Doctor gets a week’s jail for molesting sedated patient after colonoscopy

SINGAPORE – A doctor who claimed trial over molesting a sedated patient after a colonoscopy was sentenced to a week’s jail on Jan 27.

The crime was noticed by two senior staff nurses in the same procedure room who later reported the act.

The doctor, who is 76 years old, and the hospital where he works cannot be named owing to a gag order to protect the victim’s identity. She was 20 years old at the time.

According to his charge sheet, the doctor, who was 72 at the time, molested the patient on Dec 24, 2021, in an endoscopy procedure room within the hospital.

District Judge Shawn Ho convicted the doctor after finding that there was no medical basis for him to examine the patient’s breasts after a colonoscopy, when the clinical diagnosis was bleeding piles.

Online checks show the doctor is no longer listed in the Singapore Medical Council’s registry.

In a judgment dated Oct 29, 2025, the judge set out his reasons for convicting the doctor, which included the credible testimonies of the two nurses.

Both nurses testified that they saw the doctor using both hands to touch the victim underneath her hospital gown. One of them said the doctor’s hands were ungloved.

One nurse asked the doctor if he had consent to touch the victim’s breasts, but he did not respond.

“Having assisted doctors in (the hospital’s) endoscopy clinic in hundreds of surgical procedures, (the first nurse) had never encountered any doctor do an upper chest examination, especially when the patient was sedated in the endoscopy procedure room,” noted District Judge Ho.

“In similar vein, having assisted the accused for operations about 10 times a year... (the second nurse) had not seen the accused conduct a breast examination either before or after each operation.”

The judge said it was not disputed that the doctor had touched the victim’s breasts, but the issue was whether the victim had consented to the act.

The two nurses said the victim was drowsy. An independent medical expert testified that doctors generally do not take consent from a drowsy person.

The victim said that after she was sedated, she was in a “blackout state” and could not feel anything or know what was happening around her.

The drug used for her sedation was Dormicum, and the victim testified that the doctor had told her its effect would be very strong.

In the doctor’s own testimony, he had told the victim that this was “the same type of drug that people maliciously use in nightclubs to spike the girls’ drinks”, which would make them “totally asleep” and “totally unaware”.

The doctor had also told the victim that the girls whose drinks were spiked would “not be aware of some of the funny things that are being done to them” after they were sedated.

“It stands to reason that after the victim had been sedated, the accused knew that it was unlikely that she would be able to give consent for him to check her breasts,” said the judge.

Nurse should not be believed: Defence

Another medical expert called by the defence opined that the victim had regained consciousness by the time the doctor examined her abdomen and breasts, but said his opinion was based only on the doctor’s version of the facts.

The defence attempted to cast doubt on the second nurse’s account, claiming she should not be believed as the doctor had scolded her on the day of the procedure and on previous occasions.

But the second nurse disagreed that she had been scolded, and neither did the first nurse think the doctor had scolded her colleague.

The defence also said the nurses’ accounts had been “innocently” tainted from their discussion with each other before they reported the doctor’s act, but District Judge Ho said this claim was not put to the nurses during cross-examination.

Judge Ho said of the nurses: “They testified in a matter-of-fact manner without any reservation and were forthright when giving evidence.”

The court also heard that there may have been two possible medical bases for examining the victim’s breasts.

The first was to check for an intra-abdominal tumour, but the independent medical expert’s unchallenged testimony was that there was no tumour diagnosis for the victim.

The second was an opportunistic health screening, but the expert said it would be prudent for the doctor to explain this and obtain the patient’s consent if such a screening was not expected.

The expert noted: “As there is no clinical association between rectal bleeding (or) lower abdominal pain with a breast condition, I do not think there is implied consent for a breast examination.”

Defence lawyers Navin Naidu and Kuan Jin Yin of Dentons Rodyk & Davidson told the court that the doctor had Stage 4 prostate cancer and an estimated remaining life expectancy of six to 12 months.

They asked for a fine of between $6,000 and $7,000, or alternatively, one day’s jail and a $10,000 fine, while deputy public prosecutors Ng Yiwen, Jane Lim and Tay Jia En argued for between four and six weeks’ jail.