A former Addenbrooke’s doctor has admitted to abusing 18 children in his care between 2009 and 2013.

Myles Bradbury, 41, appeared in Cambridge Crown Court after admitted to 25 offences, including sexual assault, voyeurism, and possessing over 16,000 indecent images.

The court also heard that he had in his possession over 170,000 images taken with a spy pen of young male patients in various states of undress, although none were indecent.

The images were reportedly gathered at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, where Bradbury treated young patients suffering from haemophilia, leukaemia and other serious illnesses.

The prosecution, led by John Farmer, QC, claimed that Bradbury’s “abuse of his position of trust was extreme” and that he had “betrayed his profession”.

Farmer said that the routine of abuse involved asking the victim to remove their clothes and then groping their genitals “for his own personal gratification” rather than out of any medical necessity.

Sometimes this abuse happened behind a hospital curtain, just metres away from the parents of the victim.

A victim impact statement read in court described one victim as having become “withdrawn”, feeling he had “no purpose in life any more” and suffering from panic attacks.

Bradbury was arrested in December 2013, despite Canadian authorities having alerted the UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) in July 2012 that he had purchased a DVD which featured indecent images of children.

This information was not passed on by CEOP until November 2013, when authorities at Addenbrooke’s were already investigating the situation.

Angela Rafferty, the defence barrister, said that Bradbury had repressed homosexual feelings during puberty. She also claimed that she had been instructed not to put forward any mitigation but claimed that the only point she wanted to make was legal, namely that “thankfully, none of the offences were penetrative.”

Judge Gareth Hawkesworth replied that the offences were “not penetrative physically, but highly penetrative psychologically”.

The case has been adjourned until Monday.