Doctor says he filmed consent video to protect himself against #MeToo movement

The doctor accepts there were "blurred boundaries" with the woman.

A doctor at the centre of an investigation involving workplace sex allegations says he filmed a woman so he could prove she had consented and to protect himself against the #MeToo movement.

The doctor and the woman, known as Ms G, are said to have met on a sexual website before meeting up in person at a bar and agreeing to pursue a sexual, yet secret, relationship as she didn’t want her husband to find out.

That relationship related to a sexual fetish and involved the doctor acting as the “dom”, or dominant partner, and the woman the “sub”, or submissive partner.

The doctor is before the Health Practitioner Disciplinary Tribunal this week.

Heavy suppressions have been imposed on the case, including anything that identifies the doctor, the woman, or where the offending happened.

The doctor admits filming the woman, but said he only filmed her once at his place of work. He said other instances of filming took place at a motel.

He said the video taken at his workplace showed the woman unclothed and behaving in a sexual way, but he filmed her “so she couldn’t say it wasn’t consensual”, given the “MeToo” hashtag.

The doctor regrets that sexual contact took place at his workplace, and admits this was inappropriate but denies having sexual intercourse with her there.

He does admit taking a swab from the woman; she claims he pressured her into the procedure, while he says it was at her request, and at a booked appointment at his workplace.

“I also very much regret and recognise it was unprofessional for me to have undertaken the swab,” he earlier said.

However, she said the swab took place after hours, on a Sunday, and wasn’t for a suspected STI.

The Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal is due to conclude tomorrow. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson

Chaperoned appointment, or after-hours swab?

Much time has been spent during the hearing trying to establish if the swab could have been taken after hours and sent to the lab later.

An administrator and nurse who worked with the doctor said she was the only one who sent things to the lab.

She said she could never recall coming into work to find a swab waiting for her.

She said the lab collected samples at the end of each day.

The doctor thought there were two collection times, in the morning and afternoon, and said there were occasions when he would process swabs.

However, given swabs were chaperoned by the nurse, typically she would take the swab from him at the time it was taken, and process it.

The doctor said the woman had come in for the swab appointment on Monday, following their “bitter” break-up the following Friday.

An hour and a half after the doctor said he saw her as a patient in his professional capacity, he sent her an email declaring his feelings and desire for their relationship to continue.

He accepted this was inappropriate, as were some of the things he included in her patient notes, which had referred to her as his “ex-partner”, with whom he’d had a “bitter” break-up, and his concerns that she might be “vindictive”.

In the lengthy email, he concluded by asking if she wanted to continue “being [his] sub”.

The email referred to things that happened “last night”, but the doctor said that wasn’t referring to Sunday night, when the woman said the after-hours swab happened, but rather he began drafting the email over the weekend, and it referred to Friday night.

He said he only sent the email because the woman asked him to.

Dr Jonathan Coates, of the Professional Conduct Committee, put to the doctor that he had made ongoing attempts to negotiate a continuing relationship after seeing her as a patient.

The doctor accepted he still had feelings for the woman at that time and wanted the relationship to continue, as he had been “in love with her”.

He denied threatening to release sexual videos of her, but accepted there had been a montage-type video attached to the emails.

The prosecution said at one point he had been “hammering” her with sexualised messages, trying to continue the relationship.

The woman had been “really trying to get [the doctor] to stop”, Coates said.

“You’re just continuing to communicate with her in a way that’s threatening.”

The doctor accepted it may have been interpreted as threatening but said he hadn’t been threatening to release videos.

He said he had been threatening to tell the woman’s husband she was on sexual websites.

Results received ‘out of the blue’, doctor claims

The doctor is also accused of requesting blood tests and lab results belonging to the woman, including STI and HIV results, at the outset of their relationship.

Records show 12 lab results were received by his workplace, before the woman was his patient.

However, the doctor says he has no recollection of seeing them.

He accepts he must have looked at them, but denies requesting them.

Coates put to him that if that were true, he “must have been perplexed” to receive the results “out of the blue”, and asked him if he spoke to the woman about it.

He said he did not, and the results weren’t added to the woman’s patient file.

A more plausible explanation was that he requested them, Coates said; the doctor denied this.

He accepted at that time he had no right to request them, and when they turned up, he should have queried it with the lab.

The hearing is due to conclude tomorrow.

Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.