A doctor on trial for stupefying and indecently assaulting his patients has told the jury "I did not commit that" when examined by his lawyer.
David Kang Huat Lim (41) is standing trial in the Napier District Court after pleading not guilty to five charges of stupefying and eight of indecent assault.
He is accused of giving four male patients the sedative drug Midazolam to render them unable to resist his sexual advances while working as a GP at The Doctors clinic in Hastings.
This morning he was called as the first witness for his defence case; a decision his laywer Harry Waalkens, QC, made clear wasn't a requirement, let alone a normality, for a defence case. The court heard Lim was taking the stand on his own volition.
Born in Malaysia, Lim completed a medical degree in Scotland before practising for several years and then moving to Hawke's Bay in 2006.
He worked in the Hawke's Bay Hospital's emergency department and by 2009 he had moved into full-time employment at The Doctors clinic in Hastings.
Lim said he had administered Midazolam without the company of another doctor in both the emergency department and The Doctors clinic.
He said he felt "very" comfortable administering the drug for sedation and estimated he had used it between 100 and 150 times.
The court heard that after leaving the hospital, Lim did not adminster Midazolam on patients until January 2014, when he treated a 29-year-old who had injured himself at work.
Last week this patient testified he had been given two doses of Midazolam by Lim and woke up from the sedation to the feeling of someone touching him.
"When I started to wake up I could feel someone was touching my penis and at the same time rubbing my stomach."
The man told the court he said his pants had been pulled down to his knees, leaving his underwear exposed, and that he had sat up abruptly to find Lim standing beside the bed.
When asked by Mr Waalkens if he had touched this complainant's penis, Lim said "No."
And when asked if he had moved the complainants pants he said, "No."
When the examination moved to another complainant, who accused Lim of licking his nipples and moving his pants, Lim said those things had "absolutely not" happened.
The court also heard Lim explain why he moved one of his sedated patients into a darkened room to sleep; saying the teenager was in a bay allocated to treat "acute" patients and than he thought a quiet, darkened room would be "nice" to recover in.
Lim admitted to grabbing the teenager's penis while he took him to the bathroom, but told the court the patient was urinating "all over the floor" and that he had only assisted to aim the flow into the toilet bowl.
He said he had never taken a patient to the bathroom before, but had concerns about the unsteadines of the teenager and didn't want him to have a fall.
When asked by Mr Waalkens, Lim confirmed there had been no sexual purpose to his actions.
He told the court he was "shocked and suprised" to learn a complaint had been laid against him several days later.
Last week the Crown called Dr Craig Ellis who had overseen Lim for more than three years as a senior special emergency physician at the Hawke's Bay Hospital.
Dr Ellis told the court Midazolam, which was was "used extensively" in the emergency department, had a protocol that specified at least two people be present at all times during procedures involving sedation.
"We have an absolute rule of a minimum of two people being present. We would usually have three people be present if that's logistically possible."
When it was put to Dr Ellis that The Doctors followed a protocol of having two doctors on-site, not necessarily present during a procedure, during sedation he described this as "bizarre".
Dr Ellis told the court he had administered the drug hundreds of times and never knowingly had a patient have hallucinations of a sexual nature.
The trial is continuing.
