Doctor acquitted of raping patient, but convicted of sexual penetration and molest

A general practitioner who was accused of raping a 23-year-old patient at his clinic in Bedok in 2015 was on Monday (25 February) found guilty of an amended charge of sexual assault by penetration.

Wee Teong Boo was also convicted of molesting the university student on a separate occasion. In those two occasions, Wee was alone in an examination room with the victim.

The 68-year-old doctor, who owns Wee’s Clinic and Surgery in Bedok North Avenue 2, will be sentenced at a later date.

In his brief grounds, High Court judge Chua Lee Ming found that Wee was suffering from erectile dysfunction at the time. Wee’s condition cast reasonable doubt on whether he could have carried out the alleged rape with his nurses and other patients around the clinic on 30 December 2015.

Wee, who had been practicing for 37 years, had admitted to inserting his ungloved fingers into the patient’s vagina for a purported internal pelvic examination for a suspected case of pelvic inflammatory disease. He claimed that the victim had given her consent for him to do so.

The victim, however, denied giving her consent. At the time of the offence, Wee had already passed the patient’s medical card back to his nurses for them to prepare medication to dispense to her.

Justice Chua said there was no reason for Wee to carry out the purported internal pelvic examination as such a test would not confirm the supposed pelvic inflammatory disease as the doctor had claimed.

The judge was also not convinced of Wee’s explanations for why he used an ungloved finger and his saliva to examine the woman’s pelvic area. As an experienced doctor, he should know of standard practice to use gloves and lubricant for such an examination, and to conduct it in the presence of a chaperone.

Victim was a regular patient at clinic

The woman had been visiting Wee since November 2014 to seek help for gastric and acne issues.

On 25 November 2015, she consulted Wee for gastric discomfort. He directed her to an adjacent examination room and instructed her to lie down. He then asked her to unbuckle and unzip her jeans.

During the examination, Wee stroked the victim’s private parts, making her feel uneasy. However, she did not report what had happened as she trusted Wee and assumed that his actions were part of the examination.

The patient returned to the clinic at about 11.30pm on 30 December 2015 to consult Wee as she had been experiencing frequent urination and an itch on her private parts. She also asked for her routine gastric medication.

Following Wee’s instructions, the victim again lay on the examination table and pulled up her T-shirt to let him examine her abdomen. While on the table, he asked her to pull down her shorts and underwear for him to examine her private parts. She pulled them down to her thigh level but he removed them completely.

Wee then repositioned the patient on the examination bed until he stood between her legs. It is around this time that he sexually assaulted her.

The victim said she heard the sound of a zipper and felt something come into contact with her private parts. When she complained of pain, Wee allegedly repositioned her body, which was when she saw that his pants were unzipped.

Shocked by the sight, she gestured at him to stop. He then turned his back to her and she heard a zipper being drawn.

The patient then got dressed and returned to the consultation room where Wee briefed her about her medication. She then visited the clinic’s toilet to urinate and found she was bleeding from her vagina.

Over the night, the victim experienced pain and also found bloodstains when she used the toilet. She made a police report on 31 December 2015 and underwent a medical examination at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital. She was found to have small superficial tears around her vagina and a shallow fresh tear of her hymen.

The prosecution and defence will present their arguments on an appropriate sentence on Wednesday (27 February).

For sexual assault by penetration, Wee faces up to 20 years’ jail along with a fine. The maximum penalty he would have faced had he been convicted of rape is the same.

For molestation, he could be jailed for up to two years along with a fine.

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