Support and Healing

Submitted on 2009/05/28 at 4:10am

Hello,

I saw you have iSurvive listed as one of your resources and wanted to let you know a great way to support this tremendous non-profit organization. We are currently trying to involve bloggers to raise money, and it is as easy as making a post! I am a survivor and have found great support at iSurvive. I hope you will help the cause by “Blogging For A Cause”. Here is some more information, if you are interested: http://mymonsterhasaname.com/2009/05/isurvive-blogging-cause-part2/.

Thank you for being a part of the abuse survivor community!

My Monster

Professional Accountability

In Christopher Hansard’s case, there is none. He has no credentials, and no professional designations despite presenting himself as a Doctor and Physician. Christopher Hansard has no accountability as a complementary practitioner or Spiritual Shaman. Nor does he have remorse for the alleged abuses of his patients and students who were predominantly female, as he continues to carry on such abuses under the guise of teachings and healing.

Professional Accountability

Having acknowledged that some therapists have been engaging in sexual intimacies with people who have come to them for help, we must determine the degree to which we are willing to affirm and support actively and effectively the long-standing prohibition against the practice and to hold ourselves genuinely accountable for violating the prohibition. It has been suggested that one of the primary reasons that health care professions have experienced such difficulty responding realistically and effectively to rape and incest is that the populations both of perpetrators and of health care professionals have historically been predominantly male (e.g., Masson, 1986). The male professional’s sense of identification with the male perpetrator (intensified because both roles-health care professional and sex abuse perpetrator-involve being the more powerful member of a private dyad) may, according to this view, elicit the professional’s collusion in exonerating the perpetrator’s accountability for his acts and/or enabling the perpetrator to continue the abuse (e.g,, through unsubstantiated claims of “rehabilitation”). Thus the professional is placing an aspect of (perceived) self-interest (based on identification with the perpetrator) above the interests or needs of the victim.

Health care professions, like any professions, struggle constantly with the conflict between “self-interests” (often termed “guild interests”) and the ethic that professionals will scrupulously act in ways that safeguard the safety of patients. In an analysis of issues related to the withholding of care from people suffering from AIDS, Pellegrino (1987), of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, wrote

Nothing more exposes a physician’s true ethics than the way he or she balances his or her own interests against those of the patient. Whether the physician is refusing care for patients with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) for fear of contagion … or withdrawing from emergency department service for fear of malpractice suits, striking for better pay or fees, or earning a gatekeeper’s bonus by blocking access to medical care, the question raised is the same. (p. 1939)

Pellegrino argued that it is various aspects of a commitment to forgo certain self-interests in order to protect or serve the welfare of patients “that distinguish medicine from business and most other careers or forms of livelihood” (p. 1939). Medicine’s commitment to such a professional ethic may be in the process of erosion. The president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, for example, noted that “studies show that medical students are lenient towards dishonesty in education and practice” (Petersdorf, 1989, p. 119). Students’ lenient attitudes toward fraudulent practices that benefit the professional at the expense of the patient may be influenced by the less-than-vigorous systems of discipline and accountability in which physicians play an active role. An extensive study, for example, concluded, “Physician discipline in California is a code blue emergency. The system cannot and does not protect Californians from incompetent medical practice” (Center for Public Interest Law, 1989, p. 1). For further examples and discussion of professional review boards, see Sonne and Pope (in press) .

The resistance to accountability and resultant erosion of effective monitoring of compliance with professional standards may be operative in the area of therapist-patient sexual intimacies. The American Psychiatric Association, for example, has been criticized by some members for its failure to address this issue in good faith. Gartrell, a former professor at Harvard who was principal investigator in the first national study of sexual intimacies between psychiatrists and their patients (Gartrell, Herman, Olarte, Feldstein, & Localio, 1986, 1987 , 1989), resigned her membership in the American Psychiatric Association in protest of what she considered their failure to act effectively to maintain the prohibition, to protect patients, and to hold perpetrators accountable (personal communication, November 14, 1989). Similarly, Gay, a member of the American Psychiatric Association who has been deeply involved in efforts to hold therapists accountable for sexual abuse of their patients concluded, “I used to believe the [American Psychiatric Association]… . But they want to have one image publicly, then the way they act supports a completely different conclusion. I think the [American Psychiatric Association] is not part of the solution; I think the [American Psychiatric Association] is part of the problem” (Terwilliger, 1989c, p. F2). A former president of the American Psychiatric Association suggests that economic interests may heavily influence responses to accountability for victimization. Observing that liability insurance has traditionally served the dual purpose of protecting practitioners economically and compensating patients victimized by malpractice, A. A. Stone (1990) maintained that it is hard to justify the policy limits on payment to the (mostly female) victims of sexual exploitation by therapists. He noted that the economic selfinterest of these limits is “often presented with the windowdressing argument” (p. 25) that the perpetrators should not be protected. This conflict of interest, according to A. A. Stone, seems to lead to the placing of greater weight on economic self-interest (i.e., keeping malpractice premiums used to cover the costs of damages from becoming too expensive for therapists) than on the profession’s concern for victims. “The point is that the American Psychiatric Association will continue to have an economic interest in defending victimizing doctors who have committed the most egregious sexual exploitation if only to limit the amount of damages awarded” (p. 26). If psychologists are to create an effective method for eliminating the sexual abuse of patients, the possible tension between individual and collective self-interest and the safety of patients must be confronted forthrightly.

However, there is a second, related factor that may make it even more difficult to institute effective mechanisms of accountability. Many of us may be exceptionally wary of any efforts to monitor or regulate our actions, even (or especially) if such efforts are made by our own professional association. The history of the APA is interesting in this regard. The APA held its first meeting in 1892, ratified its constitution in 1894, and became incorporated in 1925. Yet it was not until the late 1930s that it was able to create an ethics committee in an attempt to ensure high standards among its membership. Prior attempts to regulate the practice of professional psychology included three separate efforts in the 1920s to establish a system of certifying psychologists performing clinical services (Fernberger, 1932). The third attempt ended when fewer than 30 psychologists could be persuaded to apply for certification-even when the application fee was drastically reduced from $35 to $5. The Committee on Certifications issued a report suggesting that by virtue of the scientific framework of the profession, psychologists, “while commonly energetic and at times heroic in the pursuit of personal aims and ideals, seldom exhibit the capacity for resolute common action which [would be necessary to maintain adequate standards despite] the energy and resources which would be mustered by [colleagues] charged with misconduct” (Fernberger, 1932, p. 50).

Accusations and Guilt; Denials and Innocence

A third pitfall can be anticipated from a study of responses to other forms of sex abuse: the danger of judging accusations or denials of therapist-patient sex to be always true or always false. Each accusation and denial must be painstakingly evaluated on an individual basis. This principle would seem so obviously self-evident as to be at best an innocuous truism. Yet the history of professional reactions to sexual abuse indicate how easily this principle is violated.

Perhaps influenced by Freud’s recantation of his seduction theory, many professionals and courts alike seemed to accept the premise that children’s allegations of incest or other forms of sexual abuse by adults were virtually always invalid (Masson, 1984; Miller, 1984 ; Rush, 1980). Other professionals, however, maintained that “young children never make up specific sexual stories or lie about who molested them” (Siegel, 1989, p. 29).

The phenomenon of sexual intimacies between therapists and patients may provoke similar tendencies to prejudge, especially in light of the issues involved and the tendency of sex abuse accusations to elicit intense emotional reactions. All of us must become aware of the ways in which our careful, unbiased evaluation of individual accusations and denials may be distorted by strong desires to protect innocent colleagues (and perhaps also those who engage in sexual abuse) from accusations, from involvement in formal hearings, and from sanctions, and to protect patients not only from victimization but also from revictimization that comes from having valid complaints discounted. Psychologists serving as expert witnesses in court settings or as members of ethics committees, licensing boards, hospital peer review committees, or other deliberative bodies have an especially significant responsibility to ensure that they render a thoroughly honest, truly professional judgment. Great harm is done to a practitioner innocent of any sexual involvement with a patient when a false accusation is, through carelessness, bias, or other factors, formally judged to be true. Great harm is done to both current and future victims of an actual perpetrator when a victim’s accusations are unfairly dismissed, discounted, or minimized. Psychologists must be particularly careful when using standardized tests to evaluate alleged perpetrators or alleged victims to ensure that the test has been adequately normed and validated for the relevant population and for the use to which it is being put, especially in light of evidence that failure to do so when using such tests as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) can result in serious errors (Butcher & Pope, 1990; Pope & Bouhoutsos, 1986; Pope, Butcher, & Seelen, 2000).

The Nature of Information, Evidence, and Knowledge

A fourth challenge to psychology and allied health professions is in confronting the question, What forms of information or research evidence regarding sexual intimacies between therapists and patients will be considered persuasive (Pope, 1986)?

What we will accept as evidence regarding such intimacies depends in part on our epistemological assumptions. Numerous writers have explored the nature, validity, and implications of diverse scientific methods, with considerable attention to the social and behavioral sciences (e.g., Adair, 1973; Ash & Woodward, 1988; Bannister, 1987; Barber, 1976; Child, 1973; Cook & Campbell, 1979; Flanagan, 1988; Hilgard, 1987; Kuhn, 1962/1970, 1977; Manicas, 1987; Piaget, 1970/1977; Plutchik, 1968; Polanyi, 1958; Popper, 1935/1959; Rosaldo, 1989; Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1975; Rychlak, 1977; Sarason, 1988; Staats, 1981; Ziman, 1968). In his survey, Kimble (1984) found a diversity of views within the field of psychology. An extreme view holds that the only acceptable psychological method is that employed by a few (not all) of the natural sciences: Only when quantifiable variables can be isolated, randomly assigned, and manipulated in a controlled environment is the evidence acceptable. According to this view, paleontology, anthropology, ethology, and astronomy are not genuine sciences in that they rest primarily on careful and systematic observation of naturally occurring phenomena that do not permit substantial experimentation with completely isolated and randomly assigned variables in a controlled environment. This appears to be a minority view. M. Levine (1974) noted and endorsed the shift from the stance “that all problems are better handled with the logic of experimental design and statistical inference” to a general recognition that the real dilemma for psychology was to “distinguish between problems that can be studied by experimentation and those that cannot” (p. 664). A decade later, Wittig’s (1985) review of the field led her to conclude,

Most researchers in psychology recognize that exclusive reliance on the methods of the natural sciences does not provide a proper basis for psychology. The challenge is to gain consensus concerning the strength of the conclusion to be drawn, given the power of the techniques employed. (p. 805)

Whatever the customary epistemological stance may be, any association that finds itself accused of causing harm to the public (e.g., that members of mental health professions are sexually abusing their patients, are not acting vigorously and effectively to prevent this abuse, and are enabling perpetrators to resume practice with vulnerable patients on the basis of unvalidated claims of rehabilitation) may tend to defend itself by pointing out that any evidence of harm does not meet sufficiently rigorous scientific standards. The tobacco industry, for example, correctly points out that the evidence supporting the hypothesis that smoking harms or at least endangers humans does not meet certain scientific criteria (see, e.g., Patterson, 1987): (a) the animal studies-in which isolated variables are randomly assigned in a controlled environment (e.g., precise control of exactly how much smoke is inhaled over specified temporal intervals, of all facets of diet that might interact with smoking effects, of all environmental variables, of relevant genetic predispositions)-cannot be assumed to have direct implications for another species (i.e., humans), and (b) none of the human studies involve random assignment to smoking and nonsmoking groups or adequate isolation of variables; for example, all smokers are self-selected (thus introducing a bias of indeterminable magnitude), and those smokers who do volunteer for studies may differ in significant ways from those smokers who decline to participate.

