Doctor under 'emergency' five year suspension finally goes to trial over social media posts

Melbourne doctor Jereth Kok was suspended under emergency provisions by the medical regulators in 2019 after two anonymous complaints triggered an investigation into his social media posts.

Neither complainant was a patient, and Dr Kok, 43, has never had a complaint made against him by a patient in his 15 year medical career, including ten years as a general practitioner (GP, equivalent of American PCP).

The posts reflected Dr Kok’s conservative Christian views on abortion, gender medicine and sexuality, raising questions over whether Australian medical practitioners are free to publicly express their religious views.

Five years later, Dr Kok finally stood trial in a five day hearing at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), held last month, with another hearing expected to be held later this year before the matter can be settled.

However, even if Dr Kok’s suspension is lifted, the five year process has already effectively ended his career.

”I think that the hurdles would just be insurmountable” he told me, listing the requirements to renew memberships, update his training, find a practice who will take him now that he has a black mark against his name, and the inevitable reeducation and practice conditions required by the regulator. “It’s been a defacto deregistration, hasn’t it?”

The process is the punishment

A spokesperson from the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) said that, “Suspension is an interim action that can be taken by a national health profession board (National Board) or a tribunal to protect the public.”

AHPRA is the umbrella bureaucracy over the National Boards (medical, physiotherapy, nursing, dental and so on), which together regulate all registered health practitioners in Australia.

AHPRA did not provide an estimate of average suspension time, but said that “the length of the suspension will vary dependent on the individual circumstances of the matter.”

However, the regulators have come under criticism in recent years for slow walking this “interim” process, resulting in some doctors being sidelined without income for years without any avenue to defend themselves against the accusations levelled at them.

Shockingly, a study into distress caused by AHPRA’s complaints process found that 16 health practitioners took their own lives while subject to investigation between January 2018 to December 2021, with another four self-harming or attempting suicide.

Subjects complained of the stress caused by the excessively prolonged process, and the unfairness of ‘double standards’, where the time allowed for them to provide information was short, contrasted with long gaps in correspondence from AHPRA.

“It's a joke,” said Dr Kok. “I just don't see why it had to take this long. If you're going to use the emergency power, you can't then go and take five years to finish the process off. You've made it so difficult to ever come back to it that most people won't.”

Dr Kok described the experience as a "road test" for his faith. “I've had to rely on God through three years of unemployment, through the grief of suddenly losing contact with all my patients, and through being slandered,” said the married father of two.

As the sole income earner in his family, Dr Kok had to retrain and is now working in the software industry.

Dr Kok also worried about the impact on his patients, explaining that the “abrupt” nature of his suspension meant there was no opportunity for him to do a proper hand over for vulnerable patients with complex medical problems.

He recalled an elderly patient who he regularly visited in a nursing home telling him of her fear that he would leave her. Dr Kok said he felt “dreadful” when her fear was realised without him being allowed to contact her to explain what had happened or to say goodbye.

Dr Kok first found out he’d fallen afoul of AHPRA when he received a letter from the regulator the week before Christmas in 2018. The letter informed Dr Kok that he had been under investigation for nine months after an anonymous complaint was lodged against him in 2017 for comments he made online about the same sex marriage plebiscite.

Another anonymous complaint was made in 2019, this one relating to an article Dr Kok wrote, titled ‘A medical perspective on transgender,’ for Christian news site Eternity News, and other comments he’d made online. Following the second complaint, the Medical Board took immediate action to suspend Dr Kok’s medical registration.

“They are not alleging that I've done any harm in the clinic,” said Dr Kok, clarifying that the complaints and subsequent investigation focused solely on his online posts.

AHPRA launched a far reaching search into Dr Kok’s social media posts and online comments, commissioning forensic IT investigators Ferrier Hodgson to compile a dossier, at an estimated cost of $4,800-$6,000. Ferrier Hodgson also suggested subpoenaing Facebook for complete access to all posts made by Dr Kok from 2014 onwards.

In February 2020, Dr Kok unsuccessfully appealed his emergency suspension. He offered to sign undertaking to remove the offending posts and not to make any further online posts about contentious topics while the investigation was underway.

