A male nurse has been fined after a simple rejection turned into a series of unwanted sexual advancements towards a female colleague.
From lewd gestures to begging her to "come to bed" with him, Gareth Lunar was found by the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal to have persistently harassed the woman for months.
In a decision released on Tuesday, the tribunal found Lunar guilty of 10 incidents of sexual harassment.
The harassment began in 2018, shortly after the nurse started working at a ward in a hospital that's name is suppressed.
Not long after she started, Lunar, a senior staffer, asked her out for dinner for her birthday. The nurse declined the invitation, but Lunar would not take no for an answer.
He was persistent, continuing to ask her out for the rest of the day and after they both finished work, he followed the nurse to her car.
"Just one date, it's not going to hurt you," Lunar allegedly said.
A couple of months later, the harassment continued when Lunar saw the nurse on her phone and asked to see her browsing history because she might "be watching porn".
"Gareth, I don't watch porn because I am a decent woman," the nurse responded to which the decision said he laughed and asked her what she does when she has sexual needs.
During another shift a few days later, Lunar continued to make sexual passes at the woman including making masturbating gestures and asking her to masturbate him at least three times.
Lunar persisted despite the nurse telling him he was "so yuck" and "disgusting". At one point he was alleged to have told her "come on, just one" while miming masturbating.
Later in the shift, the nurse was sitting down and Lunar stood in front of her and suggested she bend over to be in the "perfect position".
He also called the nurse stupid in front of a patient and suggested she sit on his lap, the tribunal said.
The nurse tried to avoid Lunar for the remainder of the shift but was forced to work with him when he asked for assistance with a patient who was bed-bound. On the way to the patient, Lunar told her "not to look at the patient's dick, that it might be big".
Lunar's unwanted advancements towards the woman then escalated when he followed her into a medical room and attempted to pressure her to go to bed with him.
"C'mon just come to bed with me, just one time," Lunar allegedly whispered in her ear.
"I told him 'What the f**k are you saying Gareth'," the woman said. "He did not respond, but just smiled at me."
She then later made a complaint against Lunar's behaviour.
The tribunal found Lunar guilty of professional misconduct concerning numerous incidents of sexual harassment. It said Lunar's conduct towards his colleague was "highly unprofessional and inappropriate".
"Reasonably minded members of the public would view this conduct as inappropriate and unprofessional. The nature and extent of the sexual harassment by Mr Lunar towards his colleague is such that his behaviour falls well short of conduct expected of a registered nurse," the tribunal said.
The Tribunal ordered the nurse be censured and pay $28,000, made up of an $8000 fine and $20,000 towards the cost of the Professional Conduct Committee (PCC) and tribunal investigation. It also recommended he apologise to his co-worker.
Lunar had already lost his job following an internal investigation into the incidents.
