There was outrage that the Prominent Palmerstonian was given permanent name suppression. We wonder if there will be further outrage when people read this story from the Dom-Post (our emphasis added):
A Palmerston North medical professional, convicted after an FBI investigation led police to find thousands of child porn images on his computer, has been suspended from working for nine months.
The man, whose identity is permanently suppressed, was found guilty last September on 25 charges of possession and one of distributing objectionable material.
Police found 290,000 images "of concern" on the man's computer, many of them showing naked young girls in sexual poses.
He has served a four-month home detention sentence given to him in February, and yesterday was censured and suspended by the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal.
Tribunal chairwoman Kate Davenport said the man had taken steps to rehabilitate himself, but his actions deserved condemnation and it was appropriate he be suspended.
However, the man will be able to work again when the suspension ends and was likely to be given his old job back.
Earlier, the Professional Conduct Committee asked for the man's registration to be cancelled.
The committee's lawyers told the tribunal there was some concern that the man had admitted to "experiencing a degree of arousal in response to seeing a particularly attractive female patient in a partially undressed state as part of his work". That raised an issue of patient safety.
It's probably just coincidence, but we note that the Prominent Palmerstonian's suspension as a registered medical practitioner is the same as that of disgraced lawyer Chris Comeskey. Personally, we believe that the former's offending is far, far worse than that of the latter.
We are frankly surprised that there is a possibility that the Prominent Palmerstonian may, early next year, be able to practise as a doctor once again, given the nature of his offending, and the concerns put to the tribunal.
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