However, the Medical Board argued that this would not suffice because the “fundamental issue” was Dr Kok’s “character,” “values” and “views,” and what Dr Kok might have “already said to members of the community who might attend on him in his general practice, or the medical profession more generally.”

The Board’s barrister argued that Dr Kok’s suspension was therefore necessary for “public confidence,” but assured that that the investigation would be “concluded very quickly.”

Twenty two months later, in December 2021, Dr Kok was finally told that his case was being referred to the tribunal (similar to a court but less formal). By this time, AHPRA had added posts Dr Kok had made about Covid vaccines and restrictions to add to its brief.

Now, three years on from his referral to the tribunal, and five years since his initial suspension, Dr Kok has finally had the opportunity to defend himself against the regulators’ accusations.

On trial for ‘inflammatory’ social media posts

During his VCAT hearing last month, Dr Kok was accused of professional misconduct related to 85 social media posts and online comments he wrote between 2010 and 2021, including memes, and a sarcastic comment which the regulator took seriously. Most of the posts were made on Dr Kok’s social media network under private ‘friends and friends of friends’ settings.

In one post, Dr Kok highlighted the fact that the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine was “derived from the desecration from a murdered human being,” referring to a cell line from an aborted foetus. Dr Kok believed this fact to be in the public interest, particularly for Christians, many of whom choose not to take medicines derived from aborted foetuses for religious reasons.

In a comment under an article on Christian website Culture Watch condemning the use of Australian aid money to fund family planning measures (including contraception and abortion) in Africa, Dr Kok sarcastically stated,

“Soon, our civilisations will be vanquished, and the Earth will be overrun by Black people. The solution is clear: we must take “family planning” to poor countries and exterminate them before it is too late!”

The regulator condemned the statement as a call for racial violence and genocide, an allegation that Dr Kok said was covered by medical news sites, resulting in him being “defamed.” However, Dr Kok told the tribunal, “I was simply echoing the point [the article] made,” that being that the aid is a form of genocide.

Several memes by U.S. conservative satirical site the Babylon Bee digging at gender ideology and Covid restrictions were also brought up in the hearing.

Medical journalist Heather Saxena, who attended several days of the VCAT hearing, reported the contents of some of Dr Kok’s other posts which were discussed in the hearing for AusDoc (here and here):

“…Dr Kok had described doctors who performed abortions as “butchers” and then added: “What’s wrong with capital punishment for serial contract killers?”

“Dr Kok also referenced the “industrial-scale massacre of babies by doctors,” called Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital the state’s “premier baby killing facility,” and claimed that doctors who performed gender reassignment surgery were “crooks engaged in mutilation.””

In another post, Dr Kok used the term “child abuse” in reference to same-sex couples with children.

Saxena reports that the Medical Board’s argument was not that any individual post constituted professional misconduct, but that in toto, Dr Kok’s language denigrated doctors and could discourage patients from discussing certain procedures with doctors. The board’s lawyer also argued that Dr Kok’s posts encouraged violence to racial groups and expressed anti-vaccine rhetoric.

During the hearing, Dr Kok conceded some of his language was “inflammatory” and “inappropriate,” such as calling abortion doctors “serial killers,” calling gender reassignment surgery “medical butchery,” and using the term “child abuse” in connection with same-sex families.

In his witness statement, Dr Kok said that some things he wrote “did amount to a denigration of other medical practitioners,” and that he would refrain from using such perjoratives in the future.

However, Dr Kok defended his religious convictions, maintaining his stance that marriage is for heterosexual couples only, that gender reassignment surgery is harmful and unethical, and that he does not condone abortion. Dr Kok also defended his long standing opposition to vaccine mandates, stating “I believe in patient autonomy ... to choose or decline treatment.”

Dr Kok’s barrister, Stephen Moloney, argued that “There is no law in this country that says [Dr Kok] is not allowed to say that abortion is morally wrong,” and that speaking on medical topics was a right “given unambiguously to the practitioner under the code of conduct.”

Dr Kok also rejected the Board’s assertion that his public stance on gender, abortion and sexuality would deter patients from seeking care.

“It might undermine their willingness to see me, but I’m not sure it would undermine their willingness to see other doctors,” he said, adding that if a patient asked him about abortion, he would refer them to a GP in his practice who provided abortion care.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-147356247

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