A doctor jailed for drugging and sexually assaulting patients now identifies as a female and continues to deny her offending and has been declined parole.

At a Parole Board hearing last week the board heard that David Kang Huat Lim was transgender and now identified as female.

She is serving a sentence of five years' imprisonment on five charges of disabling or stupefying and five charges of indecent assault on a male over 16.

JOHN COWPLAND/STUFF Former doctor, David Lim, sexually assaulted four patients. Now in jail, Lim continues to deny any offending and says victims were paranoid.

Her sentence expires in June 2022 but she has been eligible for parole since February last year. This is the second time it has been declined.

READ MORE:

* Convicted doctor David Lim served deportation notice in prison by Immigration New Zealand

* Mother of victim tells when she knew Doctor David Lim had indecently assaulted her son

* Dr David Lim thought he was safe to indecently assault young male patients

The board was advised that Lim continued to deny her offending.

"She still has no safety plan. It is said that she has the support of her family in Malaysia who are "aware of her offending". When we asked Ms Lim about that she said that one of her family members was a lawyer and had received details of the charges from her lawyer in New Zealand".

"She confirmed that while her family is aware of the nature of the charges and the fact of her conviction they also believe her denial of the offending and it therefore follows they do not accept that she is guilty," the board said in a report..

​The board was told Lim planned to retire from medical practice on her return to Malaysia.

"Ms Lim has a low assessed risk of re-offending leading to imprisonment in this country. However, nothing has changed since her last appearance before the Board. She is still denying her offending, has not undertaken any rehabilitative intervention and has not applied herself to the preparation of a safety plan, even a plan based on denial. There is no detail of the support available to her in Malaysia nor of accommodation and the information now supplied regarding her family's attitude towards her convictions indicates that there may be a lack of other protective factors available to her in that community," the report said.

Lim was still considered to pose an undue risk and, "whether released in New Zealand or in Malaysia, it is apparent that position is unlikely to change in the near future".

The board would see her next in 18 months time.

David Lim, 44, was jailed for five years in 2017 after being found guilty of five charges of indecent assault and stupefying patients at a Hastings clinic

Lim dosed four men with a sedative then sexually assaulted them by rubbing their genitals.

Born in Malaysia and trained in Scotland, Lim came to New Zealand in 2006 to work in Hawke's Bay Hospital. Lim spent three years as a registrar at the hospital before working fulltime at The Doctors clinic in Hastings.

In 2018 the New Zealand Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal stripped Lim of a licence to practise in New Zealand, censuring him and ordering Lim to pay $4380 in costs.

Lim was served a deportation notice in December 2017. It is usual practice to deport people only after any prison sentence has been completed.