Interestingly, when APA acquired Psychology Today, a venture hailed as “a far-sighted and sagacious move in the direction of social responsiveness [and] primary prevention” (Salameh, 1984, p. 4), it became the only health profession to generate considerable revenue by running advertisements that urged consumers to use tobacco products, although certain other types of advertisement were unacceptable. The APA Board of Directors unanimously agreed to issue a public policy statement in which the association did not characterize smoking as harmful (see, for example, the Surgeon General’s Warning on cigarette packets that “Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and may complicate pregnancy”) but rather adopted more scientifically conservative language, concordant with the tobacco industry’s position, to assert that cigarettes are one of a number of “products considered by some to be hazardous” (Advertising policy adopted for magazine, ” 1983, p. 2). It is crucial that we maintain an active awareness of the degree to which individual or collective defensiveness may be biasing our evaluations of whether certain actions actually cause harm.

The issue of what constitutes acceptable evidence is accentuated in the area of sexual abuse. As the professions began to overcome their resistance to acknowledging such phenomena, some professional authorities assumed that the activities labeled sexual abuse tended to be neither more nor less harmful than other forms of human sexual interactions. Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, and Gabbard (1953), for example, in their landmark text, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, did not follow up on the fact that 80% of the girls who had engaged in sexual intimacies with adults reported that they were “emotionally upset and frightened.” The researchers viewed such relationships as essentially no different from those sexual relationships between adults in which one person has not assumed responsibilities relating to the welfare of the other, could not be considered to be more powerful than the other, and so forth. Any human sexual relationships, according to Kinsey and his colleagues, might produce a little upset; incest was not inherently different. Any general harm could be reasonably attributed only to outmoded cultural or professional biases against such relationships:

It is difficult to understand why a child, except for its cultural conditioning, should be disturbed at having its genitalia touched, or disturbed at seeing the genitalia of other persons, or disturbed at even more specific sex contacts…. Some of the more experienced students of juvenile problems have come to believe that the emotional reactions of parents, police officers, and other adults who discover that the child has had such a contact, may disturb the child more seriously than the sexual contacts themselves. (p. 121)

Those who assert that incest is no more generally harmful than sexual liaisons between adults in which one person has not assumed responsibilities relating to the welfare of the other, could not be considered to be in a more powerful position than the other, and so forth argue that fatally flawed research is being misinterpreted by people imbued with outmoded cultural prejudices. They compare incestuous activity to a private, self-initiated, and completely solitary sexual activity (which thus precludes consideration of issues of power or trust with a second party, fiduciary concerns, etc.). Herman (1981) noted the tendency of what she termed the “pro-incest school of thought” to use this comparison to masturbation. As Ramey (1979), a widely quoted sociologist, wrote, “We are roughly in the same position today regarding incest as we were a hundred years ago with respect to our fear of masturbation” (p. 1). Henderson (1983) likewise decried what he viewed as the unjustified prejudice against both masturbation and sexual intimacies between adults and children within a family, and quoted approvingly D. P. Orr’s dismissal of any evidence to date: “The studies used to support allegations that sexual abuse of children is damaging are biased and selected for children already identified as disturbed” (p. 38).

Some professionals, though rejecting any evidence of possible harm, may accept evidence of possible benefits. For example, in the chapter on “Incest” in the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, Henderson (1975) called attention to such methodological problems in the research as “unfortunate sampling procedures in the study designs” and, though unable to find adequate evidence of general harm, was able to conclude,

The father-daughter liaison satisfies instinctual drives in a setting where mutual alliance with an omnipotent adult condones the transgression. Moreover, the act offers an opportunity to test in reality an infantile fantasy whose consequences are found to be gratifying and pleasurable. It has even been suggested that the ego’s capacity for sublimation is favored by the pleasure afforded by incest and that such incestuous activity diminishes the subject’s chance of psychosis and allows a better adjustment to the external world. There is often found to be little deleterious influence on the subsequent personality of the incestuous daughter. One study found the vast majority to be none the worse for the experience…. (p. 1537)

Likewise, Karl Menninger, addressing the issue of sexual activity between children and adults, once noted that “when the experience actually stimulates the child erotically, it would appear … that it may favor rather than inhibit the development of social capabilities and mental health in the so-called victims” (cited by Dziech & Schudson, 1989, p. 8). Similarly, D. Thiessen’s paper, “Rape as a Reproductive Strategy, ” at the annual meeting of the APA in 1983, prompted consideration of whether rape might have certain benefits for women as a reproductive strategy. He asserted that “patterns of rape seem to follow normal correlates of consenting adults” and that such commonalities suggest that rape may possess “sexual and reproductive facets geared toward the reproductive facility of women” (quoted by Cunningham, 1983, p. 22).

In the area of sexual intimacies between therapists and persons with whom they have developed a professional, fiduciary relationship, it is crucial to confront realistically the nature of the research. For example, researchers have examined the effects of abuse on patients who did not return to a subsequent therapy as well as on those who did, have compared patients who were subjected to abuse by a prior therapist with matched groups of patients who were not victimized, and have explored the sequelae as evaluated variously by the patients themselves, by subsequent therapists, and by independent clinicians through methods including observation, clinical interviews, and standardized psychological testing (Belote, 1974; Bouhoutsos, Holroyd, Lerman, Forer, & Greenberg, 1983; Brown, 1988; Butler, 1975; Chesler, 1972; Durre, 1980; Feldman-Summers, 1989; Feldman-Summers & Jones, 1984; Sonne, 1989; Sonne, Meyer, Borys & Marshall, 1985; L. G. Stone, 1980; Vinson, 1984). Yet some might still argue that because it is impossible to assign subjects randomly, to isolate and control all variables, and so forth, researchers cannot determine whether therapist-patient sex, rape, incest, or other forms of abuse are generally harmful or are actually more likely to be enjoyable and beneficial to the (predominantly female) individuals who experience them and that attempts to answer such questions must rest solely on transient cultural prejudices rather than on acceptable scientific evidence. Riskin (1979) maintained that researchers will find out whether sexual intimacies with patients are generally harmful or beneficial only if they conduct experiments on patients in which therapist-patient sexual activity is the independent variable; he recommended that patients be randomly assigned to sexual and nonsexual treatment conditions.

If we do not reject all evidence concerning sexual abuse as failing to meet scientific criteria, we must take seriously the limitations and qualifications emphasized by reports of the research. For example, Holroyd and Brodsky (1977) stressed that it is “crucial to consider reliability issues” (p. 848); Bouhoutsos et al. (1983) emphasized that “the meaningfulness of these data … must be evaluated in the light of our sample characteristics… . We do not know the effects for patients who did not return to therapy” (p. 192); and Borys and Pope (1989) underscored six validity issues, one of which concerns a cluster of issues involved in their approach to data interpretation, including

problems in sample selection, the potential similarities and differences between responders and nonresponders in survey studies, issues in scaling and statistical analysis, [and] the qualified nature of inferences drawn from specific findings. (p. 289)

It is only when such qualifications regarding validity and reliability are carefully taken into account that what Wittig (1985) termed the “power of the techniques” can truly emerge and the difficult, often frustrating struggle to learn from diverse investigations–each adding a piece of the puzzle–can proceed.

The Nature of Perpetrators and the Questionable Nature and Efficacy of Rehabilitation

A prevalent societal and professional misconception about rapists and incest perpetrators has been (at least generally) laid to rest: that they are predominantly the least educated, least respected, most marginal members of the community (Barnard, Fuller, Robbins, & Shaw, 1989; Estrich, 1987). Lanyon (1986), for example, noted in his review of the literature that

Most prominent is the stereotype that child molesters are socially marginal persons or “dirty old men.” Indeed, the child molester is most commonly a respectable, otherwise law-abiding person, who may escape detection for exactly that reason. (p. 177)

Similarly, there emerged a stereotype (and, regrettably, it may have been cultivated by an embarrassed profession): that therapists who sexually abused patients were those marginal members of the profession who were most poorly trained. Such stereotypes served as the basis for numerous optimistic rehabilitation efforts that generally involved some combination of (a) education (e.g., an ethics tutorial, continuing case consultation or supervision, and individualized courses in issues such as countertransference, boundary management, and sexual material in psychotherapy), and (b) intensive, long-term psychotherapy lasting several years. Unfortunately, neither education nor psychotherapy has shown any evidence in published research studies of inhibiting sexual abuse of patients, and according to some studies, they actually appear to be positively associated with tendencies to abuse (Pope, 1990). For example, a national study of psychiatrists revealed that “offenders were more likely [than nonoffenders] … to have completed an accredited residency …, and to have undergone personal psychotherapy or psychoanalysis” (Gartrell et al., 1989, p. 7). Similarly, a national study of social workers revealed that personal therapy was not associated with lower rates of sexually abusing patients and that perpetrators were more likely than nonperpetrators to have fulfilled additional requirements for inclusion into the National Academy of Certified Social Workers (Gechtman, 1989). A study of knowledgeable, well-trained, and successful psychologists revealed a higher rate of sexual abuse of patients than that found in the more general surveys of psychologists (Pope & Bajt, 1988). It is worth considering whether high educational accomplishment and professional status may not only, in accordance with Lanyon’s (1986) speculation, help perpetrators to avoid detection but also contribute more generally to some psychologists’ sense that they and their colleagues are (or should be) above the law and beyond accountability to which other less entitled citizens are subject, that they are too elite and knowledgeable to be subject to such restraints, and that even to call their behavior formally into question is an affront and may be unethical. For example, in one study of exceptionally accomplished and respected senior psychologists (Pope & Bajt, 1988), 9% of those who reported intentionally breaking formal legal and ethical standards revealed that the standard they violated was the prohibition against sex with a patient and that this violation was an act of professional responsibility (i.e., that they engaged in sex with the client to promote “client welfare”). Another study of psychologists (Pope, Tabachnick, & Keith-Spiegel, 1987) revealed that 2.4% believed that to formally report a colleague’s harmful behavior under any circumstances was inherently unethical behavior on the part of the psychologist filing the complaint; an additional 12.8% believed that reporting such behavior was ethical only under rare circumstances.

