NEWS 13 current policies aimed at protecting doctors are not working.
ausdoc. com. au 13 FEBRUARY 2026
NEWS 13 current policies aimed at protecting doctors are not working.
“ There are just not enough examples of doctors who fought the system and won,” she tells Australian Doctor.
“ I don’ t think medicine as a community has ever been a community where protecting the most vulnerable of their own has been a priority.”
The system failure
Dr Lee says too often complaints are investigated by hospitals with the victims left to continue working alongside their abusers while the machinery grinds its gears.
“ I know several doctors who have been trapped in this invidious position, where the one escape is to leave the hospital or the specialty.
“ This is why it is a terrible idea to let organisations investigate their own problems; inevitably they are going to want to protect their reputation.
“ And whether they mean to or not, they always look at the more senior, the more glorified clinicians over the junior doctors where there is so many of them and they come and go.”
Dr Lee believes that the only reason Dr Kearsley, the then head of radiation oncology at St George Hospital in Sydney, did not escape justice was because the matter was handled by police rather than the hospital.
The assault
As Dr Lee told Australian Doctor in 2023, she was in the final year of her radiation oncology training when he suggested she come to dinner at his home to discuss mentorship.
She had no reason to doubt his intentions and assumed his wife would be there.
But when she arrived, she was told his wife was away.
During dinner, Dr Lee began to feel sleepy. Her next memories were sitting on a couch while Dr Kearsley massaged her, then lying in his bedroom while he touched her bare breasts, despite her repeatedly telling him no.
He finally allowed her to leave and watched her drive off, knowing she was drugged.
Dr Lee says the only reason she came to understand what had happened to her was that her friend insisted on taking her to a GP for drug testing.
A week later, she learnt her urine test showed she had been drugged with a benzodiazepine— later confirmed as lorazepam, which is commonly used in radiation oncology as an anxiolytic.
But even then it took some time to grapple with the reality that the assault was criminal and to then convince police to act, with Dr Lee having to wave the evidence showing she had been drugged in the face of the officer who eventually took charge of her case“ in front of him five times”.
“ I don’ t believe justice would have been done if I had reported the incident to the hospital. An internal investigation by the hospital would have gone nowhere and I would have been buried.”
Independent investigations
Given so many abuse cases go unreported or are handled internally, it is difficult to put numbers on how many doctors experience sexual harassment by peers.
In NSW, a small Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation survey found that 33 % of all doctors had been harassed in the workplace— the number rose to 55 % for women doctors, and about 60 % for women doctors in training.
In the majority of cases( 70 %), the perpetrator was another doctor.
Some 84 % of doctors said they had chosen not to report their abuser.
Dr Lee says part of the solution is about ensuring investigations— up to the point of a criminal offence— are taken out of the hands of the hospitals or practices.
Either AHPRA or the Fair Work Commission could triage complaints, which would then be investigated by external corporate investigators.
If the investigation revealed a potential breach of professional boundaries, then the doctor would be referred back to AHPRA for further action.
“ In the harassment realm, there are external companies that do investigations in the corporate setting, so why should it be different for medicine? I am told by these external investigative bodies that an investigation takes at most six weeks.”
Dr Lee also believes both the accused and the person who made the complaint should be removed from the workplace until the investigation is complete.
“ People will say what if [ you ] accuse a person and they didn’ t really do anything wrong?
“ There will be those cases, but they will be the minority.
“ Just because there are cases like that doesn’ t mean the victims should remain quiet and continue suffering.”
In Dr Lee’ s case, Dr Kearsley was sentenced to two years and three months in prison, later reduced, to much public criticism, to nine months on appeal.
The argument was that his career was already in ruins, that he had been punished enough. She says the process was traumatic for her. During the trial, Dr Lee also had to endure his defence arguing that she could not have been that affected by the attack because she was married and pregnant.
When Dr Kearsley was subsequently referred to a medical tribunal, Dr Lee was not called to give evidence.
In fact, she was not even aware there was a hearing until she read a report on the tribunal findings in Australian Doctor back in 2019.
She was also outraged that the tribunal decided to hide his true identity when it did eventually cancel his registration.
There was an order in the published findings
‘ It is a terrible idea to let organisations investigate their own problems— they are going to want to protect their reputation.’
suppressing his name on the basis that he had already experienced“ substantial and adverse publicity”.
The tribunal also relied on a psychiatric report that said he had“ keenly felt” the“ professional and social consequences and disgrace” that came with his trial, sentence and imprisonment.
Former Sydney oncologist Dr John Kearsley in 2017.
Dr Dominique Lee.
In order to make clear exactly what happened, a few years ago Dr Lee took the decision to waive her right to anonymity and identify herself. She wanted to tell the story herself.
As for Professor Bolitho, he is yet to learn of the sanctions the tribunal will lay down after he was found guilty of breaching professional boundaries.
He is already subject to conditions banning him from supervising doctors.
As stressed previously, throughout the case, he has denied any wrongdoing.
Dr Lee says:“ We don’ t know what the impact has been [ on ] the women involved in the Bolitho case, but I know one person can do so much harm.
“ Most people in medicine are there to serve the community and do good. But the issue is the minority know exactly how to abuse the system to get what they want and never, never be held to account for their actions.
“ The system doesn’ t have enough in place to keep these people in check.”
AAP