Butcher surgeon messed with the wrong person

“I’M staring out to the sea, listening to the waves crashing,” says Deborah Douglas, aka the ‘Erin Brockovich of Birmingham.

- By ELLA WALKER

JAILED: Breast cancer surgeon Ian Paterson STRONG BOND: Deborah and her family shortly before surgery in 2003

The 67-year-old is on holiday in Barbados and, after all she’s been through, you wouldn’t blame her for relaxing by the pool with her husband, permanently.

Instead, she’s chatting to a journalist, determined to make as many people as possible aware of what butcher surgeon Ian Paterson did to his patients - including her.

Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003, Deborah was subjected to seven months of chemotherapy, a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery, when in fact, an independent report found, “I just needed a small lumpectomy, 2cm long, and I'd have been back at work.”

In one of the worst scandals in British medical history, Midlands surgeon Paterson performed numerous unnecessary operations on patients and deliberately exaggerated or invented their cancer risk.

He was jailed in 2017 for 20 years for wounding patients with intent - Deborah helped put him there. Her new book, The Cost of Trust, catalogues the whole story.

When the retired Rolls-Royce aerospace professional learned what he'd inflicted on her and countless others, her anger was immense.

“I didn’t have cancer. That’s good. But he’s done all this to me. He's cut me open. He’s caused me and my family all this anguish. They've seen me suffer through chemo,’ she remembers thinking.

“A lot of it was that he’d hurt my family as well as me, and nobody is going to hurt your family and get away with it.”

From that moment, Deboroah was committed to pursuing justice. “He's messed with the wrong person,’ she says.