Beale’s legal team says it's 'absurd' that he offered to assist in surgeries for extra money

JOHANNESBURG - Murder-accused paediatric surgeon Peter Beale’s legal team has labelled as “absurd” the idea that he would have offered to assist in other surgeries to make extra money.

The State alleges that Beale undertook unnecessary and ultimately fatal surgeries on children, in a bid to re-establish his financial position on the back of an investment gone wrong.

The State’s first witness in the trial that got underway this week, who is also a paediatric surgeon told of how at a conference in 2009, Beale had offered to assist others with their surgeries to try and claw back the money he’d lost.

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Under cross-examination on Thursday, though, Beale’s counsel said it was absurd to suggest that the world-renowned Beale would have taken up an assistant role.

Advocate Ian Green, for Peter Beale, has on Thursday morning led evidence in the form of a journal article looking at the history of paediatric surgery at Wits University where Beale worked.

The article described Beale as defining “the general paediatric surgeon” saying he “had a passion for operating like no other” and “was a mentor to many, teaching them to fear nothing”.

It also pointed to comments made by another internationally recognised paediatric surgeon at Beale’s retirement - - where he said Beale was “the best technical surgeon he had ever worked with”.

Against this backdrop, Green described the suggestion that he would act as an assistant surgeon as “absurd”.

The witness, for his part, said he agreed that it was absurd and that that was why it stuck with him.