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ABC News
ABC News
Health
Ainsley Koch

'Some women deserve to be raped': Doctor suspended over professional misconduct

A former registrar at the Royal Hobart Hospital has been suspended for six weeks after calling for women to be raped.

The Tasmanian Health Practitioners Tribunal last week found Dr Christopher Kwan Chen Lee, 31, guilty of professional misconduct.

The Medical Board of Australia has alleged that Dr Lee made "inappropriate comments" in Singaporean chat rooms while working and residing in Hobart in December 2016.

During the tribunal hearings, Chairman Robert Webster listed some of the derogatory comments made by Dr Lee.

"Some women deserve to be raped, and that supercilious little bitch fits the bill in every way," one of the comments said.

"She needs to be abandoned in India and repeatedly raped in order for her to wake up her idea.

"If my marriage fell apart, it would not end in divorce. It would end in murder.

"I am a medical practitioner. I also have a foul mouth and call a spade a spade.

"I can just as easily condemn your mother for a whore."

In the decision, handed down on April 17, Mr Webster said Dr Lee's comments were "disrespectful of women", "racially discriminatory" and had "potential to cause harm to the public".

He also found Dr Lee was identifiable as an Australian medical practitioner, which constituted professional misconduct under national law and common law.

Dr Lee told the tribunal he was "relatively young and inexperienced" when he made the comments and said he had "a brash and opinionated bent" to his conduct on social media.

The tribunal also found Dr Lee "did not fully appreciate that posting comments on a Singaporean online forum would have consequences on his practise of medicine in Australia".

The tribunal also heard the Medical Board of Australia had previously taken disciplinary action against Dr Lee for accessing a Royal Hobart Hospital patient's health records on 21 occasions between July 2015 and December 2016 "without consent or clinical need".

Mr Webster said Dr Lee had breached the professional code of ethics and social media policy.

He ordered Dr Lee be reprimanded and suspended for six weeks while undertaking an educational program in ethical behaviour on social media.

Dr Lee was employed by the Tasmania Health Service between February 2016 and February 2018 before commencing his role as an emergency medicine registrar at the Royal Hobart Hospital in 2016 and then the Launceston General Hospital in 2017.

He became an emergency registrar at Victoria's Box Hill Hospital in January 2019.

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