POLICE doctor Robert Wells was today found guilty of drugging and indecently assaulting young girls while filming the attacks.

Wells, a 52-year-old forensic medical examiner, was convicted of two charges of rape of an 11-year-old girl and three charges of indecent assault against the same girl.

He was convicted of taking an indecent photograph of a child as well as administering drugs to a second 11-year-old and a girl aged five. He was also convicted of a charge of indecent assault against the second 11-year-old.

He was cleared of one rape charge involving the first 11-year-old and also of a charge of indecent assault of the five-year-old. He denied all charges.

Judge Keith Cutler jailed Wells for 15 years and called the doctor of 27 years a "dangerous sex offender" who sent a "shiver down the spine" of the patients he had treated.

Wells, of Cwmbran, Gwent, closed his eyes in disbelief as the verdicts were delivered at Winchester.

Wells befriended the parents of the youngsters. He then drugged his victims before either raping them or assaulting them while a camera recorded his actions.

The trial heard that Wells, formerly of Hangleton Road, Hove, and Priory Avenue, Southampton, worked as a police surgeon in the Southampton and Winchester areas of Hampshire.

Zoo

He also had a private practice in Brighton where he lived but he had a flat in the St Denys area of Southampton where most of the attacks took place. During his trial, Wells was described as a "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" character. Stephen Parish, prosecuting, said he preyed on two young sisters aged five and 11 after their mother agreed to let them stay at his flat in Southampton last year.

Wells had first told the mother, from Brighton, his own daughter was staying and then that his girl friend would also be there. After a trip to a zoo, the mother left the girls alone with Wells, who said the others could not make it, the court was told.

She went back to Brighton and later the girls spoke to their mother from a Chinese restaurant in Southampton and all was well.

It was not until Wells dropped them off the next day that their mother noticed the older girl was "spaced out".

The youngster was taken to hospital and blood and urine samples found the older girl had Benzodiazepine in her body and the younger sister also had Temazepam in her samples.

Both drugs would have knocked the girls out and caused them to suffer amnesia. The levels in the older girl could have been potentially fatal and Wells had got it wrong and overdosed the girl.

When interviewed, the elder sister said she had been given a spoonful of "white stuff" and Angel Delight but could not remember much of the evening or the next day.

Detectives spoke to another 11-year-old girl from Brighton and she alleged that Wells had attacked her repeatedly during most of 2002 and early 2003 when he was alone with her.

In the raid on the Southampton house, police found a contraption of covered polystyrene on a wooden board with red straps which the girl said was called Satan's Pillow.

She said Wells had raped her on it several times, Mr Parish said.