In News

Follow this topic

Bookmark

Record learning outcomes

A pharmacy technician who was convicted for possessing and distributing indecent images of children has been struck off the pharmacy register by the General Pharmaceutical Council.

Axel Savage, who did not attend the GPhC fitness-to-practise hearing that decided his fate this month, was sentenced in July last year at Liverpool Crown Court to 20 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years.

In May last year, he pleaded guilty to voyeurism, possession of indecent images of children, four counts of distribution of indecent images of a child and two counts of making indecent images of a child.

Savage was also told to complete 30 rehabilitation activity requirement days, including the Horizon Sex Offence Treatment Programme, and 150 hours of unpaid work. He was put on the sex offenders register for 10 years.

The fitness-to-practise session heard the police used a search warrant to enter Savage’s home in February 2023 where they seized his mobile phone “and other exhibits”. A forensic examination of his electronic devices revealed he sent “category A images” to his partner on WhatsApp in January 2022, two “category B images” in June 2022 and one “Category B image” in May 2022.

Savage was also found to have taken 282 images in a public toilet in January and February 2023, 233 of which showed men urinating. Thirty-five of those images were taken under the cubicle doors and the walls of stalls and 15 images were of men performing sexual acts.

Savage was suspended from work on July 4 last year and sacked seven days later. The hearing was told “at least six patients” went to his pharmacy “asking to be removed from nominations should he return”.

The hearing was also told Savage’s then employer became aware of his conviction on the day he was sentenced through reports in the local press and he did not tell them he was being investigated by the police.

Savage applied to be voluntarily removal from the GPhC register on July 7, 2024 and as part of that process, replied ‘no’ when asked if he had any convictions or cautions despite being sentenced four days earlier.

In June this year, Savage told the GPhC he was “happy” for his name to be removed from the register, was no longer working in pharmacy and had “no intentions to return”.

The GPhC said there was “a public interest in the expeditious disposal of the case”.