Doctor who drugged, molested patient stripped of licence to practise in ‘unprecedented case’

SINGAPORE — During liposuction procedures in 2013, aesthetic doctor Tan Kok Leong not only drugged his male patient with powerful sedatives and touched his private parts, but he also took more than 20 photographs of the partially clothed patient.

Already serving four-and-a-half years in jail, the 53-year-old disgraced doctor has now been struck off the medical register here, with a disciplinary tribunal calling his actions “utterly devoid of any shred of common decency”.

In its grounds of decision released on Tuesday (June 18), the tribunal from the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) said that in considering the "ultimate penalty" of striking him off from the medical register, the doctor managed to tick off every box.

Tan was a partner at Life Source Medical Centre in Novena when he committed the offences.

His Malaysian patient, also a medical doctor who was Tan’s business partner at the time, cannot be named due to a gag order.

CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS

• June 6, 2013: Tan performed liposuction on the patient at Life Source. During the procedure, he touched the man’s private parts under the surgical drape. His clinical assistant and nurse both saw what he did, but the patient’s fiancee, who was also a doctor in the room, did not as she was administering a nose filler injection to the patient.

• July 5, 2013: After another procedure, Tan booked a room at the nearby Oasia Hotel for the patient to recuperate. Around 11 o'clock that night, Tan told the patient that he would be administering Dormicum, a drug that induces sleepiness, and Rosiden, a painkiller. After doing so, he took off the patient’s shorts and used his mobile phone to take lewd photos of him in the hotel room. He repeated these acts the next day.

• July 28, 2016: Tan was sentenced to 42 months’ jail in the State Courts following a trial.

• May 25, 2017: The High Court increased his sentence to 54 months and overturned his acquittal for one molestation charge, after Tan appealed against his conviction and sentence. The Court of Appeal later dismissed Tan’s criminal motion to reverse the decisions. The SMC then brought five charges against Tan.

STRIKING OFF REGISTER VERSUS SUSPENSION

In seeking the penalty of removing Tan from the register, SMC’s lawyers pointed out that Tan’s convictions for molestation implied a character defect that made him unfit for his profession.

He “had particularly employed a deliberate and elaborate scheme to carry out his illicit sexual desires in this case”, while drugging his patient, the lawyers added.

Tan’s lawyer, Mr Edmond Pereira, asked for a maximum suspension of two years. He said that Tan was a first-time offender, had a clean record during his 25 years of practising medicine and was a “pioneer in the field of liposuction”.

The tribunal, in accepting SMC’s submissions, noted that “any medical practitioner convicted of a sexual offence in relation to a patient should, by that very act, be considered to be unfit to practise in this hallowed profession”.

‘CYNICALLY EXPLOITED HIS KNOWLEDGE’

It added: “The tribunal considered that this was an unprecedented case both in terms of the number of charges for which (Tan) was convicted, as well as the serious nature of the charges, the brazenness with which they were committed, and the penalties that were imposed by the High Court.”

Turning to how Tan drugged his patient to molest him, the tribunal found these to be even more serious offences as they struck at the core of the medical profession.

“(Tan) has instead cynically exploited his knowledge of and access to restricted drugs to facilitate his own nefarious criminal intent, with total disregard to the risk to the patient’s health. His actions go beyond the pale, and reveal a defect of character that leaves us in no doubt that (Tan) is unfit to be a medical practitioner,” the tribunal said.

Comparing Tan’s case to Dr Winston Lee Siew Boon’s, who was similarly struck off last year for molesting two patients, the tribunal noted that this would “clearly plumb greater depths of depravity”.

“There is no other way to characterise (Tan’s) actions than to say they were completely lacking in propriety and respect, and utterly devoid of any shred of common decency.”

The tribunal also ordered Tan to pay the SMC the costs of the proceedings.