Former west Berkshire GP 'confessed sexual assault on boy' to monk
A court heard he spoke to the monk after he was arrested
A former doctor “confessed to a monk he sexually assaulted a boy” after he had been arrested, a court has heard.
Dr Robin Borthwick, now 78, has been accused of indecently assaulting a boy repeatedly in the 1970s and 1980s in West Berkshire – including in a GP surgery.
Borthwick, of Southend Road, Bradfield, has been charged with four counts of indecent assault on one complainant, who was a child at the time the alleged offences were carried out.
Father Peter Bowe, a monk at Douai Abbey in Woolhampton, told the jury at Reading Crown Court that after a mass in February 2022, Borthwick asked to speak to him and confessed he had “touched a boy”.
Father Bowe said: “After mass he asked could he have a word.
“I took him to a room where we were alone.
“He wanted to tell me that the police had been to see him and had told him that there was an alleged incident of sexual abuse by him many years before and he told me that in confidence, but not in confidence of what we call sacrament of confession.
“He told me in confidence and I knew immediately I would have to speak to the safeguarding officer in the parish.
“I said that to him, I said what you’ve told me I will have to tell safeguarding and possibly the police. He told me the police have already been.
“He told me that years before he had sexually assaulted, I don’t know whether he used that word, he touched a boy.
“He couldn’t remember the age, but he said boy.
“He didn’t give a date and it was way back before he was married and before he became a Roman Catholic.”
Father Bowe said safeguarding decided Borthwick could still attend church as it was a public place, and “he didn’t have access one-to-one with young people”.
Father Bowe told the jury Borthwick told him he had “done it once and he highly regretted it” and that Borthwick knew it was “morally wrong and legally wrong”.
Asked if Borthwick was a “kind man” in the years they knew each other by Daniel O’Donoghue, defending, Father Bowe replied: “He was a very kind man, he was wonderful with the older people he visited on behalf of the parish.
“He was always cheerful, someone people looked to talk and joke with.”
And asked if Father Bowe could have misunderstood what Borthwick was saying due to his speech difficulties at the time, he said: “I have never had a doubt.”
Charles Ward-Jackson, prosecuting, told the jury the complainant was “regularly abused” by Borthwick, who was a local GP in West Berkshire.
He said the complainant was aged between nine and about 13 or 14 when the offences are alleged to have occurred.
Borthwick is alleged to have indecently assaulted the complainant at a surgery and in two other locations.
The complainant, giving evidence on Thursday, described the first alleged offence to the jury.
“I was left wondering what had happened, I was terrified,” he said.
The complainant told the jury that later on Borthwick told him “not to tell anyone and if I did no-one would believe me”.
On another occasion, the complainant alleged he was shown a “violent pornographic video” by Borthwick before later being indecently assaulted.
Asked by Mr O’Donoghue why he did not tell his parents of the alleged offences, the complainant replied: “I was terrified.”
Borthwick has been deemed unfit to stand trial due to his health, therefore a trial of facts is taking place at Reading Crown Court.
The trial of the facts continues.