Civil disobedience (a term coined by Thoreau, 1949/1960) was developed as a concept of ensuring accountability through voluntary acceptance of the penalties for breaking laws considered to be unjust and oppressive as a means of bringing about social change (Gandhi, 1948; King, 1986; Plato, 1956a, 1956b; Thoreau, 1849/1960; Tolstoi, 1894/1951). For psychologists to arrogate this term to avoid accountability for engaging in sexual abuse, keeping secret the sexual abuse of others, committing perjury, faking professional credentials and obtaining expensive gifts from clients seems, at best, misguided (see Pope & Bajt, 1988).

Sexually abusive psychotherapists cannot be dismissed as the most marginal members of the profession. They are well represented among the most prominent and respected mental health professionals. Cases involving therapists publicly reported to have engaged in sexual behaviors with their patients have included those who have served as faculty at the most prestigious universities (including those with APA-approved training programs), psychology licensing board chair, state psychological association ethics committee chair, psychoanalytic training institute director, state psychiatric association president, state association of marriage and family therapists president, prominent media psychologist, chief psychiatrist at a prominent psychiatric hospital, and chief psychiatrist at a state correctional facility (“APA’s Ethics Procedures Upheld,” 1985; Bass, 1989; Bloom, 1989; Colorado State Board of Examiners, 1988; Jalon, 1985; Matheson, 1984, 1985; Pugh, 1988; “The Resignation of ___ ___,” 1990; Smith, 1984). Bates and Brodsky (1989) described how one psychologist gained publicity by reporting a “nationwide survey” based on the conceptualization that sexually abusive therapists were in fact “impaired professionals”, the survey findings, which received newspaper coverage, supported efforts to “rehabilitate” these professionals. The psychologist also made a presentation on the subject of rehabilitating perpetrators at an annual meeting of the APA. The general public and the professional community, however, were probably not aware that this psychologist had been engaging in therapist-patient sexual intimacies and, several years after the APA presentation, pleaded guilty to a sex abuse charge (see Bates & Brodsky, 1989).

The ease of demonstrating the apparent successfulness of a rehabilitation program–even when the fundamental research requirement that data be collected and analyzed by independent, disinterested researchers (insofar as any efforts that we undertake to evaluate and publicize the appropriateness, successfulness, and downright brilliance of our own clinical work are rarely disinterested) is met–is due in part to the low base rate phenomenon. Cases of therapist-patient sex abuse have demonstrated that it is possible for perpetrators to engage in sex with their patients undetected (at least until one of the patients breaks the “secret” and files a complaint) while receiving close and direct case supervision, even when the supervision is conducted by an experienced and skilled psychologist under the mandate and auspices of a licensing board (in one instance reported by Bates & Brodsky, 1989, a malpractice suit was filed against both the perpetrator/therapist and the board-approved supervisor conducting the rehabilitation/monitoring), while working within a prestigious agency, and while maintaining a high public profile. Formal complaints from patients may be thus the only reliable way in which the failure of a rehabilitation effort can be discovered. Surveys of victims suggest that about 5% actually file formal complaints (e.g., Bouhoutsos, 1984; Pope & Bouhoutsos, 1986); the percentage seems to be significantly less than 5% when the number of cases estimated from anonymous surveys of therapists are compared with the number of complaints reported by regulatory agencies, ethics committees, and the civil courts.

What are the implications of these facts for rehabilitation? Assume that a hypothetical Sex Abuse Rehabilitation Institute will be created to work with 10 offenders referred by the state licensing board. After many years of intensive psychotherapy, education, and supervision–which, as noted earlier, have not shown evidence of effectiveness in preventing sexual abuse of patients–as well as careful use of other methods, the Institute honestly believes that these 10 psychologists have been fully rehabilitated and are ready to resume clinical practice, despite the relatively high tendency toward recidivism. [The APA Insurance Trust (1990) noted that "the recidivism rate for sexual misconduct is substantial (p. 3). The rate may be at least 80% (California Department of Consumer Affairs, 1990; Holroyd & Brodsky, 1977; Pope, 1989b; Sonne & Pope, in press).] Assume that the Institute’s interventions are completely ineffective and that every one of these 10 perpetrators will offend again (each with a new patient) once the licensing board allows each to resume practice. Even if the Institute and licensing board track the offenders for the next 20 years, what are the chances that they will discover that even one of the 10 therapists continued to abuse? According to the binomial probabilities, there is a 59.9% likelihood that none of the 10 subsequently abused patients will ever file a complaint. Thus the Institute and licensing board might in good faith publicize glowing findings that all 10 were rehabilitated and that patients and the public were adequately protected when in fact all 10 perpetrators continued to abuse.

At present, the diverse attempts to rehabilitate therapists who perpetrate sexual abuse have not demonstrated success in replicated research studies (even with the misleading “aid” of the low base rate phenomenon). Moreover, executive directors for the California licensing boards for psychologists, social workers, and marriage and family counselors have reviewed rehabilitation attempts. Having encountered more offenders than the licensing boards of other states, the California boards have had opportunity to test the widest variety of rehabilitation approaches. The executive directors concluded that in cases involving therapists who became sexually intimate with a patient, “prospects for rehabilitation are minimal and it is doubtful that they should be given the opportunity to ever practice psychotherapy again” (Callanan & O’Connor, 1988, p. 11).

The dilemma of rehabilitation is not limited to the highly questionable feasibility or demonstrated efficacy of rehabilitation. Among the other aspects of the dilemma are two major questions. First, what level of inviolable integrity and trust, if any, does the profession wish to affirm and sustain? A judge might take a bribe to decide a major case, lose the judgeship, subsequently pay the debt to society through a prison term, and undergo extensive rehabilitation; yet the judge would obviously not resume the bench. A teacher running a preschool might sexually abuse the children, subsequently undergo extensive treatment and rehabilitation and satisfy legal requirements (i.e., jail or probation), and seem to present no threat of further abuse; yet the teacher would not subsequently be granted a license to operate a preschool (unless, of course, the teacher was able to conceal this history of child molesting, perhaps by moving to another state and providing false answers during the application process). If people found to have used their positions of trust to accept bribes for rendering certain legal decisions or to victimize students were allowed to resume the positions of trust that they had betrayed, the nature of those positions-what they mean to the society and to those whose lives they influence-would be profoundly changed. Violation of a clearly understood prohibition against such a grave abuse of power and trust precludes further opportunity to hold these special positions in the legal or educational professions, although numerous other opportunities in law or education (e.g., research, writing, and consultation) remain available to the rehabilitated perpetrator.

Psychology must answer the question of whether psychotherapy involves, requires, and deserves the same level of inviolable trust (both from society and from those who are directly affected by the therapist) and integrity as judiciary and teaching roles within the legal and educational professions. The exceptional privacy and intensity of most psychotherapy relationships should not be overlooked when one confronts this question.

Second, to what degree does the profession affirm and ensure the rights to informed consent of patients directly affected by rehabilitation efforts? When new, not-yet-validated rehabilitation methods for perpetrators are being used on an experimental or trial basis by independent clinicians and professional boards, are the patients who are treated by the perpetrators during these initial investigative trials accorded full awareness and written informed consent to their participation, as the Ethical Principles in the Conduct of Research With Human Participants (APA, 1982) clearly seems to require? If the rehabilitation methods have already been independently validated, are the patients made aware of the nature of evidence supporting the validity of the approach and of any doubts, reservations, or qualifications regarding the safety and potential fallibility of the method? [Footnote1]

Our responsibility to scrutinize carefully the methods for ensuring informed consent used by clinicians, researchers, licensing boards, ethics committees, and others involved in rehabilitation efforts is vital: The patients placed at risk for serious harm are predominantly female, and informed consent procedures may be less adequate or completely nonexistent when risks for harm from experimental efforts fall mainly on women and minorities (Gallagher, 1990; R. J. Levine, 1988).

Psychologists must overcome professional resistance to the collection and public disclosure of such data (see the section on Acknowledging the Scope of the Phenomenon). It may also be worth considering whether any victim of rape, sexual abuse from a therapist or of incest who is considering seeking help from a therapist is genuinely aware that the therapist she or he selects may have sexually abused patients and has been returned to practice, after some sort of rehabilitation effort, by licensing boards.

A responsible professional stance is incompatible with neglect of these issues. All of us must maintain an active and knowledgeable awareness of such factors as (a) the consent forms and other components used by those (e.g., individual clinicians, professional licensing and ethics boards) who develop, study, publicize, and use rehabilitation attempts that have not yet been formally validated to ensure adequate informed consent by patients placed at risk by the perpetrators, and (b) the measures used to assess the reliability and validity of untested (i.e., having yet to show demonstrable effectiveness) approaches to rehabilitation, with special attention to how the psychometric properties of those measures and how the low base rate of discovery of abuse are taken into account.

more…

to be continued

When “healers” do harm – Christopher Hansard

“Sex on the couch: The therapists who abuse their clients’ trust”;

Sex on the couch: The therapists who abuse their clients’ trust

For a therapist, seducing a client is a wanton abuse of trust. Yet it’s far from rare.

