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Christopher Kwan Chen Lee was a doctor in Victorian and Tasmanian hospitals when he made comments in online forums promoting violence against women
Christopher Kwan Chen Lee was a doctor in Victorian and Tasmanian hospitals when he made comments in online forums promoting violence against women. Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP
Christopher Kwan Chen Lee was a doctor in Victorian and Tasmanian hospitals when he made comments in online forums promoting violence against women. Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP

Doctor suspended after repeatedly calling for women to be raped

This article is more than 4 years old

Dr Christopher Kwan Chen Lee, who worked in Victoria and Tasmania, has been suspended for six weeks

An emergency department doctor who worked in Victoria and Tasmania has been suspended for six weeks after he repeatedly called for women to be raped, made racist remarks and boasted in online forums about being able to say whatever he wanted.

Dr Christopher Kwan Chen Lee was employed by the Tasmania Health Service between 2016 and 2018, before working in Victoria at Box Hill hospital and La Trobe regional hospital, where he was second in charge of the emergency department.

Lee made numerous comments in the forums between 2016 and 2018 boasting about being a doctor and promoting violence against women, including against his wife.

“If my marriage fell apart, it would not end in divorce. It would end in murder,” he wrote. In an online profile, he described himself in the third person as “a mongrel doctor who claims to know all manner of shit on earth”.

“It is rumored [sic] that his hospital in Australia has the highest casualties in the world due to him not attending to his dying patients”, the profile said.

Commenting on a news story about an Egyptian lawyer sentenced to three years in jail for saying that women who wear ripped jeans should be raped, Lee wrote: “I’m surprised they didn’t give him a medal instead.”

Other comments included “some women deserve to be raped” and “I will not conform to your ridiculous moral standards and your expectations of what a doctor should or should not say”. When called out for the comments by other forum users, Lee responded: “Free forum, baby; anyone can start a thread on anything. Suck it up.” He also wrote: “My qualifications are as genuine as your stupidity” and posted photos of himself wearing a stethoscope and with his employee identification.

Lee, 31, admitted to the posts before the Tasmanian health practitioners tribunal. The tribunal heard Lee had previously been cautioned for accessing a Royal Hobart hospital patient’s health records on 21 occasions between July 2015 and December 2016 without the patient’s consent or a clinical need.

Lee, who graduated from the University of Melbourne in 2012, told the tribunal he was “relatively young and inexperienced” when he made the posts. However, he was bound by his employer’s social media policy and it was his responsibility to be aware of this policy, the tribunal heard.

Lee said that despite his online conduct he had not allowed his personal views to influence his work. Lee presented a letter of support from an emergency physician and director of emergency medicine training at Latrobe regional hospital and Knox private hospital, which described Lee as “warm, engaging and affable” with “excellent communication skills”.

The tribunal chair, Robert Webster, said the online posts were unacceptable and inconsistent with a relationship of trust with the public.

“The online posts convey socially unacceptable and extreme sentiments which are disrespectful of women and comment upon violence towards or sexual abuse of women,” Webster wrote in his decision, published in April. “Some of the online posts might reasonably be interpreted as being racially discriminatory and contrary to acceptable social norms in Australia. All of the online posts had the potential to incite radical views, antagonise the reader and they had the potential to cause harm to the public.”

Webster ordered that Lee be suspended for six weeks from May, and that he undertake education on ethical behaviour, communications and use of social media. However, after the suspension, Lee was still posting on the forum under his username. On Monday, in response to a forum user who said they admired Lee for still posting on the forum despite the decision, Lee responded: “We’ll see who has the last laugh”.

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