A male nurse who had sex with a patient with bipolar disorder at a Melbourne youth mental health service has been jailed for a maximum of three years.
Kennedy Swamy was employed as a division two nurse at the health service in Melbourne's west last year where he met an 18-year-old woman who had recently been admitted with bipolar disorder.
Swamy, who was 28 at the time, asked the woman on March 7 if she liked him and suggested they go to the bathroom, where the pair had sex.
Two days later they met and had sex again in the bathroom.
Judge Wendy Wilmoth said the victim disclosed the sexual activity while participating in a therapy session the following day, saying at first she thought it was okay but then realised it was wrong.
Judge Wilmoth said that due to her illness the victim's decision-making ability would have been severely impaired.
She said Swamy should have been aware from his training that sexual indiscretions were a breach of his duties.
"You breached the trust placed in you as a carer of a vulnerable person who was in a fragile state," Judge Wilmoth said in sentencing Swamy in the Victorian County Court Wednesday day.
She said Swamy, who migrated to Australia from India in 2006, had lost his career and now found that his future in Australia was uncertain, because his student visa had expired.
But she said his mental state was also fragile at the time of his offending because his wife had not long returned to India with their two-month-old child.
Swamy had pleaded guilty to two charges of sexually penetrating a person with a cognitive impairment.
He must serve a minimum of 15 months' jail before being eligible for parole.
- Sitiemilia , Singapore.
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