Doctor now identif ies as female
A doctor jailed for drugging and sexually assaulting patients now identifies as a female and continues to deny her offending and has been declined parole.
A Parole Board hearing last week was told David Kang Huat Lim was transgender and now identified as female.
She is serving a jail term of five years on five charges of disabling or stupefying and five charges of indecent assault on a male over 16.
Her sentence expires in June 2022 but she has been eligible for parole since February last year.
Parole has been declined previously. The board was advised Lim continued to deny offending.
‘‘She still has no safety plan. It is said she has the support of her family in Malaysia who are ‘aware of her offending’. When we asked Ms Lim about that, she said one of her family members was a lawyer and had received details of the charges from her lawyer in New Zealand.
‘‘She confirmed that while her family is aware of the nature of the charges and her conviction, they also believe her denial of the offending and it, therefore, follows they do not accept that she is guilty,’’ the board said in a report.
The board was told Lim planned to retire from medical practice on her return to Malaysia.
‘‘Ms Lim has a low assessed risk of re-offending leading to imprisonment in this country.
‘‘However, nothing has changed since her last appearance. She is still denying her offending, has not undertaken any rehabilitative intervention and has not applied herself to the preparation of a safety plan, even a plan based on denial.
‘‘There is no detail of the support available to her in Malaysia nor of accommodation and the information now supplied regarding her family’s attitude towards her convictions indicates that there may be a lack of other protective factors available to her in that community,’’ the report said.
Lim was still considered to pose an undue risk and, ‘‘whether released in New Zealand or in Malaysia, it is apparent that position is unlikely to change in the near future’’. The board will see her in 18 months.
David Lim, 44, was jailed in 2017 after being found guilty of indecent assault and stupefying patients at a Hastings clinic.
Born in Malaysia and trained in Scotland, Lim came to New Zealand in 2006 to work in Hawke’s Bay Hospital before working at The Doctors clinic in Hastings.
In 2018, the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal stripped Lim of a licence to practise in New Zealand. Lim was served a deportation notice in December 2017.
It is usual practice to deport people after any jail term has been completed.