photos of me whilst I was asleep. How could that even happen? It’s sick.”

Olivier Branford, 50, was the golden boy of the Cadogan Clinic. The handsome Frenchman was the star of magazine profiles and beauty blogs — Tatler magazine hailed him as a “fresh-faced and unassumingly suave . . . visionary” while another website praised the Cambridge-educated surgeon as “the man making supermodels more naturally beautiful”.

He had a considerable social media profile with more than 100,000 followers. He used Instagram and Twitter not only to share the results of his work, but also to recruit new clients, many of whom, like Hazel, were beautiful young women who worked in the glamour industry.

“I like to get inside a patient’s head,” he told Tatler in 2019. “So that when I am doing the procedure, I know exactly what they would be saying to me, were they watching.”

The Cadogan Clinic was founded in 2004 by husband and wife team, Dr Bryan Mayou, a plastic surgeon specialising in liposuction, and Dr Susan Mayou, a dermatologist.

Hazel first contacted the clinic on February 5, 2020 to make an appointment with Branford for breast augmentation. He followed her back on Twitter the same day, and no sooner had she got in the taxi after their first consultation, the married father of three was showering her with increasingly flirty messages from a personal number.

She was flattered by his attention and by the time of the surgery, on February 24 of that year, believed he was interested in a relationship. “He made you feel special. Like he cared,” she said.

She recalled how Branford tried to reassure her after sending her the operating table photo — before requesting more pictures of her breasts. “I treat a lot of models but you have an elegance and beauty that sets you aside,” he told her. “I am so happy that I have given you breasts that match your beautiful body. I am so excited to see more photos x.”

She was still in a lot of pain when she returned to the clinic for her first nurse-led check up the following week.

Despite knowing it was clinically inadvisable for a patient to have sex or alcohol so soon after surgery, Branford invited Hazel to return at 6pm that same day, arranging for a false appointment to be entered into the clinic’s book system. He sent her a previously posted photo of her wearing thigh high boots and requested she wear the same to their fake check-up — with black lingerie underneath her coat. “Please do have a cognac,” he added. “Will be sexy to smell it on your breath.”

She went into his consultation room believing his interest was genuine, and left, shaken and bewildered. “He wanted to role play, that doctor-patient fantasy thing.” Instead of calling him “Ollie” as he had previously insisted, “I had to call him ‘Dr Branford’. He would say things like ‘How can I help? Let me have a closer look,’ as if talking from a prepared script. He had a bottle of lubricant next to the examination table, all set up.”

She found the sex rough and painful. “My stitches hadn’t even dissolved. And it’s not like he was gentle. It was a massive abuse of power. I was on a lot of drugs after surgery.

“The strangest thing was once he got what he wanted, almost immediately afterwards, he snapped back into professional mode, as if nothing had happened, like a different person. Then he offered me free Botox and filler.” An offer, which she now suspects was a way of keeping her quiet about their encounter. Branford “entirely refutes” any suggestion he offered free treatment to patients in return for their silence, according to a statement from his lawyers.

She added: “It was so weird. I was left thinking, ‘what the hell just happened?’ I felt, almost immediately, that this was not the first time he had done this. I felt so stupid for having believed his attention and wondered how many girls this had happened to?”

She realised that he had no intention of pursuing a relationship. Instead, she claimed “he was preying on very vulnerable people who have self-esteem issues”. On realising she had been duped, she says she began “drinking heavily and self-harming because of what happened,” adding “it was a nightmare”.

Twenty-six days later, she instructed her solicitors to make a formal complaint to the clinic about Branford’s behaviour. The complaint included copies of Branford’s sexually explicit messages and the photo that was taken during surgery. The clinic immediately referred Branford to the General Medical Council.

Regulations allow surgeons to take photographs in a clinical setting but only if the patient has given their explicit written consent — Hazel claims she did not. According to the clinic, an independent review found there was no violation of its policies on photography.

Hazel’s hunch that she was not the only patient he had used for sex was correct. A Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) misconduct hearing concluded that the surgeon had abused his professional position in pursuing sexual relationships with three patients, including Hazel, specifically exploiting the first woman’s hatred of her body, the second’s low self esteem, and causing significant harm to all three.

