Predation of Doctors by Doctors: Harassment and Sexual Assault in the Workplace

Like all other workers and patients, doctors are entitled to be safe in the workplace and when they are receiving medical care. However, it is apparent that some medical practitioners use their positions of power and influence to prey on other practitioners. This talk explores the stresses and impediments for victims of such conduct to turn into whistleblowers and report sexual harassment and misconduct from professional colleagues to regulators, to persons in the institutional hierarchy and to police.

Using high profile cases in which such conduct has been proved, Freckelton explores the unedifying and largely hidden world of sexual predation of doctors against other doctors. He argues that by calling out the phenomenon, by denouncing such abuses of power, and by the taking of robust action against perpetrators, medical culture can become safer and the incidence of harassment of doctors by other doctors can be reduced.

Speaker

Professor Ian Freckelton AO KC

Ian Freckelton is a King’s Counsel in full-time practice as a barrister throughout Australia with a mixed appellate, trial and advisory practice. He is listed as a Leading Senior Counsel by Doyle’s Guide and Best Lawyers in Australia. Since 2017 he has been a judge of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Nauru and has been a member of eleven statutory tribunals at State and Federal level.

Ian was a member of the Mental Health Tribunal of Victoria for 25 years until 2021 and is a member of the Coronial Council in Victoria. He is also a Professor of Law and a Professorial Fellow in Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne, where he is a Co-Director of the Health and Medical Law postgraduate programme, an Adjunct Professor of Forensic Medicine at Monash University, and an Adjunct Professor of Law in the Australian Centre for Health Law Research at the Queensland University of Technology.

He holds a Doctor of Laws (LLD) degree from the University of Melbourne and a PhD from Griffith University. He is an elected life member of the Australian Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law and an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, the Academy of Social Sciences Australia, the Australian Academy of Law, and the Australasian College of Legal Medicine.

Ian is the editor of the Journal of Law and Medicine and the Founding Editor of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law. He is the author of more than 750 articles and chapters of books, and the author and editor of over 50 books, the most recent of which are: Expert Evidence: Law Practice, Procedure and Advocacy (7th edn, Thomson Reuters, 2024); Australian Public Health Law (Federation Press, 2023, with Bennett); COVID-19, Law and Regulation (Oxford University Press, 2023, with Bennett and Wolf); Pandemics, Public Health Emergencies and Government Powers (Federation Press, 2021 with Bennett); Tensions and Traumas in Health Law (The Federation Press, 2017, with Petersen), and Scholarly Misconduct (Oxford University Press, 2016).

In the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours, Professor Freckelton was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the law, and to the legal profession, across fields including health, medicine and technology” and in July 2024 at a ceremony in Barcelona, Spain, Professor Freckelton was awarded the highest honour bestowed by the International Academy of Law and Mental Health, the Prix Phillippe Pinel, to become the first Australian recipient of this prestigious award.