By Julia Stuart

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When Jo Adams was referred to the counsellor at her GP’s surgery, she expected to be given help for her severe depression. But that was not all she received. During the six sessions, her counsellor paid her a number of suggestive compliments. In her desperately ill state, they gave her a boost. “They put me on a false high, even though I’m happily married,” says the 35-year-old, who works in sales. “He made me laugh when I was suicidal. I felt I couldn’t do without him and if he went out of my life I would go back to the hell of depression I had known.”

When the sessions ended, she wrote to him to express her gratitude for helping her. For several months the pair exchanged letters. The counsellor, who was 20 years her senior, poured out his troubled personal life. One day he turned up at her doorstep and they embarked on a four-month relationship. As they kissed and cuddled, he would try to pressurise her into having sex, though she always refused. “It was all very manipulative,” she says. “He kept saying it was OK, but I knew it wasn’t. I felt powerless. I was very vulnerable. I was so ill, and saw this man as a way out of my depression. I thought I loved him.”

Ms Adams had a breakdown and told her husband. It was the first time in 20 years that she had seen him cry. She told the counsellor it had to stop, and a month later, following another mental collapse, she told a doctor at her surgery what had happened. “I was even more depressed than when I had gone to see [the counsellor],” says Ms Adams. “I was suicidal again and had to have someone with me for 24 hours a day for nine months. I blamed myself for a long time. I had a lot of self-hatred. It put my recovery back at least three years.” Two years later, she is still on medication.

The charity Witness, which supports people who have been abused by health and care workers, believes the problem of sexual abuse by counsellors to be so serious that earlier this spring it held a conference on the subject, called Broken Boundaries: Sexual and Non-Sexual Boundary Violations in the Psychological Therapies.

“There is a lack of awareness and attention to the issue on the part of practitioners and professional bodies,” says the charity’s chief executive, Jonathan Coe.

“If a therapist is struck off they are legally still allowed to practice. So for even the worst offences there is currently no enforceable sanction. At the moment anyone can set up as a therapist, even without training or experience.”

The only UK study of therapist-patient sexual conduct found that 3.5 per cent of therapists admitted sexual contact with patients. However, Birmingham psychologists Drs Tanya Garrett and John Davis, who conducted the survey of 581 clinical psychologists, think the true figure may well be higher. Almost a quarter of the respondents reported having treated a patient who had been sexually involved with previous therapists. And nearly two-fifths knew of other clinical psychologists who had had sex with patients. “We know that it’s likely that reported levels of abuse by professionals are lower than the actual levels,” says Dr Garrett, who estimates the real figure to more likely be 6 or 7 per cent.

Most perpetrators are men and their victims female. There have been incidents of same-sex pairings, as well as adults sexually abusing child patients. The Birmingham psychologists found that therapists who had themselves undergone therapy were more likely to have sex with patients, and that single or divorced therapists were more likely to start a sexual relationship than married ones.

Research has also found that victims often suffer from borderline personality disorder. Typically they have been sexually abused, and may be over-demanding and have intense relationships because they fear being abandoned.

The impact on patients can be devastating. Some are so traumatised they attempt suicide. Often they are re-hospitalised. Research also suggests they can be vulnerable to being abused again by another mental health professional.

Even if a counsellor belongs to a therapeutic association, has a fancy address and is endorsed by celebrities there is no guarantee he or she will behave honourably. Last year therapist Beechy Colclough, whose clients have included Elton John, Michael Jackson, Robbie Williams and Kate Moss, was exposed for having affairs with women patients in his Harley Street consulting room. One of his victims, Janet Bell, started seeing him in private practice in 1999 for binge drinking. After six months he offered to massage her shoulders when she complained of a bad back. The massages became more intimate. After about a year of therapy they had sex for the first time. “I was lying naked on the floor on big square cushions and he was massaging me,” she says. “He just did it, and I didn’t try and stop him. I should have ended it there and then, but, bizarrely, his wanting to have sex with me made me feel special. I was so in need of affection at the time, I think I would have taken anything.”

They had sex during most sessions until the end of 2002, when she texted him to say she was not coming back. She never heard from him again. She filed a complaint with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). He is no longer a member. “What he did is little better than abuse or rape,” she says.

Doctors can be struck off for having a sexual relationship with a patient. Last October the rules were tightened further when the General Medical Council issued revised guidelines stating that having an affair with a former patient would almost always be viewed as inappropriate, no matter how much time has elapsed since treatment ended. But it is anticipated that counselling and psychotherapy will not be subject to statutory regulation until 2008. In the meantime, while a therapist’s membership of a professional body may be terminated, there is nothing to stop them nailing a new plaque to their front door the following day.

The Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE) is currently running a one-year project, funded by the Department of Health, to find strategies to minimise abuse of patients by healthcare practitioners. “Professionals will throw back the claim that ‘the patient came onto me’. The theme that runs through all of the sets of guidance is that it’s absolutely and always the professional’s responsibility to set and maintain the boundaries,” says Professor Julie Stone, who heads the CHRE project.

With support from Witness, which has been calling for statutory regulation for over 15 years, Jo Adams reported her counsellor to his governing body, the British Association for Sexual and Relationship Therapy. He is no longer a member. Ms Adams has also started legal proceeding against him in the civil courts. “I know there are lot of people who are suffering in silence. There is help out there,” she says.

Some names have been changed

When healers do harm

* Psychologist Dr Steven Manley, who had sex with a patient claiming it was therapy, was suspended from the British Psychological Society for three years in 2005. He met the woman, known as Mrs W, in a car park. She said he “brainwashed” her into thinking it would help her and charged her £35 for the sessions.

* Colin McLean-Manning was jailed for a year in 2004 for indecently assaulting 12 patients. The mental health nurse got a sexual thrill from brushing their hair and rubbing himself against them. He has since been struck off the nursing register.

* In December 2006 the British Psychological Society suspended Gemma Bouwman for three years after she confessed to a sexual relationship with a former client, Mr JG, who was said to have problems relating to physical and sexual abuse he suffered as a child.

During one of their sessions, he told the psychologist he wanted to have an affair with her. She eventually discharged him so they could see each other non-professionally. She was sacked by the NHS following an internal investigation.

To contact Witness call 08454 500300 or visit www.witnessagainstabuse.org.uk

Recovery from Cults: Help for Victims of Psychological and Spiritual Abuse

Whilst most people would rightly assume that cults represent a major problem in North America, few realise the enormity of the problem in Great Britain and the rest of Europe. In the U.K. there are well over 500 cults in operation which means that on a per capita basis the problem is the same as that of the U.S. In Eastern Europe, since the collapse of the ‘iron curtain’ cults are also flourishing by exploiting (and removing) the new found freedoms given to the average citizen.

Cults are operating throughout the fabric of contemporary society. Cults have made inroads into the religious and medical communities and  even advertise in the media.

without an understanding of the basics, a counsellor may overlook cultism as the source of a client’s difficulties and even look for deficiencies in the individual as the root cause of the problems. Other carers, with the best intentions, may recognise that recent cult involvement is at the heart of a client’s difficulties, but enter the counselling with many assumptions about cults that are unfounded and erroneous. This lack of understanding impairs progress and can be extremely harmful to the very person one is trying to help.

There are many myths associated with an understanding of the general cult phenomenon today. One popular notion suggests that to become a member of a cult you have to be experiencing a personal problem. This school of thought further postulates that the prospective cult member must be a lost, searching soul with no faith, who may be unstable and suffer from low self-esteem. It continues with the idea that he is likely to be an uneducated teenager, who may have a history of mental illness and/or joined the cult in order to fill a void in his life. The reality is vastly different.

By far the majority of people who are recruited into cults are in fact normal and healthy. They usually come from economically advantaged family backgrounds, have average to above average intelligence and are well educated, idealistic people, with no prior history of mental illness. Their spiritual perspectives vary greatly. Some have a strong faith and some do not.

People of all ages are influenced and many are professionals. It appears that anyone can be recruited. For rather than joining a cult they are actively recruited. No one wakes up in the morning and says “it’s about time I got involved in a cult” and goes out looking for one. Instead they become unwitting victims of deception and subtle techniques of psychological manipulation.

These techniques of mind control used by cults to overpower the unsuspecting are many and varied. They include food and sleep deprivation. Trance induction is common and achieved using hypnosis or prolonged rhythmical chanting. Another popular tool is bombarding members with conditional love. This love is removed whenever there is a deviation from the dictates of the leader. It is known as ‘love bombing’. Guilt and fear are also used to bring about conformity along with isolation from rational reference points, as well as a removal of privacy, so there is no time to think and reflect on the issues and activities experienced thus far. These techniques are employed against the individual in an atmosphere of intense group pressure to conform at all times to the desires of the leader.

A list of 26 cult methods of psychological coercion is as follows:

Hypnosis Peer Pressure Love Bombing Rejection of Old Values Confusing Doctrine Metacommunication Removal of Privacy Time Sense Deprivation Disinhibition Uncompromising Rules Verbal Abuse Sleep Deprivation Replacement of Relationships

Chanting Confession Financial Commitment Finger Pointing Flaunting Hierarchy Isolation Controlled Approval Change of Diet Games No Questions Guilt Fear Change of Dress Codes

The victim is broken down physically and mentally so as to become highly vulnerable to the suggestions and wishes of the group and its leader. This process is likely to take only three or four days with the average person in the average group. The end result is a sudden, drastic personality change in the individual. The cult tries to equate this with ‘conversion’. However, Conway and Siegelman describe the change of personality as ’snapping’ (Conway & Siegelman, Snapping. New York: Delta Books, l979). The new personality is unable to reason, to choose, to critically evaluate and is dependent on the cult to interpret reality and his reason for living.

Even with the right help the typical ex-cultist still faces more than a year of pain and suffering before he recovers from the damage done by the group. Typical symptoms of withdrawal include confusion, depression, disorientation, insomnia, amnesia, guilt, fear, floating in and out of altered states, suicidal tendencies and violent emotional outbursts. Most were outlined by Conway and Siegelman in their paper “Information Disease,” Science Digest, January 1982. An ex-member may even bear physical scars that serve as a constant reminder of his experience.

It is obviously a difficult recovery time for former members, but it is made easier if they are made aware of what it is they are experiencing. When ex-cultists experiencing the above symptoms are brought to the realisation that their suffering is quite normal, there is a tremendous sense of relief expressed. This is another area where a counsellor can be particularly helpful. It feels so good to feel normal again, even if only normal at this stage in the fact that they are suffering as they heal, like thousands of others before them.

