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We'll get back to your true crime story in just a moment. This podcast is part of the Always True Crime Network, home of thousands of episodes exploring gripping true crime cases. If you're looking for somewhere to start, check out our recent investigative series, Project Mind Control. It uncovers a chilling chapter in history, examining the disturbing experiments carried out on vulnerable people in an attempt to erase and reprogram the human mind. Featuring testimony from one of the last known survivors of a notorious Canadian psychiatric institution, it's a powerful story that's as shocking as it is important. Check out the show and more@always truecrime.com.
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Max Rushton
Hello American podcast listeners. Max Rushton here from the Guardian Football Weekly, which I think you should give a listen. It is good. It comes out three times a week and the podcast delivers you analysis news, both the good and the bad from the Beautiful Game and maybe even the occasional laugh. He's angry about everything.
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He doesn't have a great poker face, does he? I would like to play cards with Bruno Fernandes.
Max Rushton
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Narrator / Interviewee (possibly Luke Jones or a guest)
I first came across them when I was in England and I couldn't believe what I was reading. To be perfectly honest, I never encountered anything like that in practice here in the UK because you wouldn't expect to.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Bad things had happened at Jamestown hospital long before Dr. Sergio tipped up there.
Vince (Newspaper Editor)
We did have a doctor here who definitely was a Water Mitty character.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
When I started investigating all of this, it wasn't just Sergio's story and how that would eventually pan out that shocked me, but that similar dreadful incidents had happened before.
Vince (Newspaper Editor)
It had no qualifications whatsoever. He conned his way in. He was really, you know, a sandwich short of a picnic. Obviously, you know.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
We had a doctor who is still referred to by medical staff as Dr. Death.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Newspaperman Vince Human Rights Commissioner Catherine. They both have tales and stories about awful doctors. The island of St. Helena is weathered. There was another doctor who Catherine says went to her for help after he'd been fired for a very serious mistake.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
Diagnosed somebody with a migraine who turned out to have a life threatening brain hemorrhage.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
What was it about this island? Was there something about the place that allowed Sergio and people like him to harm the people who lived there? And would Sergio actually ever face justice from audio? Always. And me, Luke Jones this is The Surgeon of St. Helena. Episode 3 Driftwood. Before the wobbly airport, the only way on or off St Helena was the open sea.
Narrator / Interviewee (possibly Luke Jones or a guest)
So flew to Cape Town from England and then caught the ship, the RMS St Helena and prepared myself for a five day journey across the sea.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
This is Mark Willems, an English barrister. He was called out for a case in St. Helena in 2017.
Narrator / Interviewee (possibly Luke Jones or a guest)
You're taking a really historic journey. Africa disappears from view and then you realize there are no birds anymore flying around because you're so far away after a couple of days and you don't see any vapor trails in the sky anymore from planes and you see a completely different set of stars and you see the Southern Cross and things like that. And there's one moment on the ship after a while where the captain announces your position and at one point they say, so sea depth is 5000 meters or 1000 nautical miles from Namibia and 1500 nautical miles from Brazil. And you think literally the middle of the ocean. It's a fantastic feeling.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
They finally arrived on St. Helena at 5am local time.
Narrator / Interviewee (possibly Luke Jones or a guest)
I couldn't sleep. I was so anxious to see land. It was fantastic. So dawn was breaking and the. The shape of the island appears in the distance.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
When he was off the boat, Mark was straight to work.
