A doctor convicted of sexually assaulting a female patient in Canberra deceived Australian medical authorities into registering him as a practitioner, a tribunal decision published this week revealed.
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Four years before he was convicted in Canberra, Ammar Dhaimat was arrested in the United Kingdom over allegations he sexually assaulted a female patient while practising in that country.
After his arrest, Dhaimat acted quickly to get a certificate of good standing from the UK medical council, and used that to apply for medical registration in Australia, the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal decision said.
The tribunal said that when Australian authorities required another certificate of good standing later in 2008, it appeared he submitted a fraudulent document.
Three years later, while working in the ACT in 2011, Dhaimat was alleged to have made inappropriate comments and touched a female patient during a consultation.
The Medical Board of Australia also alleged he inappropriately disclosed information about her to a third party.
It was further alleged that Dhaimat had in April 2014, during a consultation with another female patient, put his hands on her bottom, forcefully pulled her towards him and kissed her on the lips.
In relation to the latter incident, the doctor was convicted in the ACT Supreme Court in 2014 on two counts of committing an act of indecency.
Following his conviction, the medical board applied to cancel the doctor's registration.
The board was unable to serve notice on the doctor, after failed attempts to find him at residential addresses, professional addresses, solicitors, the Jordanian embassy, Facebook and White Pages and the newspaper.
Documents from a subpoena to the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service in 2015 suggested the doctor had not left Australia - under his own name - in the past year.
But the hearing to cancel his registration went ahead without him, after the tribunal accepted notice had been served by an advertisement in The Canberra Times.
The tribunal member who heard the case said she was satisfied the doctor had behaved in ways that constituted professional misconduct.
The behaviour fell "so far short of the standard of practice reasonably expected" as to amount to professional misconduct," the tribunal member said.
The order to cancel his registration was made on June 22, 2015.
But a tribunal document was published only this week, addressing the reasons for a series of issues raised during the process, including the order for substituted service.
In the decision, the tribunal member said there were further indications the doctor's behaviour was not an "isolated occurrence".
He had trained in Jordan, and was practising in the United Kingdom when in September 2007 police received reports of an allegation that he had sexually assaulted a female patient.
"At the time of the hearing before the Tribunal he was still wanted by UK police," the tribunal said.
The UK General Medical Council suspended his registration in 2008 and told the Jordanian authorities.
It later transpired that the doctor had moved quickly to get a certificate of good standing from the medical council only weeks after his arrest, and had relied on this to apply for registration in Australia.
"When a further certificate of good standing was required in 2008, it seems that he submitted a fraudulent document to the Australian authorities," the tribunal wrote.
Police searched his home in 2013 and found evidence of fraudulently created documents, the tribunal said.
