Doctor David Lim found guilty of indecently assaulting patients

Disgraced Hastings doctor David Kang Huat Lim has been found guilty of five charges each of stupefying male patients to indecently assault them.

But Lim, 41, was found not guilty on three counts of indecent assault when the jury returned the verdicts just over an hour after resuming deliberations at the end of a 10-day trial in Napier District Court.

Judge Geoff Rea declined defence counsel QC Harry Waalkens' bail application and remanded Lim in custody for sentence on July 26.

Lim, who has no family in New Zealand and was described in court as "overtly gay", had denied all 13 charges when the trial began on May 22. They related to assaults in cubicles and in a toilet at The Doctors, Hastings, over about eight months in 2014.

The jury heard evidence over eight days, including testimony from four complainants, expert witnesses and Lim, who took the stand and denied each of the charges.

The defence's case had been that the patients knew Lim was "overtly gay" and that this, combined with hallucinations that are a side effect of Midazolam, the drug Lim administered, lead the victims to see, hear and feel things that didn't happen.

A young man who saw Lim at The Doctors when he was 18 years old testified he was being treated for a dislocated finger when he felt Lim's hands on his private parts.

"I can remember lying on the bed and while I was lying there I felt his hand."

His mother said she had heard her son cry out "You better not be touching my b****!" while he was behind a drawn curtain with Lim.

She said she entered with a nurse and saw her son was physically aroused under a towel that had been placed on his body from his chest to his knees. She said Lim was standing beside the bed.

The court heard the male's pants were neatly placed on a chair in the cubicle; a "telltale" sign for the mother who told the court her son never folded his clothes, let alone neatly folded them.

"In my mind all the time I was thinking 'Surely not, this is a doctor'," she said.

That night the mother said she noticed her son kept looking at her as if something had happened.

"I couldn't sleep because I thought 'Oh my God. He's done something to him.'

"I had a gut feeling he took control of [my son] and myself."

On the witness stand, the male cried as he described feeling "disgusted".

Despite the experience feeling dream-like, he said he was "100 per cent" sure Lim had handled his private parts.

Crown Prosecutor Steve Manning told the court Lim had lied on the stand and the jury only had to join the dots to find that he had adminstered Midazolam with an ulterior motive.

He said Lim had used the drug to take advantage of his patients; knowing they would struggle to believe they had been touched by a doctor and doubt their recollections because of the effects of the sedation.