Ex boss at Coventry NHS trust used Snapchat to lure and rape underage girls

A former boss at Coventry's main hospital trust used Snapchat to lure and rape underage girls. Paul Lipscombe, who a court was told worked at the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust as a director involved in improving patient waiting time, admitted 34 offences.

The offences include a string of rapes and other sex offences against girls aged from 12 to 15. LeicesterLive reported that the 51-year-old's crimes emerged after he ran off with a 15-year-old girl.

Leicester Crown Court heard that Lipscombe picked the teen, who has not been identified, from her home in Lincolnshire and took her to a hotel in Birstall, near Leicester, where they had sex. The girl, following a script Lipscombe had given her, had called Lincolnshire Police to claim she had run away from home to stay with a friend and did not want to be found.

But after Lipscombe picked her up they stopped to get cash out and that led police to identify Lipscombe from his car, which was caught on CCTV. Police began hunting the vehicle.

After having sex with the girl in their hotel room, he was at the nearby KFC in Birstall the next day when Leicestershire Police arrested him. A search of his phone later revealed he had also been committing offences against five other underage girls he had met through Snapchat.

Officers also searched the Birstall hotel room, where they found empty cider cans, an open bottle of vodka, a leather bondage collar, Viagra pills and used condoms.

Married software expert Lipscombe, of Rothley, Leicestershire, also admitted making indecent photographs of children, distributing images and causing or inciting sexual activity.

While Lipscombe was in custody, police went to his home where his wife told them she believed Lipscombe, a senior NHS executive for Warwickshire hospitals, was away on a business trip in London. A search of his house and in his home office led to police finding underwear, a ball gag, lubrication and ropes.

The youngest of Lipscombe's victims was aged just 12. She thought he was 32 but he knew she was 12 when the offences were committed in 2024. Yesterday (November 10) at the crown court, Lipscombe appeared for sentencing for a total of 34 crimes against the six girls.

The crimes included rape of a child under 13, a string of sexual assaults and various child abuse image charges. The court heard Lipscombe, described as an IT expert, had also made more than £3,000 by selling illegal images online.

He used AI technology to help create the abuse images and on the website he had set up paedophiles could also request pictures they wanted him to create using AI.

His arrest was in April 2024 and he has been in custody since then. At an earlier crown court hearing in February 2025 he pleaded not guilty to the charges against him but then appeared back at the court later that month to plead guilty to 34 charges, all committed between September 2023 and April 2024..
Fear

Sickening details of how the girls felt pain, shock and fear as Lipscombe raped and sexually assaulted them were heard in court. One girl had told police how she had met Lipscombe briefly outside a shop after school and she told him she had to leave because her parents were going out and she had to look after the family's dogs.

Five minutes after her parents left, Lipscombe turned up, having used the Snapchat app to locate her home address, which she had never given him. She made him coffee.

As she went upstairs to go to the toilet, Lipscombe followed her, grabbed her from behind on the stairs, forced her into her bedroom in a choke hold, pushed her onto the bed and sexually assaulted her.

The attack lasted a few minutes and caused her pain, the court heard. She lied and told Lipscombe her parents would be back soon to make him leave.

In another assault on a different girl, he picked her up from school, took her to a hotel and had sex with her while she was wearing her school uniform, filming the whole thing without her knowledge.

The charges Lipscombe, of HMP Welford Road, Leicester, has admitted are 21 counts of sexual activity with a child, seven indecent child image charges, three sexual assaults on girls under 13, two rapes of girls under 13 and a charge of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

Sentencing is set to conclude today (November 11).