A fitness-to-practise panel of the General Medical Council yesterday heard how Dr Thomas Dent posed as a teenage girl named "Katie Beckinsale" and used this false identity to chat with 26 genuine teenage girls using "indecent language about sex and underwear".

According to the Independent, Dent - a GP and director at the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) - "accessed porn websites and swapped photos with youngsters while talking to them in chatrooms about masturbation and orgasms".

Dent, of Newbury, Berkshire, was caught while sitting on a train home from Nice on 10 May 2004, using his laptop to pose as Katie and "looking at a picture of a teenage girl". He sat next to a special constable who saw the files and arrested him.

The Crown Prosecution service later decided there was insufficient evidence to charge Dent with grooming, but he was given a "five-year risk of sexual harm order, and a civil order". The GMC hearing continues. ®