Disgraced doctor John Myers running for Melbourne Ports in 2016 federal election

A DISGRACED former doctor who had his medical licence suspended and indecently assaulted a former patient is standing for public office again.

Dr John Myers is standing for Melbourne Ports as an independent.

A DISGRACED former doctor who had his medical licence suspended and indecently assaulted a former patient is standing for public office again.

John Barry Myers of Balaclava, who stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Caulfield seat at the 2014 State election, is now running for a Federal seat, this time as an independent candidate for Melbourne Ports.

The serial candidate also failed to win election to Glen Eira Council during local government elections in 2012.

The Ports seat is currently held by Labor’s Michael Danby.

Caulfield candidate Dr John Myers indecently assaulted vulnerable 68yo woman in 2012, a tribunal has found

Dr Myers was fined $10,000, ordered to pay the Medical Board of Australia’s legal costs and disqualified from applying for re-registration as a health practitioner for five years by the WA State Administrative Tribunal in February 2015.

But Dr Myers said the accusations and judgment were all “contrived” and the result of “procedural unfairness”.

Calling the system “a disgrace”, he said he hadn’t committed any offences and had been wrongly accused because the system was “corrupt”.

“What they found was not what happened, it was what they wanted to find,” he said.

In public findings released last year, The Medical Board of Australia last year stated: “in October 2014, the WA Tribunal found that Dr Myers had behaved in a way that constituted professional misconduct in relation to sexual misconduct and boundary violations with a deeply vulnerable patient”.

This was in reference to his behaviour with a 68-year-old woman admitted to a regional WA hospital for depression and suicidal thoughts.

Dr Myers worked at Geraldton Regional Hospital as a locum physician for three months in 2012.

According to the Medical Board of Australia’s report, during this time, he was accused of fondling the elderly woman’s breast and bottom without her consent, hugging her, propositioning her for oral sex and entering her room after dark to kiss her on the cheek and say “goodnight sweetie, I’ll see you tomorrow”.

He was not the woman’s treating physician.

Dr Myers fought the allegations in the State Administrative Tribunal, representing himself, saying the woman was being manipulative to seek the attention of her husband.

In its decision on penalty, the Tribunal determined that Dr Myers’ actions represented a “persistent inability to recognise the appropriate boundaries between a medical practitioner and a patient”.

It said a pattern of such violations dated back to 2004 and “conduct in this matter … shows an escalating pattern of conduct”.

The tribunal found Dr Myers failed to be deterred by a caution, counselling or a fine and posed too great a risk to the public to be able to practise any longer.

When the WA Tribunal handed down its finding, Dr Myers’ registration had already been revoked in a separate case in Victoria.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) found Dr Myers had engaged in professional misconduct, cancelled his registration and disqualified him from applying for registration for one year from October 2013.

VCAT determined that Dr Myers had an inappropriate relationship with a patient who claimed she was suffering “Stockholm syndrome” due to his treatment of her.

He was found to have made unrequested late-night house calls to the woman’s home up to 43 times in three months at the height of their friendship, but denied there was any sexual contact with the patient.

VCAT heard the 37-year-old woman sent the doctor more than 300 pages of poems and letters, tapes of love songs and other gifts, yet he continued to treat her.

Dr Myers described the decisions against him as “nonsense” and “scandalous”.

He said the reason he decided to put his name forward for election yet again this year had to do with what had been done to him.

“It’s corruption and if you don’t do something about a system that is corrupt, then you are corrupt as well,” he said.

“The fact that I’m standing is exactly for that reason. I need to deal with these things because who else is going to?”

Dr Myers told the Leader he represented “what is worth voting for”.

“The way the law is conducted needs to be revamped.”

He said he stood for principle and was not “party-driven”.

“I help people to understand things, to get over things and … achieve.”

He claimed to “help the world in the best way possible”.