Narrator / Interviewee (possibly Luke Jones or a guest)
I had to take my silk robes. We all had to have our photographs taken with cannons on either side of us, which is a relic from the days when St Helena was part of what was the British Empire.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
The issue that Mark had been brought over to help with concerned, would you believe it, a rogue surgeon. Pause for shock and disbelief.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
We had a doctor here From South Africa, Dr. Detoit, and I use the term doctor loosely.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Catherine Turner, who runs the Human rights commission on St Helena, was involved in this case as well. It was an awful incident from 2012. A woman who we can't name was just over 30 weeks pregnant. Around 40 weeks is full term. So she was heavily pregnant, but still very much not ready to give birth. She had a coughing fit one day, a cough so bad she developed a really concerning pain which shot down her lower back. Worrying at the best of times, but when you're pregnant, even more worrying. So she went to Jamestown Hospital the very next day. There she met this Dr. Du Toit. He insisted she was in labour. She wasn't.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
She said she only had backache. She was telling him she didn't have contractions.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
It was not her first child either, so she knew what contractions would have felt like.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
The mother said she didn't want Caesarean section he still put her under. This was a fully competent woman, no learning difficulties or anything like that, under
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
general anaesthetic to perform a Caesarean section. This woman was anxious. The caesarean was premature. She knew it. The baby girl was delivered, but all was not well. The little newborn was immediately incubated. Mother and father were not allowed to see her until the next day. And when they did, is clear to them from her condition that all was not good.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
The baby died three or four days later and it was absolutely heartbreaking. And it was only much, much later on did the mother discover that she'd been sterilised.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
This doctor from South Africa, Dr. Dutoit, whilst delivering a baby far too early, had decided to, quite by himself, without consultation with the mother, sterilize her. He cut her fallopian tubes. They weren't tied in a way which might later be reversed. They were cut and cut very short. So there was no hope of ever reconnecting them and making her fertile again. And incredibly, tragically, the same doctor did it again. Another pregnant woman, a 27 year old, came to see Dr. Dutoit.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
The other girl had a fairly severe learning difficulty in IQ below 70. So I acted as her litigation friend in court so that she could. She wasn't really capable of giving evidence.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
She had an elective caesarean, her fourth child.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
The baby was going to be taken from her anyway for adoption because she'd been unable to look after her previous three children and they were all in care with various family members and it had already been decided through the court that she wasn't going to be allowed to keep this baby. Foster parents were in place, et cetera. He delivered the baby again. He sterilized her. She found out almost immediately because they told her.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
The midwife told her with any accompanying reason?
Ruth Powell (Solicitor)
No.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
But the midwife swore that this girl had consented, but this girl was not capable of consenting.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Both these cases were serious assaults with, as a judge later noted, serious psychological consequences for the women. But by the time all of this started to be investigated, the doctor had scampered back to South Africa.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
He was long gone. We all knew where he was, but they couldn't find him. The police said they couldn't find him to bring him back to face charges.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
But Catherine had a pretty good idea. Her son had the doctor's daughter on Facebook.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
I did tell the police where they could find him, but they still didn't do that. I knew where the daughter was and I knew what school she was going to and all the rest of it. He was a single parent. So it's not difficult, is it?
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
But nothing. So all that was left to do was sue the government who had admitted liability, which is where barrister Mark comes in.
Narrator / Interviewee (possibly Luke Jones or a guest)
The overriding feeling was, this is really
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
quite serious and expensive. Mark had to ask the judge to import systems that we already have in England and Wales to try and help protect claimants from being out of pocket. Things like no win, no fee agreements and mechanisms to protect them from being on the hook for the Government's costs if they lost.
Narrator / Interviewee (possibly Luke Jones or a guest)
Because we needed experts to prove the losses and the public solicitor who instructed me at the time had no funds
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
to do so, that was swiftly sorted. But the sticking point, incredibly, was when looking at the compensation that would need to be paid. Compensation not just for injury, but for loss of earnings, the physical and emotional impact as well.
Narrator / Interviewee (possibly Luke Jones or a guest)
Over the years in the uk, we now follow guidelines, judicially published guidelines, so there's a standardisation of what each injury is actually worth and the severity of the injury will affect the level of damages. But on St. Helena, they had this archaic rule, which was, because St. Helena earnings were nominally one third or one quarter or one sixth of UK average earnings, general damages should be reduced also to one third or one quarter or 1/6, whatever that ratio was at that time.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
The St. Helena government went to court against Mark and the two women affected to argue that they were worth one third of a British citizen living in the uk.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
The barristers argued very coherently that if you lived in Manchester, you wouldn't expect to get less money than somebody in London for an injury. So why, if you live on St. Helena, should you get less? Because we're all British.