They can soon be helped by carers to realise they are not alone, that their current situation is understood and has been documented in a growing body of literature published by other pioneers in this field including Dr John G. Clarke Jnr., Dr Margaret Singer, and Dr Jolyon West.

Before beginning counselling the counsellor needs to be sure that it was indeed a cult and not a sect in which the person was enmeshed. A sect may be described as a spin-off from an established religion or quite eclectic, but it does not use techniques of mind control on its membership. However, a cult can be defined as follows:

Definition of a Cult A cult has all of the following characteristics: It uses psychological coercion to recruit, indoctrinate and retain potential members. It forms an elitist totalitarian society. Its founder leader is self-appointed, dogmatic, messianic, not accountable and has charisma. It believes ‘the end justifies the means’. Its wealth does not benefit its members or society.

There are two distinct categories into which most cults can be classified. Whilst most people have heard of ‘Religious Cults’, few are aware of ‘Therapy Cults’. Victims of both groupings require the same counselling skills, but it is useful to understand the differences between the two classifications even if only to help recognise these groups as being cults. The two types of cults are as follows:

Religious Cults	Therapy Cults
Communal living common. Members usually leave or do not join society’s workforce. Average age at the point of recruitment is in the low 20’s. Registered as religious groups. Appear to offer association with a group interested in making the world a better place via political, spiritual or other means.	Communal living rare. Members stay in society’s workforce. Average age at the point of recruitment is in the mid 30’s. Registered as ‘not for profit’ groups. Appear to offer association with a group giving courses in some kind of self improvement or self help technique or therapy.

For many of Christopher Hansard’s former victims of abuse the coercion, intimidation, and manipulation described above will be all too familiar. As for  those he may be engaging with sexually currently, or who he has recently threatened or intimidated in any way. You are not alone. Though he may tell you that you are the only one, or that the sexual practices you are partaking in with him are meant for your own good and are spiritual, they are not. Christopher Hansard has found a way to ensure his sexual addictions will always be fed and his ego nurtured. For him it is survival. With the help and support of his therapists and media, he will be guaranteed a steady supply of ‘willing’ and ‘consensual’ victims.

What is possibly the worst part of this ongoing scenario is that he also manages to manipulate those around him into feeling sorry for him, drawing out their sympathy and presenting himself as the victim of harassment when he has sexually coerced his patients into granting him sexual favours,  intimidated others into continuing fruitless treatments, and frauded countless people out of their time and money by presenting himself as a “Tibetan Master of Dur Bon Medicine” and even calling himself “Doctor”.

Christopher Hansard never had a teacher, he was never trained in the arts of Tibetan Medicine. He was however trained as an actor in New Zealand long ago. In 1992 if not before, his wife came home one day to find all her house plants hanging from the ceiling and her husband claiming that they were Tibetan medicine and bid her not to question him. Even at that time, friends and acquaintances tried to get him psychiatric help, but he refused. The illusion he had only just begun to create was too good to give up. He set up his own clinic in Adam and Eve Mews and began almost immediately recruiting apprentices, most if not all of which he slept with telling them they were taking part in sacred practices and teachings with him, most of which he had drawn forth from his own practice and were patients or fellow practitioners in his clinic. Most left, only one remained.

Psychological Harassment

Information Association

Psychological Manipulation

Psychological Manipulation and Induced Psychological Illness

As indicated on the home page, psychological harassment and psychological manipulation “mind control” can induce psychological and physical disorders.

When an individual is targeted, the level of harassment usually begins slowly and increases with time.

Anytime someone interacts with you they can influence your thoughts and also manipulate your thoughts.

Usually, people “tune out” the conversations around them. If you are in a crowded room and someone calls out your name they will probably attract your attention and the same goes for other specific words or sounds.

Individual’s can recall or form images. The expression “I get the visual”. When someone talks about or describes a scene you may form an image even if you have never seen what the other person is talking about or describing.

An individual can come in close proximity to another individual and ask a question, If the individual hears the question, whether he is the target of the question or not, his mind can respond with an answer. The answer response can be in different forms such as an image or sound. For example, if the question is what does the person look like? The individual may form an image of the person in his mind. If the question is what is the person’s name? The individual’s mind may respond with the sound of the person’s name.

If someone says leave and slams a desk drawer or hits an object. This is a form of indirect intimidation, an indirect threat of violence. If these actions are repeated it can become a form of conditioning. The next time a person slams a desk drawer or hits an object the person may associate this as a threat.

Classical conditioning can be used to associate different threats to different things. (see also Fear Conditioning)

Bookmarks (sections):
Conditioning your mind Negatively or Positively
Act Happy (condition your mind happy)
Indirect Communication – State of Constant Interrogation
Conditioning Sounds – Hitting Sounds, Conditioning and Fear Conditioning
Conditioning Words – The Identification Word or The Trigger Word
Indirect Threats – Verbal Maneuvering to Hide Direct Threats
Social Queues – Rejection Hurts and can Lower Your Self-Esteem
Smiling and Acceptance (opposite of rejection)
Intrusive Thoughts – Inducing Degrading Images (Degrading Themes)
Psychological Constructions – Constructions, Barriers, and Restrictions
Subtle Attacks – Hidden, Doubtful and Uncertain, Psychological Defenses
Ambiguities – Self Doubt and Uncertainties (A State of Limbo)
Ambiguities – Inducing Self-Doubt and Attacks to Self-Confidence
Metaphorical Speech – Hidden Threats and View on Reality Manipulation
Interpretation and View on Reality Manipulation – The Workplace, The Media, Propaganda, Brainwashing
Fear of Fear and Attacks to the Honor
Responsibility and Vulnerability
Ideation used to Manipulate Victims
Credibility and Psychological Warfare (Psychological Technology)
The Never Ending Test
My Space, Your Space, Not Behind Me
The Domination Game – Who Dominates
Psychological Manipulations used in Covert Type Investigations

Social Queues – Rejection Hurts and can Lower Your Self-Esteem

Rejection hurts, registered as pain by the brain as mentioned on the home page, and rejection can be used in attempts to harm and also lower a person’s self-esteem.

A person’s self-esteem can be lowered or increased by conditioning the person to look only for certain social queues, disregard certain social queues, or by changing the meaning of certain social queues.

Smiling and laughter, social queues, are very important and also have very positive effects on the brain. A tactic often used is to try to condition, associate, negativity to the act of smiling and laughter.

Social queues like smiling indicates acceptance towards the person. A person can be conditioned to associate negativity such as a threat or rejection to a smile. If an individual is repetitively threatened or attacked by individuals that use a devilish or fake smile, that is then gradually reduced to a common smile while still engaging in this behavior, and combined with other tactics to induce paranoia, the result can be that the person will associate other peoples smiles to negativity because they are reminded of the behavior or because they are confused or uncertain as to its intention.

Laughter is associated to joy and acceptance also. Laughter is also a great stress and threat reducer.

A person can be conditioned to associate negativity such as threats, or sarcasm and ridicule using the same tactics, as described above, to laughter.

The desired emotion that victims are usually manipulated towards or led to is anger because of its negative health effects, instead of laughter.

Ambiguities – Self-Doubt and Uncertainties (A State of Limbo)

Humans do not like ambiguities and uncertainties. We like to have certainty and security and ambiguities are also often used to induce insecurity.

Sometimes ambiguities are used to confuse the victim and leave them wondering what it is that they are suppose to do or be doing, or what is the intended meaning. This can also affect the victim by placing them in doubt or used to induce self-doubt and uncertainty, reducing decision making abilities, and can also have the “state of limbo” affect.

The ambiguities can also be manipulated as to hinting at a certain meaning and then modified to hint or indicate another meaning and so on to keep the victim confused or guessing as to what the true meaning of the ambiguities are. This can induce confusion, frustration, and self-doubt.

Ambiguities can also be used for emotional manipulation such as inducing regret for example. One way this is done is by hinting at a certain meaning of what the ambiguities mean with very subtle hints at another and different meaning. After a period of time the meanings can be reversed or what was the subtle meaning can be clarified or made more obvious to the victim to induce regret, self doubt, and also attack or reduce the victim’s self-esteem and self-confidence.

Classical conditioning can also be used with ambiguities. For example the victim can be constantly bombarded with negativity or is lead to the conclusion that past ambiguities also had a negative meaning. Because of the conditioning the person will deduce or assume what is implied follows the same trend or pattern of negativity or theme. (see Conditioning your mind Negatively or Positively)

Song lyrics often use ambiguities so that the listener can apply the lyrics to their own life or view on reality. Ambiguities can also be used to influence a person’s view on reality or in combination to efforts to change a person’s view on reality.

Ambiguities – Inducing Self-Doubt and Attacks to Self-Confidence

A tactic that is often used to attack a persons self-confidence and to induce self-doubt is to ask a question using an ambiguity, when the person answers with a deduction or guess, a negative (wrong or no) is indicated and a more accurate re-question is provided with the correct answer. This is done repetitively to induce self-doubt and attack a persons self-confidence by having them believe that their conclusions or deductions are always false.

Metaphorical Speech – Hidden Threats and View on Reality Manipulation

Sometimes people will use metaphors and metaphorical speech to try to hide different threats or use words that are not obvious in their association to a threatening nature and try to reduce the risk of exposure or criminal evidence.

The meaning of different words can also be changed (sarcasm). For example if two people that hate each other are using the words “I love you”, the intention and meaning of the words used do not have the same meaning or intention as the definition of the words.

Metaphorical speech can also be used to change or manipulate the view on reality of a victim. For example metaphorical speech can be used to describe a certain view on reality or belief that is not the actual reality in an attempt to manipulate the person. (see Ideation in Suicide Factors)

The words “profile”, “psychoanalyzed”, we are going to “fill you up” in the sense of creating a bad or false psychological profile and using psychiatry as a threat is often used. The victim is psychologically harassed and also bombarded with degrading themes such as pedophilia and an attempt to make them believe that they will be labeled a pedophile, sexually confused, or a violent, angry, and dangerous person. The truth and reality is that this tactic is used by the perpetrators in an attempt to protect themselves, discredit the victim, and prevent the victim form coming forward and exposing them.

