A British-Nigerian cosmetic doctor has been guilty by a tribunal for giving free Botox to a patient in return for sex at one of his clinics.
Dr Tijion Esho, who has featured on ITV’s This Morning, BBC’s Morning Live, and E4’s Body Fixers, also told the woman he could ‘get away’ with giving her more Botox in exchange for sexual services, a medical tribunal found.
The father-of-two, 42, admitted having an ‘improper emotional relationship’ lasting almost three years with the woman, a sex worker who offers services on Only Fans and webcams.
He also admitted he ‘behaved inappropriately’ after they exchanged X-rated messages on Instagram and that his conduct was ‘driven by sexual desires’.
But the cosmetic doctor – also known as Dr Oluwafemi Esho and dubbed ‘the King of Lips’ – denied their relationship became physical after the woman claimed he’d ‘hounded’ her for sex.
The medical tribunal, in Manchester, heard how the woman – known as Patient A – went to him for a designer lip procedure, which he provides at his clinics in London, Liverpool, Newcastle, and Dubai.
After an appointment in July 2019, she started following him online and he would respond to her posts with ‘strong, sexual content’, with some of his sexually explicit messages discussing him performing sex acts on himself or acting out his sexual fantasies with the patient.
The patient had felt ‘taken aback’ by his responses but had believed he wanted to become a customer of hers and she would send him pornographic videos and photos and other images showing her in ‘states of undress’.
On one occasion, she sent him 30 photos of her bottom after she messaged him about her cheeks being in pain due to a filler treatment, and he’d responded: ‘OK I’ll help if I get the booty.’
Chloe Hudson, for the GMC, told the tribunal that the messages showed how Dr Esho had ‘built’ his sex chat with the patient and he was ‘keen to receive’ the services she was offering at the same time he was treating her.
She said he was ‘aware of the difficulties’ this presented because he told the patient in one message: ‘But if we do for mls I break the doctor’s code and I’d be a dead man.’
The patient claimed she had talked about doing a ‘skills swap’ with Dr Esho, in which she would provide ‘booty’ and ‘t****’ in return for ‘mls’ – a reference to milliliters of filler.
Giving evidence, the woman said she had provided ‘free sexting’ to the doctor and she accused him of being a ‘freeloader’ for not wanting to pay for any of her services.
She said she’d felt ‘sexually objectified’ and ‘exploited’, and while she did sometimes give clients free content for a limited time, it had continued with Dr Esho ‘because he was my doctor’.
While the doctor was ‘attracted’ to her, she claimed, she said she wasn’t attracted to him, nor was she interested in a relationship with him.
Dr Esho, who had denied six of the ten charges against him, claimed that his sex chats with Patient A were just a way of ‘distracting’ himself and he had been ‘joking around’ and had never wanted to take it further.
He said he had never taken the chats seriously and he’d regarded the woman as a ‘friend’.
Although he admitted his conduct had been ‘driven by sexual desires’, he denied agreeing to any ‘skills-swap’ with the patient or having any physical sexual contact with her.
But the tribunal found him guilty of charges that he gave Patient A free Botox in exchange for having sex with her at his Newcastle clinic in August 2021, and that he told her he could ‘get away’ with giving her more Botox in exchange for further sexual services.
Further charges that he made inappropriate comments about the patient’s bottom during one appointment, rubbed himself against her, and took his penis out of his trousers, and allowed her to perform a sex act on him were also found proved.
Dr Esho admitted behaving inappropriately by exchanging messages with the patient and engaging in an ‘improper emotional relationship’ with her between July 2019 and May 2022.
A charge that the patient was vulnerable due to her profession was found not proved.
The tribunal will decide later this month if Dr. Esho’s fitness to practise has been impaired. If so, it could decide to impose a sanction which could include him being suspended or erased from the medical register.
