The dispensing optician who was found guilty of performing a sex act in front of a 14-year-old female patient has been given a 21-month jail term.

John David Gill, 36, had taken the girl for a field vision test for her new contact lenses in the back room of his practice in Knottingley, West Yorkshire during an appointment in 2008.

He has also been found guilty of Outraging Public Decency after witnesses saw him in the window of his branch exposing himself a year earlier.

The DO was barred from practising for a six-month period in August last year at a interim order hearing at the GOC, which is due to be reviewed soon.

Reports on his sentencing this week at Leeds Crown Court focused on the betrayal of trust between a health professional and a patient.

Judge Rodney Grant, reported the BBC, jailed the practitioner, and said: “The offence of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child was, in my view, one which was serious. It was aggravated, in my view, by the fact that you betrayed the trust that [the girl] placed in you.

“She had been a patient of yours for some considerable time and she trusted you to the extent that when she received a telephone call to tell her that her contact lenses were available for collection, she ran down to your shop and it was while she was there you committed the offence for which you were found guilty.

“That, for a young child, is a considerable breach of trust. She was entitled to be protected by you and not subjected to the behaviour that you indulged in.”

He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for the offence of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child and a consecutive three-month sentence for outraging public decency.

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