A doctor who wanted to have sex with one of his male medical students gave him medication meant for erectile dysfunction and told him it was to help him sleep.

He also filmed the young man in his shower, despite knowing he’d been abused at a young age by another male mentor and had significant trust issues when it came to older men. In fact, the student disclosed the abuse to the doctor specifically as a plea that he wouldn’t do something similar.

The doctor was discharged without conviction by a District Court judge after he pleaded guilty to a criminal charge. He was granted permanent name suppression, which has now continued at the Health Practitioner’s Disciplinary Tribunal where he’s avoided having his registration cancelled.

Instead, the doctor has been handed censure, conditions on his practice and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine in combination with $70,000 worth of legal costs.

It’s a ruling that lawyers for the Medical Council have appealed to the High Court, hoping to see the doctor suspended from practice for at least one year.

It’s also one that’s left victim advocates calling for more transparency around name suppression for medical professionals so members of the public know more about the people they are seeking care from.

While the doctor’s profile on the Medical Council notes the conditions on his practising certificate, it does not point to the tribunal’s decision, nor the nature of the charges against him.

“It is terrifying that you can go along to a medical practitioner and not have the insight you need to make an informed decision,” said Ruth Money, chief victims adviser to the Justice Minister.

“It’s these kinds of decisions that don’t enable people to have agency over their decisions, a member of public does not know that there is a risk involved with this doctor.”

‘Please don’t do the same'
According to the heavily redacted summary of facts from the tribunal, the doctor first met the 20-year-old medical student while giving a guest lecture at a university to Bachelor of Science students.

The pair spoke after the lecture and a few weeks later the doctor invited the student out to lunch where he offered to be a professional mentor for the young man so he could get into medical school.

The student finished his science degree and returned to his home country, but he and the doctor remained in casual contact by email and by text.

Cialis (top), is one the more commonly used and more popular sexual dysfunction drugs for men along with Levitra (middle) and Viagra (bottom). Photo / Kenny Rodger

The doctor was in the same city as the student for a conference and they met up socially. After this trip, the doctor helped the student with his application to medical school by editing his essay applications, coaching him before interviews and writing a letter of support.

After this, the pair started to travel together.

The doctor would take the prescription sleep medication benzodiazepine triazolam, commonly known as Halcion, to help with his jetlag during these trips, and supplied it to the student as well. The medication is a class C substance that, since late 2023, was discontinued by Pharmac in New Zealand.

After the student was accepted into medical school, the pair continued to take trips together, with the doctor paying for the travel and accommodation.

On one of these trips, at the airport, the doctor gave the student drugs he told him were to help him sleep. But, it was Cialis, a drug used to help with erectile dysfunction and often used to enhance sexual performance in men.

Also during this trip, the doctor used a portable security camera to video the student in the shower and take photos of him without his knowledge.

Some time after this, the doctor wrote the student a prescription for tramadol and benzodiazepine triazolam, and the student came to live with him while he worked a summer research job.

The doctor hid a portable security camera in a speaker in a bathroom that the student was using and filmed him in the shower.The student found the pictures and videos after borrowing the doctor’s phone and moved out a few days later.

Following this, the doctor sent the student a message on WhatsApp admitting to giving him tadalafil, sold under the brand name Cialis, instead of jetlag medication “with the hope that we will have more exciting sex”.

“I am so sorry for this,” he wrote.

He also admitted to and apologised for filming him in the shower.

“This was the worst as I caught you in an embarrassing situation, recorded it on my phone without even considering it was an invasion of your privacy, also not factoring the fact you are slightly paranoid about recordings.”

The doctor was discharged without conviction for a charge of intimate visual recording at an unidentified District Court. Photo / File

The student had disclosed to the doctor at an earlier date that he’d been abused by a teacher as a child , and by a mentor when he was 18. The student told the doctor about this history as a gesture of “please don’t do the same”.

The student made a complaint to the police and the doctor was charged with making an intimate visual recording, an offence punishable by a maximum of three years in prison.

The doctor received a discharge without conviction at an unnamed District Court in 2021 and received permanent name suppression.

‘Misplaced folly’

Medical professionals are subject to a code of ethics and while the doctor had already been through the District Court, the Medical Council levelled charges of malpractice against him before the Health Practitioner’s Disciplinary Tribunal, which held a hearing in late 2023.

The doctor admitted the charges and made submissions to the tribunal that he’d seen the close relationship between the pair as romantic.

It’s unclear from the decision whether this was actually the case and the tribunal ruled that it wasn’t relevant in terms of the details of the charge, and the doctor’s conduct was serious regardless of whether the relationship was a sexual one, or just a close one.

The doctor said that he got the idea to give the student Cialis because he’d heard stories of people administering the drug at parties and thought “it would be a fun thing to do”.

During cross-examination, the doctor accepted it was possible that the student gave the practitioner what he wanted in terms of their close personal relationship in order to get into medical school.

His lawyer, Harry Waalkens KC, said the doctor’s “poor judgment” was contained within the context of a private relationship and was totally separate from his medical practice.

Harry Waalkens KC represented the doctor before the tribunal. Photo / Supplied

Waalkens said his client had been in practice for a very long time and this was the first complaint he’d ever received.

A Professional Conduct Committee of the New Zealand Medical Council charged the doctor before the tribunal and said his conduct was a “ gross violation of trust” and wasn’t “inappropriate and foolish” as he had described it, but rather “inappropriate and illegal”.

It sought a 12-month suspension from the profession as well as a fine, censure and conditions imposed on his practice.

The tribunal stopped short of suspension for the doctor in its recently released ruling, noting that he had voluntarily agreed not to practise for the past four years since he was discharged from the District Court without conviction.

“The tribunal considers that misrepresenting tadalafil as a sleep medication is a gross violation of trust. While the practitioner has characterised it as a ‘misplaced folly’, this conduct seriously harms the reputation of the profession as a whole,” its ruling reads.

“Misrepresenting what medicine is, in an attempt to obtain sexual gratification, is fundamentally wrong.”

The tribunal said the doctor’s sexual misconduct was serious.

It opted not to suspend the doctor not because his conduct wasn’t serious enough but because he had demonstrated a “significant degree of insight” since the offending, and the fact his conduct wasn’t done on the clock as a doctor.

The doctor must tell any prospective employer about the tribunal’s decision for the next year and any prescribing he does will be monitored during that same period. He was also issued a censure, fined $10,000 and ordered to pay $70,000 in legal fees.

NZME understands that the Medical Council has appealed the tribunal’s penalty and is seeking suspension for the doctor.

The doctor declined to make any comment for this article.

‘Mockery of the court system’

There is no reference in the tribunal ruling to why the District Court granted a discharge without conviction to the doctor, other than that the offending was assessed as being of low seriousness.

Simon Johnson, general manager of male sexual abuse victim advocacy group Better Blokes, disagrees.

“People that have had abuse done to them are very reluctant to come forward in the first place, so when they finally find a voice, which is often decades later…you would like to think that the system is behind them and supporting them to get justice,” he said.

“It kind of makes a bit of mockery of the court system.”

Johnson said the sentence, or lack of it, minimises a clear case of abuse.

“Historically as a society we don’t take male to male sexual abuse as seriously.”

Ruth Money, chief victims adviser to the Justice Minister, told NZME that it was concerning that the doctor retained name suppression.

Victim advocate Ruth Money. Photo / supplied

“It’s not okay for the community not to know that their health practitioner faced disciplinary action,” she said.

“There are professions where we should always be safe, we hold certain professions with higher mana than others.”

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.