Pretoria - Did they have sex in his surgery or not?
A husband’s concern that his wife had an affair with her doctor and on several occasions had sex with him in his consulting rooms led him to turn to the Pretoria High Court demanding compensation for the adultery.
The man demanded that the doctor pay him R2.5 million for the affair. But the doctor denied any inappropriate conduct with the woman, in spite of her claims that they had sex.
According to the doctor the husband wanted to extort large amounts of cash from him, as he kept on phoning him for money.
The woman in question, who is still married to the husband, was not called to the witness stand by her husband to give a first-hand account of the alleged affair.
While saying the husband’s evidence did not support his allegations that the doctor had on several occasions had sex with his wife at his surgery, Judge K E Matojane was also critical of the doctor. “He was not an altogether satisfactory witness,” he said.
The doctor at first denied he knew the woman was married and said he only knew her by her maiden name. He recanted when confronted with his clinical notes relating to her visits to him.
But Judge Matojane could not reach a conclusive verdict. While not granting the damages as he could not say who was telling the truth, he ordered each party to pay their own legal costs.
“While I have understanding for the position of the plaintiff in this case, sympathy cannot supplement a lack of evidence,” he said.
None of the parties are identified, to spare them embarrassment.
The husband earlier told the court that his woes started around 2011 and lasted until March 2012, when he suspected his wife slept with the family doctor. He said the man had been his doctor since 2004 when he was married to his former wife. They split when she also had an affair with someone else.
According to the husband, the doctor gave the man and his present wife a washing machine as a wedding gift.
He became suspicious when his wife, after a year of marriage, was not to keen on sex and she started to live beyond her means.
He became even more suspicious about her frequent visits to the doctor.
The husband accompanied her once to the doctor and sat in the waiting room. He said the consultation took “very long”.
He later saw a message on her phone, reading “C, my lover, I hope you slept well and that you are happy about what we did”.
The husband confronted his wife, who tried to grab the phone from him. He read various similar messages he said and phoned the number. He reached the doctor’s receptionist, who said he was consulting patients.
The husband went to the surgery to confront the doctor and managed to slip in between patients. He then fetched his wife, who was waiting in the car, an invited the doctor to go through the messages.
He said the doctor broke down crying and said he would never contact his wife again.
But, the husband said, the doctor kept on phoning her. The doctor denied this.
The judge said while he wouldn’t speculate on why the husband did not call his wife to testify, he couldn’t accept her hearsay evidence that she did have an affair with the doctor.
A psychologist, meanwhile testified that tests proved the husband did show “psychological distress”.
Pretoria News