Psychiatrist John Peter Dominic Rigano sentenced to nine months jail for indecently touching patient

April 29, 2009

The Cairns (Australia) District Court sentenced psychiatrist John Peter Dominic Rigano to three and a half years jail, suspended after nine months.  Rigano was convicted of indecently touching—massaging and masturbating—a teenage boy he treated between March 1993 and January 1995.  The boy had come to Rigano for treatment of anxiety problems.  Rigano lost his medical license in May of 1999, after conceding to an Australian Medical Assessment Tribunal that he should be banned from practice for engaging in sex with a patient.  Rigano admitted that between June 1996 and August 1997, he had masturbated a 19-year-old male patient and attempted on one occasion to have anal intercourse with the patient, who had come to him for treatment of serious depression.  (“Shrink sent to slammer,” The Cairns Post, April 30, 2009.)