Narrator / Interviewee (possibly Luke Jones or a guest)
The value of the pain and suffering shouldn't change just because they live in the middle of the Atlantic.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
The women won that argument at the St Helena court, but the government took it to the Court of Appeal. The women won that again. So the government took it to the top, to their Supreme Court, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. Friends of the podcast, if you heard the Pitcairn series there, the St Helena government again argued that their British citizens were worth a third of a UK British citizen.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
That a woman who's been sterilised and seen her baby die is worth a third of somebody in the uk.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
For a third and final time, the two women, Mark, Catherine, they won. Saints were British citizens and it was established in court that they should be treated the same and are worth the same amount. Of course, saints haven't always been treated equally or fairly. A doctor who visited St Helena, in 1960, later wrote about the two clinics in the capital, Jamestown. At the time, he wrote, the expats and the privileged came to the front of the hospital to be examined on a comfortable examination couch. Inside the hospital, he wrote, the saints lined up to be examined on a wooden table in a hut behind the hospital, which doubled as a mortuary, which is obviously very grim. A lot of this could be put down to how the island came about. St. Helena grew out of the ocean 14 million years ago, but it was only in the 14th century that a passing Portuguese ship discovered it.
Adam Sizeland (Museum Director)
Then the British decide in 1659 that they're gonna actually take the island completely for themselves, settle it and fortify it and basically turn it into their outpost.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
This is Adam Sizeland, who runs the museum in St. Helena.
Adam Sizeland (Museum Director)
This includes British mainly, but also slaves and other indentured workers over the next sort of 100, 200 years, which left
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
a kind of racially stratified society.
Adam Sizeland (Museum Director)
You had these sort of ruling white British upper class, but you also then had loads of soldiers. And then you had a large enslaved population. I'd say so half the population.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
And that section where, where were they drawn from?
Adam Sizeland (Museum Director)
Drawn from all over the empire, really, but with a focus on India and the sort of East Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the places the British, particularly the East India Company, were getting into and getting involved in. The majority of people that stayed and remain on the island are descended from these enslaved people that were brought in from India and Southeast Asia.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
This wasn't like the British colonies in the Caribbean with cash crops to farm. The economy here was entirely based on serving passing ships. If you were coming back from India, back to Britain, you would have to head south, swinging round the Cape of Good Hope and head all the way up the Atlantic. The last friendly place you could make a pit stop before reaching Europe would be Little St. Helena, a sort of 18th century service station. A hundred or so years later, when Britain decided the transatlantic slave Trade was bad, 25,000 enslaved Africans were removed on ships passing St Helena. They were described as liberated, but were actually put into awful camps on the island in dreadful conditions. Only recently, a grave of around 10,000 people who died well before their time because of disease and poor conditions, was found. Another 325 graves were found and reburied when building a road to the new airport. There's nothing to commemorate these graves, but go to one of the 11 Anglican churches on the island, including a little one grandly called St. Paul's Cathedral, and there are small plaques all over the Walls lamenting the deaths of British sailors on the way back from India. And Catherine says there are reminders of that past everywhere. The governor, she points out, still lives in a mansion called Plantation House, in the grounds of which are slave graves.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
There are lots of other colonial houses on the island. When I first came to the island, those houses were all occupied by British white people. And I am going to say that white people who had come out here to do senior jobs and it wasn't. It still isn't saints that live in them. Very few of them are owned by saints.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
If you mention St. Helena to anyone around the world, many will not have heard of it. But if they have, they might say in response, oh, yes, Napoleon. After the battle of Waterloo, but before Abba immortalized it in song, the now former French emperor had to be put somewhere. They exiled him to an island off the coast of Italy, but he escaped.
Adam Sizeland (Museum Director)
He led this uprising again and was finally put down by the alliance, and in 1815, was sentenced to exile on St. Helena. So they decided this time they're going to take no chances, send him somewhere very remote and very hard to escape from. So St. Lena seems like the perfect place for that.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Napoleon was eventually put in a place called Longwood house, one of St. Helena's tourist attractions now. But he was bored. Playing cards, writing to friends. He even took up gardening. In the end, however, Napoleon only lasted six years.
Adam Sizeland (Museum Director)
He was buried on the island and a lovely valley in a tomb. For 20 years he was there, and then as a part of this rapprochement, this kind of repairing relations with the French government. After 20 years, an agreement was made that his body could be returned to France.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
So he did sort of escape. In the end. The whole affair put St Helena on the map. But soon there was little reason to need it. The British crown took St Helena off the East India Company in 1834. So just after half past six, and economically, things soon started to go wrong.
