No sanction on doctor after bottom-slapping at Silverstone

A doctor who slapped a colleague on the bottom at an event should not be punished any further for the “isolated error of judgement”, a panel found. Dr Andrew Lim admitted the slap but she alleged he groped her between her legs, which he denied and was cleared of after a crown court trial in 2021.

At the time of the incident at the World Endurance Championship in April 2017, Dr Lim was the deputy chief medical officer at Castle Combe circuit in Wiltshire. He volunteered at events at Silverstone at weekends and had earlier served two five-year terms on the council of the Royal College of Anaesthetists.

He told a panel he had slapped the same woman’s bottom in a playful way at a previous event in 2015 or 2016 but the woman said she had no memory of that. The panel was told by other witnesses of a culture of “well-meaning banter”, which would be sexual and non-sexual, involving members of the volunteer medical team at Silverstone, NorthantsLive reports.

One member said it had “always just been seen as a bit of fun and we all know how far this [could] be taken”. There was a CCTV camera in the area where Dr Lim admitted slapping the woman’s bottom but it was not working at the time. The woman had accepted she had been “acting jokily” with Dr Lim and had pretended to close a door on him before he slapped her. He consistently maintained the slap was not sexually motivated and that if he touched her in any place other than her bottom it was accidental.

After the incident, the woman complained and Dr Lim wrote a letter of apology to her, expressing his regret of what happened. He resigned from his voluntary role at Silverstone and others at motor racing venues the same month. The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing found even if he had slapped the woman’s bottom before, it would not have given him “carte blanche” to repeat it. It said he “should have taken account of the fact that some people do not like to be touched without clear invitation, warning or implied consent.”

It found the slap amounted to misconduct. But it found Dr Lim had needed to consider the incident’s impact “on all involved” since 2017, his “previous good history” and that he had apologised unreservedly. It concluded there was “little, if any, risk of repetition”.

The panel also found the woman had made an “avoidable error” about the date it happened and compounded that “by giving successive accounts of events that did not account with previous versions” she had given. “The tribunal concluded that accuracy was not a priority for [the woman],” it said.

It found her complaint of being slapped on the bottom was proved. It found that her complaint of being groped was not proved. It concluded that Dr Lim’s fitness to practise was not impaired as a result of the “one-off error…in a long, otherwise unblemished, career”. It did not impose any sanction on Dr Lim.