A disgraced doctor who downloaded sado-masochistic child porn was suspended for another 12 months this week. Dr Adrian Catterall, 46, was back before the General Medical Council as restrictions which prevented him from treating children under 16 were slam

A disgraced doctor who downloaded sado-masochistic child porn was suspended for another 12 months this week.

Dr Adrian Catterall, 46, was back before the General Medical Council as restrictions which prevented him from treating children under 16 were slammed as unworkable.

It was said that hospitals could not guarantee he is not left alone with youngsters.

The former consultant gastro-enterologist at Lister Hospital who lives in Foxhill Road, Guilden Morden, has already served a 12-month suspension which was imposed in late 2003.

A year later he was reinstated and made the subject of 10 stringent conditions over the next 18 months.

That period is about to elapse and the GMC ruled at his latest hearing on Tuesday that his fitness to practise is impaired.

Suspending his registration for a year, chairman Polly Clarke said the panel had read testimonials from colleagues including one professor who said he believed Dr Catterall's risk of reoffending was extremely low.

"There is no evidence before it that you have reoffended in the seven years that have elapsed since you viewed the images," she told him.

"The panel accepts there are no appropriate and practical conditions that are capable of being put in place that would properly address all the areas of concern.

"Balancing all of these factors, the panel has determined that it would be sufficient and proportionate to direct the registrar to suspend your name from the register in the UK."

The doctor narrowly escaped jail in 2003 after sickening images of children being tortured were found by police on his home computer.

After admitting 16 counts of making an indecent photograph of a child, he was given a three-year community rehabilitation order and placed on the sex offenders' register for five years.