Another example is referring to the victim as an animal and usually a dog. The attempts made by the victim to expose the perpetrators are then described as trying to “bite”, like a dog, or eat the perpetrators. Using metaphors that are orally oriented are then re-directed towards degrading themes in an attempt to prevent the victim from continuing the behavior of trying to expose the perpetrators. This example of the victim being described as a dog can also imply or insinuate that the person is less then human and can be controlled by a master or as a slave.

A better use of metaphors to describe the situation is that by trying to expose the perpetrators, the victim is using the light (exposure and visibility) and the perpetrators trying to use the darkness (deception).

When your enemy uses the darkness and tries to hide in the darkness, you have to use the light.

Interpretation and View on Reality Manipulation – The Workplace, The Media, Propaganda, Brainwashing

Event or Action -> Interpretation of Event -> Reinforcement of Interpretation
An event or reality -> interpretation of this event or reality -> reinforcement of interpretation and view on reality

In the workplace, employees who are psychologically harassed or psychologically tortured are often described as having the wrong interpretation of events, or having a “perception problem”, a “bad attitude”, and the wrong view of reality. They are then asked to consult a medical professional, a psychiatrist, and are then usually subsequently discredited and classified as having a psychological problem or mental illness.

You may have seen this in the media where something will happen, the media will interpret it in a way that is false according to other media groups or to your understanding of events and evidence, and will then proceed to try to reinforce their view and interpretation on reality or events and evidence.

Conflicting countries or organizations will often use what is called propaganda and their media to interpret their view on reality and events. For example the media in the US, Russia, Europe, China, and Asia may all have different interpretations of events and views on reality that they wish to induce in their audience.

Controlling a victim’s source of information and interpreting reality and events for the victim is also part of brainwashing technologies. An example of brainwashing and psychological attacks is Fear of Fear and Attacks to the Honor. A victim will be lead to believe that the fight-or-flight response is fear, they are then threatened which results in the fight-or-flight response, which is interpreted as fear, you were scared (showing fear to your enemy), and the victim’s honor is then attacked. (see also Degrading Themes)

Interpretations and evidence are not the same. For example if the interpretation of events is that Julius Caesar throw himself on the knifes of the Senators several times, that would contradict the evidence, so ignorance, intelligence, and the ability to interpret the events and evidence correctly and deduce the right view on reality is key and a factor.

For more information please follow the links below

Thank you

Patient Abuse by Therapists

From Lawyers Weekly USA.

Feature Story

Small Firm Specializes In Patient Abuse By Therapists
Far More Common Than Many Suspect

By Elaine McArdle

In the late 1970s, Stanley J. Spero was a successful trial lawyer in Cambridge, Mass., with a typical roster of medical malpractice and auto product liability cases. That all changed when a deeply troubled young woman with a history of serious psychiatric problems told him that her psychiatrist had sexually abused her numerous times.

At the time, no one had ever successfully sued a therapist in Massachusetts for sexual abuse of a patient – and Spero’s colleague Linda M. Jorgenson, who later became his law partner, had strong doubts about the case. The woman was a bi-polar schizophrenic and delusional; at one point, when they visited her in a mental hospital, she claimed George Washington had just dropped by.

“I’m embarrassed to say this now,” recalled Jorgenson, “but I told Stan, ‘You really want to be sure she’s telling the truth.’ She was very, very ill.”

But Spero was certain that, in spite of her many delusions, the woman was telling the truth about her therapist.

“What made me decide to take the case is one of my strengths and weaknesses,” he said. “I’m terribly sensitive to people being abused. Just because they have psychiatric problems doesn’t mean they’re not telling the truth.”

Jorgenson, however, remained unconvinced. Her opinion didn’t change until she reluctantly agreed to take the deposition of a doctor who treated the woman after the defendant psychiatrist.

“I asked him, ‘Why do you believe what this woman is saying?’ And he said, ‘Because when I called up the psychiatrist, he told me he did it.’”

Jorgenson shakes her head at the memory, saying that she “decided at that moment” that she would never again doubt a victim’s story without looking into the matter further.

Spero and Jorgenson set state precedent in 1983 when they won a $280,000 verdict against the psychiatrist. Since then, the team – who formally became partners in 1993 – have handled more than 400 cases of therapist abuse throughout the country and become national experts on the issue.

The five-lawyer firm currently has about 100 open cases a year, most of which settle for between $300,000 and $500,000. But if a case goes to trial the typical verdict is substantially larger. They’ve settled dozens of cases for more than $1 million, including a recent $1.7 million confidential settlement against a psychologist in a Western state, and they’ve landed dozens of verdicts of similar size.

“From that first case, it just turned into an incredible thing, as more and more people realized they had rights,” said Spero.

Therapist abuse cases are plentiful, he noted. According to a national survey published in 1986 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, between 7 and 12 percent of therapists admit having sexual contact with one or more patients. Eighty to 90 percent of therapist abuse cases involved female victims, the partners note, usually with male therapists. Some therapists are serial predators, others may stray just once.

Studies have demonstrated irrefutable harm to most patients who enter into a sexual relationship with a therapist, including depression, isolation, relationship difficulties, and increased risk of suicide. For that reason, professional ethics strictly forbid therapists from having any sexual contact with patients, and for psychiatrists, the restrictions are even greater: they are forbidden from sexual contact with former patients, too.

Twenty-four states regard therapist-patient sex as a criminal act, because the power imbalance in the relationship makes it impossible for the patient to voluntarily consent. And in almost all states, proof of a sexual relationship with a patient will result in the therapist losing his license.

“The sex act itself isn’t necessarily the damaging part,” said Spero. “It’s the invasion of all kinds of boundaries, and the violation of trust.”

“It doesn’t matter if the therapist thinks he’s in love or not,” added Jorgenson. “They should never have sex with a patient. It displaces the primary purpose of the relationship, which is to treat that patient so that they can have healthy relationships with other people.”

The first order of business when trying these cases is to get a jury to understand these aren’t about consensual affairs.

“This is about a doctor’s fiduciary duty to the patient, and the fact that this duty has been violated,” said Spero.

Different From Medical Malpractice

Therapist abuse cases carry their own peculiarities of law and trial strategy, the partners note.

Defendants almost always deny that sexual contact occurred. Since the victims suffer from emotional or psychiatric problems while the defendants are well-spoken, educated physicians or psychologists, it’s critical to have corroborating evidence such as telephone records, hotel receipts, witnesses who’ve seen the therapist and patient together in social settings, gifts, or love letters.

For their first case, the one involving the bipolar woman, Spero and Jorgenson located a nurse who recalled the defendant psychiatrist visiting the victim’s hospital room at odd hours. They also found neighbors who testified they saw the doctor’s car at the victim’s home. Without this kind of evidence, it’s almost impossible to win what amounts to a she said/he said contest.

Spero and Jorgenson are currently suing the former director of psychiatry at a major Massachusetts hospital on behalf of two female victims. In that case, the doctor snapped nude photographs of one patient and had her take his photo, too, which shows him naked beneath his framed Yale medical degree, wearing nothing but a black condom that reads “lollipop.”

But it’s rare to have such clear-cut evidence.

“We say to the clients, ‘It’s your word against his. Do you have something to back you up?’” said Spero. “They have to understand how severe the risk is, and how intrusive these cases are. They’re going up against a person who comes cloaked with a professional degree.”

Defense attorneys delve into the victim’s psychiatric history and every other aspect of his or her life – family relationships, romantic history, work failures – all touchy matters that often are the reason the person went into therapy in the first place.

“It’s a very different kind of litigation,” said Spero. “With regard to the revealing of intimacies and the invasion of privacy, nothing in med-mal compares to it.”

The statute of limitations – three years, in most states – often kills many potential cases. But Spero again set precedent in Massachusetts in 1991 in Riley v. Presnell, which recognized that many plaintiffs don’t realize until long after the incident that what the therapist did was harmful. (565 N.E.2d 780)

In the Riley case, the male plaintiff began therapy with Dr. Presnell, a male psychiatrist at Harvard who gave him alcohol and drugs and later engaged him in sex.

“Riley could never understand anything was wrong,” said Jorgenson. “He was told this was good for him, that it was treatment, so he continued.”

It wasn’t until another young patient revealed that Dr. Presnell had sex with him, too, that Riley thought something might be amiss.

The defendant won summary judgment based on the contention that the statute of limitations had run out. But Spero and Jorgenson appealed the case to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which changed the standard for determining when the patient “discovered” the abuse, and thus when the statute of limitations begins to run. Today, it is up to the jury to decide when the statute begins to run by determining when the plaintiff knew or should have known that the sexualization of the relationship was improper.

“It was a good decision for the victims. It recognizes that for some victims, it takes years to realize what happened,” said Jorgenson. “A lot of them regard it as an affair. They never think that their inability to sleep at night or their depression is connected to this relationship [with the therapist].”

Another problem is insurance coverage. Most malpractice policies do not cover sexual abuse of patients, so the plaintiffs must pursue a defendant’s assets, which is time-consuming and sometimes fruitless.

And these cases have much more emotional impact on the victims than typical medical-malpractice matters, the partners note. Often the plaintiffs have deeply mixed feelings about suing.

“Their self-blame is so powerful,” Spero said. “They can hear every expert support them, and still they blame themselves. People don’t like to feel they were victims.”

It’s hard on the lawyers, too.

“This litigation is so intense, very few lawyers could tolerate it,” Spero said. “You have to spend a lot of time with the clients, where in a regular med-mal, your time is with the expert witnesses.”

Spero typically spends a full day or longer on the initial interview with the client, getting to know her, garnering her trust, and determining whether she is credible.

Few cases ever get to the jury. Once there is credible evidence that a sexual relationship took place, defendants typically settle, since such behavior is a clear violation of medical ethics. The partners have lost just one jury trial, in a case involving a male patient and a female therapist who was a drug counselor, where the judge was clearly not sympathetic to the cause of action, Spero recalled.

“We’ve had other cases with male clients and female therapists, and except for a couple of them, all they wanted was their money back for the therapy,” said Jorgenson. Male clients often are embarrassed to paint the relationship as anything but positive, she believes.

Important Work

Many victims say their primary goal in these lawsuits is to protect other patients from a doctor’s abuse, Spero said.

“We have so many come in here where they don’t even want to know the value of their case,” he said.

Often, clients choose not to sue civilly. Instead, they testify before the state board that licenses the therapist, hoping to see his license revoked.

