A “coldblooded and ruthless” ex-children's doctor was yesterday jailed for 18 years for sexually abusing young girls at Stoke Mandeville Hospital – and going on to rape one victim in his own home.

Michael Salmon, 80, must serve at least nine years behind bars for the historic attacks on six teenage patients in the 1980s, which took place around the same time Jimmy Savile was abusing patients at the hospital.

The former consultant paediatrician was convicted at Reading Crown Court last Friday of indecently assaulting girls at the Buckinghamshire hospital and raping a teenager. It was the second time he had been found guilty of abusing patients.

Dr Salmon attacked young patients in his consulting room, often behind a screen while his victims' parents were still in the room. The perverted doctor conducted unnecessary internal examinations, said by the prosecution to be for his own sexual “kicks”.

Salmon was also found guilty of brutally raping a 16-year-old girl in his bedroom after she had gone to him for medical help, telling her “one favour deserves another”.

A jury found the doctor guilty of nine indecent assaults and two rapes carried out against six girls aged 12 to 18 years, between 1980 and 1988, after a month-long trial.

Sentencing him Judge Johanna Cutts QC said Salmon was a predatory paedophile who had showed “significant planning” and a “gross breach of trust” in his grooming and abuse of young patients.

He would engineer situations where he would be alone with young girls, to have sexual conversations and touch them inappropriately, she told the court.

“I can find no better way to describe you than the words of one of your victims," Judge Cutts told Salmon.

“'These are the actions of someone intelligent,' the victim said. 'These are the actions of someone who knows right from wrong.

'These are the actions that breached, in the most henious way, what the medical profession stands for. This was someone who was cold and calculating.'

“It was your conceited arrogance that led to your downfall,” the judge went on.

“All the girls were ill at the time. They were treated as objects for your sexual gratification.”

Salmon, who specialised in children's growth disorders and neurological problems, worked in hospitals around Buckinghamshire, including Stoke Mandeville, where shamed TV presenter Jimmy Savile targeted patients for sex attacks during his time as a fundraiser.

He was the first person to be charged under Operation Yewtree for offences at the hospital when eight women came forward in the wake of the Savile scandal alleging rapes and indecent assaults.

There was not thought to be any link between the crimes of the two men.

The court heard he raped one of his 16-year-old patients after she believed she was pregnant in 1984 and turned to the paediatrician, under whom she had been a patient for several years.

The now adult victim told the court how he invited her back a second time after saying she might have been pregnant with twins and again raped her.

Judge Cutts said: “You raped her at a time when she couldn't have been more vulnerable.

“This court sees a lot of rape cases.

“It is rare to see such coldblooded and ruthless behaviour as against this girl.”

Sentencing him under the 1956 legislation relevant at the time of the offending, the judge told Salmon that if she was following modern sentencing guidelines, he would be facing a life sentence.

Judge Cutts added: “Your attitude towards these women showed a complete lack of understanding and remorse for your actions.”

She praised his victims’ bravery for coming forward.

Sarah Jones, defending, asked the court for leniency due to her client's age, saying Salmon's health and mental capacity had deteriorated during the course of the lengthy trial.

The shamed doctor left his profession and position at Stoke Mandeville in 1987 when detectives searching his office for evidence of fraudulent activity discovered love letters from young female patients and launched a further probe into his behaviour.

Salmon pleaded guilty in November 1990 to indecent assaults on three girls, one of whom was aged just 12 years when he touched her “intimately” in his car, and was jailed for three years, serving around 18 months.