Adam Sizeland (Museum Director)
You see all the funding that the East India Company was putting into the island is withdrawn, but as a double blow, you then start to see the advent of steamships and also the opening of the Suez Canal later in the 1800s. Not only is the budget reduced on island, so there's less money to spend on things that are needed. The money that's then coming in from other sources through shipping and trade is
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
falling off a cliff, and there's plenty of cliffs on St Helena to fall off. By the 1960s, as the British Empire was deflating again to almost nothing, St Helena stuck around along With Gibraltar and Turks and Caicos and Bermuda and Pitcairn and more. It became what is now called a British Overseas territory.
David Jeremiah (Former Attorney General)
And I'm afraid this has been effectively a government island ever since.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
David Jeremiah lives on St. Helena many, many years ago, he was the Attorney General, the top law officer.
David Jeremiah (Former Attorney General)
This island is financially dependent on the United Kingdom, and it's the United Kingdom that decides how much it will give it.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
The vast majority of the island's cash comes from London.
David Jeremiah (Former Attorney General)
It comes out of Britain's foreign aid budget. And this place obviously is not foreign. For hundreds of years, really, the island has been inculcated with the idea that Britain knows best.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
It's always been colonial.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Human Rights Commissioner CATHERINE we only got
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
a council back in the 1980s and even then it was advisory. It couldn't pass laws, it couldn't make policy. But Even in the 90s, government managed things like rice, margarine, flour. Everybody had to go and get their rations from government every time the ship came in. It's still expected that government do everything. I think one of the biggest remnants is that people feel even now that they can't speak out, that if they raise a problem, if they complain about something, then there will be repercussions.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
And the majority of the workforce is still government employed. That gives you an idea of how little actual economic value is being generated. On Ireland, the average salary for Saints is 11,000 pounds, $15,000 a year. The government says the minimum income standard on the island is £180 a week. That is the minimum you need to survive, they say. And yet the basic state pension is 80 pounds a week. And do people have much of a say on what happens on their island? There are elected councillors and since 2020, one ministerial government with a chief minister came to St Helena. But the UK can still override anything they decide. So St Helena is still in the eyes of the UN, a non self governing territory. It's like passage to India, one local told me, quote, the top jobs have always been UK people. The gentry drink tea on the lawn and the local people clean the toilets.
David Jeremiah (Former Attorney General)
Large numbers of contract officers from Britain working here on the island are usually at much greater pay than local people can expect to get, which does cause some dissatisfaction.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Saints might be on an average of 11 grand a year, but. But professionals from Britain and elsewhere can expect three, four, five, six times that. Are they actually any good, though?
Vince (Newspaper Editor)
No, definitely not.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Newspaper editor Vince rolls his eyes when I ask him.
Vince (Newspaper Editor)
Whenever have we had a governor, for instance, that's been on the upward curve in his career projection? No, it's the opposite way. They're easing off to retirement. Attorney Generals come for a matter of a month. The churn has been phenomenal. They're a bit like doctors. They've come and they've gone and you don't know they've been.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
So many people tell me this, including a Brit who themselves went out to St Helena a few years back to do a shortish government contract. It was astonishingly incompetent. They told me broadly, you had a mixture of people who are either not fully briefed or competent. The last turkeys in the shop, you didn't get the best people and I'd include myself in that.
Narrator / Interviewee (possibly Luke Jones or a guest)
I admit it.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Another person simply called these people who come over there on big salaries driftwood. And you can see how a community set up like this can cause problems. A colonial past, a massive economic and social divide, a dismissiveness, as some might see it, of saints, but a veneration of people who come from overseas with skills, or what they think are skills. Enter into this scene then. Doctors like Dr. Du Toit, the South African who wrongly sterilized two women and killed a baby in the process. And Dr. Sergio Villatoro Brann. He was a professional socialising with the top British imported brass. I understand that he was earning just over £100,000 a year when on the island. Remember, this is a place where the average salary is 11,000 pounds a year and some homes don't even have electricity or running water. Is that why he was able to get away with what he did for so long?
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
Dr. Sergio had had more complaints about him than all the other doctors put together, but nobody did anything. And this is the thing about saint voices. They might not get repercussions, they might not get bullied and not get hospital treatment next time, but they're not listened to. Oh, they're just St. Helena's it doesn't matter. And so all those complaints went unheeded until somebody from overseas raised it.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
I could see now why Bernard and Sandra were not hopeful about what charges might come come from their investigation. Their time was up so they packed their bags and were off. How did you feel? I don't know. Stepping back into Stanstead or wherever you came back in after.