Spero and Jorgenson believe therapists should be required to inform patients, at the start of therapy, that sex is never an appropriate part of the therapeutic relationship. They also believe all therapists should be required to meet regularly with a supervisor or a peer group, to discuss whether a patient relationship is becoming too personal and, if so, to get help.

Jorgenson continues her efforts to pass legislation in every state that criminalizes this behavior. In the meantime, the firm has a heavy caseload and continues to get calls from all over the country. But Jorgenson believes that things are slowing slightly, in large part because public awareness of the issue is making it harder for therapists to abuse their patients.

Both lawyers find the work deeply satisfying.

“I don’t see how you can’t feel good about it,” said Jorgenson. “In so many kinds of cases, like divorce, you really could take either side. But here there is clearly only one right side.”

Spero saves the letters that his clients send him, thanking him for his help.

“I want my children to know that you can make a difference in this world. Not always a big difference, but in your own way,” he said. “I know we’ve made a dent in this problem.”

Questions or comments can be directed to the features editor at: bibelle@lawyersweekly.com

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It is up to us to initiate Safety and Efficacy at the CNHC

It has been brought to the attention of the Courant that while other publishers have acted responsibly by removing the current fraudulent biography of Christopher Hansard stating that he  “was trained in the spiritual and medical traditions of Tibetan medicine from the age of 4 and is now a leading practitioner in the field. He is Director of Clinical Affairs at the Eden Medical Centre, London. He writes a weekly column on herbal medicine in the Sunday Express magazine and a monthly column for the Life section of the Express. He regularly appears on TV and newspapers in Britain, Europe and the US. He is married with a young daughter.”  those at Hodder Mobius, Hodder & Stoughton – his main publisher – seem slow to act or react in the face of more recent allegations. The current biography above is directly from their site, and as it is used by other publishers and book promotors it is this biography that continues to draw innocent future victims to the practice of Christopher Hansard, It also helps to lend him credibility in the eyes of the public who remain ignorant of the fact that publishers and agents are not required to look into an authors past history.

Christopher Hansard is known to be violent, he has been accused of various sexual offences against his patients and students spanning from the time of his conception as a Tibetan Healer to now. His victims have been shamed, blamed, and called any number of names by him such as “scorned women”, “jealous practitioners”, “vengeful ex-students”, and “mentally ill”. The patients that he has been accused of molesting have been referred to as delsional, while it was Mr. Hansard who created an illusion for them when they came to him for help.

He is currently seeking further credibility and a certificate in counseling, cognitive behavioural therapy, and psychology courses with the help and encouragement of his former therapists who were made aware of his many breaches of boundaries, and of his fraud that has now been published in 3 books. The Tibetan Art of Living, The Tibetan Art of Positive Thinking, and The Tibetan Art of Serenity. He writes a daily blog where he continues to present himself as a spiritual, enlightened guru. In the past he would preach the importance of respecting women, revering sacred unions such as marriage, all the while he was breaking such boundaries, and dis-respecting women in the worst way. Infliciting violence on those closest to him, coercing his patients into acts of sex with him under the guise of healing, and manipulating his students into submission and unquestioning loyalty.

Safety and Efficacy at the CNHC

The Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council
(CNHC) is the UK Government’s attempt to regulate “alternative
therapy”. But it does not even require evidence that certified
treatments are safe, or actually work.

On 19 January 2009, the UK Government set up the CNHC, ostensibly to
regulate Supplementary, Complementary and Alternative Medicine (SCAM)
practitioners.

Double Standards

The actual effect will be to create a double standard for treatments.

In “normal” medicine, therapies must undergo rigorous testing
for safety and efficetiveness, and may not be licensed even if
preliminary data seem good. A good example of this is the drug
Herceptin, which was not licensed for use in the UK because the early
promising trials did not pan out. This is good – I don’t want some drug
being administered to me on the sole say-so of the company that made
it, and if it costs the drug companies millions to prove that it’s OK,
then so be it. What is the price of a human life?

However, market your cure-all nostrum as a supplement, herbal remedy or traditional medicine, and the sole-say-so rule is exactly
what happens. A SCAM practitioner can get accreditation from his or her
“professional body” – an association of other true believers, usually -
and a certificate of insurance, and become government accredited for
£45.

Worthless Certification

The CNHC does spell out what they do and do not claim about those on
its register, but this is hardly likely to be read by the general
public. SCAM practitioners will undoubtedly use CNHC certification to
imply safety and effectiveness. In fact, the CNHC referring to their
little logo as a “kitemark” reinforces this belief, as a kitemark
usually refers to the mark of the British Standards Institute, a
well-respected and trusted body.

And it turns out that this implication is a step too far for
the BSI. The term “kitemark” is a trade mark of the BSI, and the CNHC
have had their wrists slapped over the use of the term, through the medium of a cease-and-desist letter from the BSI’s lawyers.

Petition

I have set up a petition at the Government’s Petition Website, asking them to amend the requirements for CNHC certification to include evidence of efficacy and safety – please sign it.

the Courant encourages all UK citizens to sign the above petition and show your support for those who suffered in the ‘care’ of Christopher Hansard. A man who is highly delusional, dangerous, and due to a lack of regulation, seeking credentials so that he may carry on abusing those who turn to him for help and healing.

The story of his supposed ‘training’ turned out to be false in it’s entirety. A story that has been publised in 3 books. The Tibetan Art of Living, The Tibetan Art of Positive Thinking, and The Tibetan Art of Serenity.

While complementary practitioners expect to be treated with the same respect as our General Medicial Practitioners, they are not bound by the same laws nor any code of ethics save those imposed by their own regulatory bodies should they choose to be a member. However being a member of a regulatory body is not mandatory, nor are there any REAL consequences if any of the professional associations rules are broken. Even insurers offering coverage to those in the complementary field seem to lack any teeth when in comes to enforcing their own code of ethics or policies. This was evidenced when we attempted to bring the many abuses we were aware of to Christopher Hansard’s insurance company. With such serious accusations, one would think that at the very least a thorough investigation would have been launched into his claims, let alone his abuses of clients.

There is a need for government imposed regulations specifically aimed at those in the complementary and alternative medicine field. Christopher Hansard is perhaps one of the best examples of why it is so important that we take an active interest, whether you are a practitioner yourself, a student, or a client.

the Government’s Petition Website

Investigate Christopher Hansard

Thank you!

Is Christopher Hansard now “Based in Canada”?

Christopher Hansard, Physician of Tibetan Bon Medicine
Master Physician of Tibetan B?n Medicine. Author, educator on ancient Tibetan lifestyle, health, and spirituality. Based in Canada.

According to the above submission from “Healthy Popular.com” he is!

It appears to be a more recent link as it links directly back to his own site.

If you are in Canada, and you have been sexually harassed, assaulted, coerced into granting sexual favours for Christopher Hansard while in his ‘care’ as a therapist, under the title of “Physician of Tibetan Dur Bon Medicine” please contact your local RCMP station and ask them for advice.

Contact Us

VISIT ONE OF OUR PROVINCIAL OR TERRITORIAL WEBSITES

Federal and Provincial Consumer Protection and Information
for Scam Victims in Canada

Federal Consumer Information

BC Consumer Services – I can no longer find any consumer protection services ministry in British Columbia. They seem to refer all concerns to the RCMP.

Alberta Consumer Protection

Saskatchewan Consumer Information

Manitoba Consumer Protection

Ontario Consumer Protection

Office de la protection du consommateur

NB Consumer Protection

NS Consumer Protection

PEI Consumer Protection

Newfoundland Consumer Protection

Tantric teachings, Dur Bon teachings, or Sexual Coercion & Abuse

Through the course of  on-going research, every article found by the Courant on Adult Sexual Abuse seems to suggest that victims should turn to either an existing therapist or find a physician.

But the question remains, what if the therapist or “physician” [of Tibetan Dur Bon Medicine] you have turned to for help, winds up convincing you that the ‘cure’ can only be found through them, in a ’spiritual manner’? What if it is your physician that tells you that you must surrender yourself to them completely in order to experience a successful healing journey?  What if over the course of a year, or many, the man you refer to as your ‘doctor’ [of Tibetan Medicine] has persuaded you that he is in love with you, and has somehow beset upon you that the strange sexual incidences that only over occur in his treatment room or office are ‘for your own good’, “a Dur Bon teaching” or part of legitimate “Tantric teachings”.

Sexual Abuse of Adults

What is the sexual abuse of adults?

Sexual abuse of adults includes both sexual harassment and rape.

What behaviors occur with sexual abuse of adults?

Sexual harassment includes any unwelcomed sexual advances or unwanted sexual contact by another adult. People involved in sexual harassment may also tell sexual jokes, ask for sexual favors, and/or use crude or abusive language in the presence of someone else who is not inviting the behavior. Victims of harassment may wrongly blame themselves for having somehow contributed to the harassment.

Rape is the forceful act of sexual intercourse against a person’s will or consent. The focus of rape is power or anger and not sex. Rape is frequently carried out by someone known to the victim and can even occur within a marriage. Anal intercourse, which may accompany rape, is called sodomy. Fellatio, oral sex, may also be a forced act that accompanies a rape. Threats of serious bodily harm or death are often connected to a rape. Following an assault, victims of sexual abuse will often feel like they have been ruined by the horrible, painful event. Victims of rape may also wrongly blame themselves for somehow getting into a situation where the assault occurred.

What are some of the statistics of sexual abuse of adults?

1. Most rapes are committed by men between the ages of 20 and 50.
2. Victims of rape range from under 2 years of age to more than 80 years of age.
3. More than 50 percent of all rapes reported in the United States occur against females under 18 years of age.
4. Strangers commit only about one-half of all rapes; the other half are caused by men who are known to their victims.
5. Relatives of the victim commit about 5 percent of all rapes.
6. In more than one-third of all cases of rape, the male, the female, or both were using alcohol.

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Do males or females commit sexual abuse?

Males are almost always the perpetrators of sexual abuse in the United States.

At what age does sexual abuse of adults occur?

Sexual abuse of adults occurs during any age of adulthood even into the geriatric population.

How often are adults sexually abused in our society?

Many, maybe most, rapes go unreported to authorities. However, more than 100,000 rapes (which is about 300 episodes every day) are reported in the United States every year.

How is sexual abuse of adults treated?

