In 2017, Pelham Spong filed a complaint with the General Medical Council about Dr Wendy Snell, a doctor employed by Mohamed Al Fayed who had subjected Spong to intrusive sexual health tests during a job interview in 2008. Spong told the GMC that Fayed had quizzed her about a sexually transmitted disease that Snell had assured her would remain confidential, and that other women had similar stories. The GMC told her it was not in the "greater public interest" to investigate and disclaimed any power to examine whether gynaecological screening should form part of a recruitment process. Fayed continued abusing women until his death in 2023. The institutional failure runs deeper than bureaucratic inertia. At least three victims now allege that doctors employed by Fayed conducted sexual health examinations and shared results with him or his brother Salah Fayed — results that preceded sexual assaults. Joan alleges Dr Ann Coxon disclosed her test results to Salah Fayed by speakerphone before she was raped in the 1990s. Judith describes a full gynaecological exam with STD testing conducted by Snell as part of a post-2010 recruitment process, after which Fayed groped her. These are not ambiguous boundary cases. They describe a medical pipeline feeding a predator. The GMC's 2017 dismissal of Spong's complaint is the critical node. Spong explicitly flagged a pattern — other women, other improper screenings, a recruiter who had sent multiple candidates through the same process. She simultaneously reported to the Metropolitan Police, which obtained her GMC complaint and also took no further action. Two institutions, both given specific intelligence about a systematic abuse pipeline involving medical professionals, both chose passivity. Nearly a decade later, the GMC has now imposed restrictions on Coxon and another surviving doctor, pending full investigation. Snell died in 2022 without ever facing scrutiny. The regulator's spokesperson describes the abuse reports as "horrifying and shocking" — language that erases the GMC's own role in allowing them to accumulate. Emma Jones, a solicitor at Leigh Day representing several victims, notes that the GMC should have reported the 2017 complaints to police and that the allegations — conducting sexual health examinations and reporting results to Fayed without patient consent — were inherently serious. The structural question is whether the GMC's gatekeeping function operated as designed or as captured. The regulator's mandate is to protect patients from dangerous doctors. When a 23-year-old woman reports that a doctor conducted intimate examinations during a job interview and shared results with her employer who then sexually assaulted her, the regulator's response that this falls outside its powers is not a jurisdictional technicality — it is an institutional choice to look away. The "greater public interest" test became a mechanism for suppressing exactly the kind of intelligence that could have interrupted ongoing abuse. Survivors are now calling for a public inquiry encompassing both the GMC and the Metropolitan Police. Judith is explicit that she wants not apologies but legislation ensuring oversight of private doctors, identifying what she describes as a regulatory vacuum. The pattern echoes other institutional abuse scandals — Jimmy Savile, the Catholic Church — where regulatory and law enforcement bodies possessed early warnings and chose institutional comfort over victim protection. Fayed died in 2023 without facing accountability. Hundreds of women came forward in 2024. The gap between the 2017 complaint and the 2024-2025 enforcement action represents years during which Fayed remained active and doctors remained uninvestigated. The GMC's belated action against surviving doctors, while Snell escaped scrutiny entirely through death, captures the core dysfunction: regulators who move only when political pressure makes inaction more costly than action.
