Doctor accused of having affair and giving drugs to teenage patient

A woman alleges a Canterbury doctor plied her with drugs and alcohol and had sex with her nearly 25 years ago, a disciplinary tribunal has heard.

The doctor, who has interim name suppression, is charged with disgraceful conduct for having sex with a patient, who was 16 at the time.

It is also alleged he supplied her with marijuana, cocaine and nitrous oxide, or laughing gas.

The doctor, who is still practising, denies the allegations, which date to 1985.

The complaints were laid nearly eight years ago.

The five-member Medical Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal, sitting in Christchurch, yesterday heard from the complainant, whose details are suppressed, and her mother.

In her evidence, the woman said she was raped just three weeks before the first of two sexual encounters with the doctor.

The doctor had been counselling her after the sex attack and she started babysitting his young children, she said.

Both sexual encounters happened at the doctor's house, the woman said.

The doctor and his wife became good friends, taking her to a rock concert, the beach and on a two-week family trip to Queenstown, where she looked after their children.

Whenever she was at his house, the woman said the doctor would offer her alcohol and cannabis.

Just before the first alleged encounter, she said the doctor told her he had been attracted to her since he first met her and had asked her to babysit so he could get to know her better.

They then kissed and had sex in his living room, she said.

On another occasion, she said she was in a spare room when the doctor approached her and asked her to sniff a white powder.

Asked by defence counsel Harry Waalkens how she knew it was cocaine, she said she assumed it was.

The woman said she tried to end the relationship after the second sexual encounter.

She went overseas, but after she returned in 2000 she admitted she set up private email accounts to keep in touch with the doctor.

In an email dated December 21, 2000, the doctor allegedly told the woman that he wanted to resume their relationship.

"I want you, a discreet place, Champagne and talking and laughing for hours and catching up on 15 missed years and looking at you and holding you."

However, in May 2001, when the woman was the same age as the doctor had been when they had their alleged affair, she was struggling to understand how he could have considered having such a relationship with a 16-year-old patient.

"My husband I were thinking about having children and I thought about how I would feel if a doctor treated one of my children the way [the doctor] had treated me," she said.

"I thought I would feel outraged and that is when I decided to make a complaint about his behaviour as a doctor when I was in his care.

"I decided that I didn't have to cope with the matter on my own any more, that the medical authorities could sort it out for me."

The woman was calm during her testimony but cried when speaking of how the alleged matter had affected her life.

The hearing continues today.

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