“This is not just about some ‘Harley Street’ surgeon getting struck off, it’s so much more than that,” said Hazel. “He was grooming women.”

Jayne*, not her real name, was another one of the three. As a middle-aged woman, she was very conscious of being older than Branford’s typical client pool of younger glamour models. Again, he showered her with compliments, fostering an emotional attachment that led her to believe he wanted a relationship.

“I went into that clinic because I felt ugly and invisible. By the time I came out, I felt so ugly, I wished I were invisible,” she said, describing how his misconduct shattered her self confidence. “I spent two years [after surgery] just getting over that feeling of not being able to leave the house.”

Branford’s inappropriate messages began after she had breast reduction surgery in July 2019. He texted asking to look at the results. “I sent him a picture, still with bandages over my scars. You’re relying on the doctor as you recover, asking things like, ‘should it be swollen like this?’ and relying on him as an expert.”

Instead, he replied that she now had the “perfect breasts of a 20-year-old” and signed off with a kiss. At a follow-up appointment in October, he massaged her breasts with oil. At the next one, they had sex in the consultation room on the Cadogan Clinic premises.

“He played on my insecurities as an older woman and abused my trust,” she said, recalling how the surgeon also offered her chemical peels to “wipe off all my wrinkles” and liposuction even though she was already underweight.

She believes: “He didn’t do it for sex. His whole motive was power. He was a good-looking man, powerful, wealthy, there were a million ways he could have got sex if he wanted sex. He wanted power. He just manipulated me, saying ‘I can make you young again. I can make you feel beautiful’. It’s like he operated beyond all the rules. I look back and see that I was so obviously groomed, I feel stupid for falling for it. I feel foolish about what happened. All he said was a lie.”

There is no suggestion that the clinic condoned Branford’s misconduct or that it was aware of his violation of their policies. As opposed to a surgeon employed by the NHS, Branford was a self-employed consultant with his own privately employed support staff. The clinic claims his “practising privileges” were suspended as soon as the allegations came to light, and that he was effectively barred from the premises within days of Hazel’s complaint, from April 2020 onwards.

Jayne still feels let down. “The man was just a pig and the clinic takes no responsibility whatsoever. They say they’re not responsible for Branford because he was self-employed. But I didn’t pay him. I paid them. They made money out of me as a client, so they should have a duty of care.

“He was downright dangerous. He operated freely and undetected. He was having regular sex in his office. How come it wasn’t picked up? How could he do all of that and no one noticed?

“He blatantly told me, ‘No one will come in the room unless I call them’. He had no fear of being caught and believed he was untouchable. I believe the Cadogan had a duty to ensure that patients received safe treatment at all times within the clinic and they did not.”

Branford has now vanished from the clinic’s website. His social media accounts have been deleted. In mitigation, he told the tribunal that he had “become a totally different person in the last 32 months” with a new “ethical compass” and claimed to have had such an epiphany that he now “questions whether people should even be having private cosmetic surgery”.

It was not enough to convince the tribunal, which ruled that he should be erased from the medical register.

Tracy Sell-Peters, partner at Keystone Law, said in a statement issued on Branford’s behalf: “The Medical Practitioners tribunal found that Mr Branford was unwell at the time of these events and Mr Branford’s position is that he was not conscious of his illness. He has spent three years working on his recovery but remains very unwell from a mental health point of view. In due course, Mr Branford may explain his position further, but not when he is unwell. Mr Branford entirely refutes any suggestion that he offered the patients free treatment in exchange for their silence.”

A spokesman for the Cadogan Clinic said: “The Cadogan Clinic maintains the highest standard of patient care and safety as assessed by our regulator, the CQC. In this case, the consultant deceived the clinic over a period of time. As soon as we became aware of Mr Branford’s misconduct, we took every available step to stop him practising, with us and with other providers. We agree with external review that the misconduct could not have been prevented, but we have nevertheless worked tirelessly with all the regulators to ensure that our systems are robust, and we continue to offer the highest standard of patient safety.”

*Not their real names

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