Doctor's licence cancelled over porn

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A doctor who avoided criminal conviction for accessing child pornography on a computer has been stripped of his medical licence.

The Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal says in a decision made public yesterday that it has cancelled the doctor's registration, ordered him to pay 30 per cent of the costs of the tribunal and a Medical Council professional conduct committee, and permanently suppressed his name.

The man repeatedly accessed and viewed child pornography from about 1999 to 2013. He admitted his misconduct to the committee.

He told the tribunal that most of the images he accessed were in the lower categories of objectionable material and only a few were in the more disturbing categories.

The doctor disclosed his behaviour to the council early last year.

At the time he was employed by a district health board. He told the DHB of his behaviour and asked it to impose a chaperone requirement for examining patients younger than 18.

He has not worked since the middle of last year, when he agreed not to practise medicine. He has left his wife and two young children.

In 2008, criminal charges were laid against the doctor after a police investigation. He faced nine counts of possessing objectionable material relating to more than "600 images of female children and young persons", the tribunal says.

"The Crown case in respect of the images relied on evidence gathered pursuant to three search warrants. That evidence was ultimately ruled inadmissible by the Court of Appeal [in] 2010," a document said.

He was discharged.

"In his January 2014 submission to the council Dr R advised that the 2008 charges were dismissed 'through a technicality'."

According to an agreed statement of facts, the doctor told the committee he started viewing ordinary pornography on the internet after he and his partner at the time bought their first computer in about 1998.

He became bored with ordinary pornography and moved to viewing child pornography initially by accident. He also has a history of cannabis and alcohol addiction.

Some time after the discharge he began accessing objectionable material at home on a work laptop. In 2013, when returning from overseas, his laptop was seized and forensically examined. Evidence was found of objectionable images having been present but later deleted.

"Because Dr R had deleted the relevant images by the time that he arrived in New Zealand, Customs did not lay a charge ... "

Following the seizure, the doctor confided in a GP and later saw a counsellor. The doctor told the committee he felt shame and guilt, partly from realising his behaviour was a form of child abuse.