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
It was surreal. It was really surreal. It was.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
It was a, you know, Sandra still had the voice of the woman who had that knitting needle sized pin fall out of her arm swirling through her mind.
Ruth Powell (Solicitor)
I still felt guilt that I needed
Catherine Turner (Human Rights Commissioner)
to try and find somebody to look into their case for Them.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
When they got home, they told this entire story to Bernard's cousin. He works at a law firm. They passed it on to another law firm who specialise in clinical negligence. And so it ended up on the desk of Ruth Powell.
Ruth Powell (Solicitor)
How did I get into the law? I went and did some questionnaire when I was about 16, one of those Cascade questionnaires. And they say, do you like working outside? Do you like working with animals? Do you like investigations? And the three top things that came up were journalist, barrister, solicitor, and I'm really sorry, I didn't want to be a journalist.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
I'm taken.
Ruth Powell (Solicitor)
I chose solicitor.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
I met Ruth in her central London office. She has thick dark glasses and electrically orange hair. She took the call from Bernard's cousin.
Ruth Powell (Solicitor)
He gave us a ring and said, there's something going on on St Helena and it's to do with a doctor.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
How long have you been doing this? You say 30 years. 30 years. In your 30 years, have you ever had or seen a case like what is unfolding in St. Helena at the moment?
Ruth Powell (Solicitor)
Never. Never. This is completely novel.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Ruth did not know how the criminal investigation into Dr. Sergio Brann that Bernard and Sandra had been working on would actually shake down. How wide would this scandal go? She was about to be dragged into an almighty, bitter fight that would almost consume the whole island.
Ruth Powell (Solicitor)
If somebody described the situation that I'm in now three years ago and said, that's what you're going to be doing, laughed in their face.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
When I got in touch with Ruth, she was just about to make a trip to the island, taking barrister Mark Willems with her for a belated encore.
Narrator / Interviewee (possibly Luke Jones or a guest)
When I got the email from Ruth Powell, I was intrigued and then pretty immediately horrified when I realized the scale of the issue. This time around, not just two cases, but over 140 potential cases, they were
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
off to St. Helena. So I thought if I was really going to find out how this story ended today, I better go too.
Vince (Newspaper Editor)
Strong winds.
Ruth Powell (Solicitor)
It fills me with repulsion and outrage that he came here and he felt like he could do whatever he wanted to do to whoever he wanted to and there was going to be no comeback.
Luke Jones (Host of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
That is next time on the Surgeon of St. Helena. Dr. Sergio Villatoro Brand did not respond to our requests for comment and the St Helena government, which runs the hospital, declined to comment. The surgeon of St. Helena is an audio Always production. It's written and hosted by me, Luke Jones. Louisa Adams is the producer, Ailsa Rochester is the executive producer and sound design is by Craig Edmondson. Want some more True Crime why don't you check out my weekly podcast Strangely? Each week I join my friend and true crime podcast queen Poppy Damon to swap stories from either side of the Atlantic about some truly weird goings on from our notebooks, from our headlines. It spans UFO encounters to thieves swallowing diamonds to people pretending to be monarchs. Search for Strangely and hit Follow wherever you get your podcasts.
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Podcast: The Pitcairn Trials (Always True Crime)
Episode Title: Driftwood
Air Date: June 29, 2026
Summary Prepared By: Podcast Summarizer
This episode examines the small and isolated British territory of St. Helena—a remote island with a population of just a few thousand—through the lens of a devastating medical scandal. Host Luke Jones investigates how colonial legacies, insularity, and economic inequalities made St. Helena vulnerable to dangerous, unvetted doctors. The episode spotlights shocking cases of malpractice, the struggle for justice and equality, and explores how historical and social context fostered an environment ripe for abuse.
Both gripping and deeply unsettling, this episode blends investigative rigor with personal testimony and historical insight. Speakers’ language ranges from clinical (“serious assaults with serious psychological consequences”) to emotional (“repulsion and outrage... no comeback”). The overarching tone is one of exposure—of long-festering injustices, systemic failures, and the dangerous effects of neglect and colonial legacies in isolated communities.
The episode ends with a promise to follow Ruth Powell and barrister Mark Willems back to St. Helena, as the case against Dr. Sergio Brann unfolds, potentially involving over 140 victims.