Treatment for the rape victim focuses on helping that person heal from the psychological and physical trauma caused by the event. It is important to give immediate support to the rape victim. Individual, group, family, and/or couples therapy are recommended. The victim should be encouraged to talk about her feelings about the trauma. It is often very helpful and healing for a victim to know that the rapist has been arrested and convicted of the rape.

What can people do if they need help?

If you, a friend, or a family member would like more information and you have a therapist or a physician, please discuss your concerns with that person.

Supporting Survivors of Abuse

Supporting Survivors of Abuse – How you can help

Most victims of sexual violence choose to tell someone close to them, who they feel safe enough to disclose about abuse which they have experienced, they believe that you are trust-worthy, will believe them and will not tell others without speaking to them about it first. As a ’safe’ person to tell, you are a woman’s most important source of support.

Whether you are helping someone cope with the immediate trauma of a recent experience or someone coming to terms with sexual abuse suffered as a child, you are very important to them. It is important, therefore, that you see yourself as important here and take care of yourself and your own needs. The victim is not going to get over the trauma quickly, so you need to pace yourself in terms of how much time and energy you can realistically offer the woman whom you are supporting. Consistency over a long period is more important than sitting up all night for a week and setting up expectations that you will always be able to ‘be there’ for her.

Similarly, remember that she is not ‘rejecting’ you if she chooses to seek help elsewhere, such as from a counsellor. When someone is in shock, grieving or traumatised, they will not look after themselves very well; they can be overwhelmed with painful emotions and negative thoughts. You need to be able to feel calm and be ‘real’. Hot drinks, food, vitamins, treats and a hand to hold may be all the person needs from you. Victims have had their minds and bodies invaded; they may have difficulties in sleeping, eating, and bathing, relaxing and not least with sexual or intimate contact. It may take time for these activities to become normalised as every day life; any support you can offer in this process can add a lot to their sense of security and self-respect.

Many people are afraid of saying or doing ‘the wrong thing’, or of ‘damaging’ someone further because they ‘do not know enough’ about sexual violence. It is important to remember that you do not have to be an expert, you are not dealing with a ’strange disease’. If you are prepared to listen, the woman concerned will be able to guide you in what she needs.

You may feel traumatised, confused, overwhelmed, or a range of feelings about what has happened, you may feel: angry, helpless, guilty, scared, upset, nervous. These feelings are natural, it is important that you deal with these away from the victim, try not to dump them on her. Talk to a friend or someone whom you can trust, with permission from the victim of course, arrange to get support from agencies near you.

Victims are often afraid of how other people will react to what has happened to them, they may fear not being believed, embarrassment, having their experiences minimised or trivialised, even fear rejection. Women often fear well-meaning, but ignorant questions such as: “Why didn’t you tell me before now?” “Why didn’t you scream?” “Why didn’t you tell someone?” “Why don’t you report it to the police?” “Why did you (encourage him / wear that skirt / walk that route / etc.)?” If you do not understand why a victim is behaving in a particular way, or is reacting the way she is now, remember that this is YOUR problem, NOT HERS. Do not badger her with questions or ask her questions, which you are not sure, whether she will want to answer; read a book instead.

The woman may have her own questions about what has happened to her and may want to explore these with you. It is very important that she makes up her own mind and finds her own truth about what has happened to her and makes her own decisions from it. Sexual abuse and violence leaves women with feelings of powerlessness and loss of control about their lives. It is important that people do not take over, without consulting with the woman about what she needs in the situation. Confronting the perpetrator, phoning the police, or making a medical appointment ‘on her behalf’ may make matters worse, you can best help by listening to her and asking her or checking out what she wants; do not tell her what YOU believe she OUGHT to do; explore her options with her.

No two people are the same and reactions to rape and sexual abuse are as varied as they are to bereavement. It is likely, however, that whatever her experience, at some point she feared for her life and that she will feel numb after the attack, ‘cut off’, in shock or even hysterical; she may appear perfectly calm and unaffected; she may fear that she is ‘going mad’; these are all normal ways for a woman to process what has happened to her. Other effects may be flashbacks or panic attacks. Her behaviour may change: her eating habits may alter, she may feel the need to wash repeatedly. She may vomit or have other physical symptoms. All of these problems are alleviated by being able to talk about them; repetition of the trauma is common – TRY TO BE PATIENT.

Victims whose story has not been believed by others may find it very difficult to trust anyone else and may resist talking about their experiences. Do not take this as your not being ‘good enough’ to trust, be patient and encourage her GENTLY, do not push her. If you feel the need to press her, ask yourself why YOU ‘need to know’ now. Her apparently frozen state will not last forever.

As time passes, a woman may go through emotional and psychological change. She may be adding to her trauma by blaming herself and tormenting herself with ‘what ifs’ or about her behaviour before, during and/or after what has happened. Remind her at these times that it is never a woman’s fault that she has been violated, it was the attackers decision to act in the way he did. Rape is never ‘asked for’ and it can be hard for a woman to face just how powerless she was in the abusive situation. Thinking that she could have done something different is a way of a woman ‘problem solving’ so that they can protect themselves in the future. These are complex issues, which can sometimes require specialist support. Rape Crisis Centre can help.

What many of Christopher Hansard’s victims are dealing with now, is knowing that they have done everything right about the wrong that has been done to them, and in some cases they were blamed for the abuse that occurred.

Initially many of Christopher Hansard’s victims were patients, or their families were patients. The Courant has knowledge of at least 3 young ladies whose families were somehow involved with Mr. Hansard and they were therefore pressed to join his ‘apprenticeship’ in one form or another.

As stated in earlier postings, in this capacity, the victims were instructed to perform “Tibetan Massages” on their “teacher”, Mr. Hansard.

The massages were almost always administered while Mr. Hansard was fully naked, exposing himself to his students. Sometimes during the massage or at the end, Mr. Hansard would rise from the treatment couch naked and attempt to embrace the student “only to thank [them] for the massage”. Other times Christopher Hansard would suggest the student “straddle” him on the treatment couch.

Such breaches were always offered as “teachings” or “treatments”.

One woman was offered that such intimacy would help her to feel loved and beautiful again as she had been told she was ugly all her life, and that it would help her to overcome her “fear” of men. Another was told it would help her with the Astrology lessons she was being taught, while one other woman who resisted his advances was ridiculed, and told she was overly sensitive, that it was just meant as nothing more than a gesture of gratitude.

None of the three women found the support they needed from their own families. Some found it too difficult to share, and remain silently in shame to this day, while another who did attempt to turn to her family for help, was disbelieved entirely by some and blamed by others.

	General information about abuse What are the effects of abuse on women and children? The following information is taken from the publication “Wife Assault Hurts Us All” and it relates to the effects of abuse on women and children. It is a fact that abuse by a partner or doctor affects women in many ways. There are many areas of your self that are affected by abuse. WOMEN Self-Esteem Our self-esteem or self-concept is a measure of how we feel about ourselves. Low self-esteem creates feelings of self-doubt and worthlessness, taking away the self-confidence needed to make decisions and to solve problems. When our own feelings and judgment cannot be trusted, solving even small problems becomes difficult. In many cases low self-esteem and poor self-concept may lead to depression. Depression is a medical condition that often requires medication or therapy to be effectively treated. Low self-esteem can also result in a disregard for personal appearance and health. Feelings of Helplessness In abusive relationships, the abusive man maintains control of his partner’s actions by physically, sexually, and psychologically abusing her. If the assaulted woman tries to regain some control, the abuser may become more controlling. Her repeated unsuccessful attempts at stopping his violence reinforce her feelings of helplessness. As a result the assaulted woman may give up trying to break the cycle of violence. Self Blame and Guilt Many women are used to looking after the emotional needs of their families. When the emotional well-being of the family is suffering, as it does when abuse is present, the woman tends to blame herself and tends to believe she fails in her role to look after her family. Some women have hidden the abuse for years because of the guilt and shame they feel. The partner usually encourages this thinking by blaming her for the abuse. This results in the woman falsely believing she has failed as emotional caretaker and that she causes and deserves the abuse. Denying and Minimizing Denying and minimizing abuse are two ways of coping with his violence, although they are ineffective. They increase the danger already present by encouraging the victim to disregard signals which can warn her of further assaults. Abused women frequently deny being victims of wife assault and that a pattern of abused has been established. A false sense of responsibility for the violence and embarrassment prevent her from telling others about it. Other excuses can be made to explain away the violence and to renew hope for the relationship. Minimizing abuse downplays its seriousness. Often women avoid accepting the reality that they are being abused by comparing themselves to others who have endured more extreme acts of physical and psychological abuse. Their own situations then seem much less serious and much less dangerous.

Nobody “wants” to be a victim!

One of the obstacles that the victims of Christopher Hansard have faced is that he is not part of any regulatory body. Finding out who those who continue to support and ‘protect’ him are regulated with is equally frustrating.

Self-regulating “Professional” bodies that have been set up to deter such offenses or breaches of boundaries and prevent those abuses that Christopher Hansard has been accused of do not make themselves readily available and are numerous in number. What the public may also not be aware of is complementary practitioners can sign up with more than one governing board or regulating body. Therefore if they are expelled or barred from one, they are often still registered or members of another. This poses yet more problems for victims trying to seek justice.

Finding the appropriate regulatory bodies is difficult enough, and then submitting complaints to them has not always been well received as they find themselves having to defend “one of their own”.

The insurance companies want proof, and the victims are questioned once again and called upon to re-live their experiences and in many cases defend their own actions or reactions. Abuses that for some were disguised as “love” though they never left Christopher Hansard’s treatment room and couch. Christopher Hansard told victims that he was in love with them in order to continue to abuse them, and feed his now obvious sexual addiction.

Up until February of 2008, those clients that Christopher Hansard was grooming and engaging with sexually never left his office. For the first time he was able to take his patient relationship ‘public’. The reason the others were not taken public was because he was married and had to keep up that facade as it seemed to help maintain his image and assure victims that they were the “only ones”. He also worked with other practitioners and ‘peers’, and maintained sometimes up to 7 sexual ‘relationships’ at any one time. Each ‘treatment’ or ‘teaching’ relationship had to be kept compartmentalised from the others in order to maintain them all.

It is time to talk about this, and bring it out in the public forum so that more people can understand how this happens, and how this has been allowed to happen for so long.

the Courant welcomes letters and commentary. Please send letters to theCourant@mail.com

*Please be aware that portions of your submissions may be posted anonymously unless otherwise stated.