Marriage Counselor Sheila Loven Convinced Couple to Divorce, Had Sex with the Husband

Taken from "Sex Between Therapists and Clients".

Although the prohibition against sex with patients reaches back beyond Freud, beyond the Hippocratic Oath, and at least as far as the code of the Nigerian Healing Arts, it was only with systematic research that began in the 1950s that the profession began to understand the depth, pervasiveness, and persistence of the harm that can result when therapists abuse their license, role, power, and trust.

Partly as a result of this increasing understanding of the consequent harm, it came to be recognized as more than a violation of professional or clinical ethics, of licensing laws, and of the civil laws (i.e., patients can sue offending therapists for malpractice in the civil courts). An increasing number of states have criminalized therapist-client sex, some classifying it as a felony. As one court held in reviewing the constitutionality of criminalizing therapist-client sex concluded:

the state has a legitimate interest not only in protecting persons undergoing psychotherapy from being sexually exploited by the treating therapist but also in regulating and maintaining the integrity of the mental health profession. It is equally obvious to us that the legislative decision to criminally proscribe a psychotherapist's knowing infliction of sexual penetration on a psychotherapy client is reasonably related to these legitimate governmental interests. . . . [It] therefore comports with due process of law.

Whether because of increasing recognition of ways in which sex with a therapist can harm a client, increasing legal penalties, or other factors, studies suggest that fewer and fewer therapists are sexually abusing their patients. The 8 national studies published in peer-reviewed journals that are summarized in Table 1 draw on anonymous self-reports from 5,148 therapists. Psychiatry, psychology, and social work each provide data in at least two independent studies conducted in separate years, allowing statistical analysis of possible trends. When all factors are taken into account in statistical analysis, there is a significant gender effect, which was discussed in a previous section. Interestingly, there are no significant differences among psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers in self-reports of engaging in sex with clients. [Footnote: The apparent professional differences in Table 1 are, the statistical analysis suggests, the result of a confounding correlation between two variables: "profession" and "year of study." A statistical analysis incorporating the data and variables of all studies allowed comparative evaluation of how much predictive power each variable (i.e., profession and year of study) had after the variance accounted for by the other variable was subtracted. Year of study possessed significantly more predictive power after effects due to profession had been accounted for than the predictive power of profession after effects due to year had been taken into account. When the predictive power of year of study is accounted for, there are no significant differences among the professions.]

The effect due to year of study is statistically significant: There is about a 10% drop in the self-reports of therapist-client sex each year. (This does not, of course, mean that there will be no self-reports of therapist-client sex after 10 years; each year the drop is only 10% of the prior year's level.)

Research suggesting that the rate of therapists sexually abusing their clients may be declining is encouraging but it is far from enough. The mental health professions have made a modest beginning in overcoming the self-protective guild orientation, the vulnerability to self-idealization, the difficulty acknowledging and taking responsibility for reprehensible behavior, the conspiracy of silence, the impulse to the tendency to disbelieve or blame clients who appear to have suffered harm because of a therapist's unethical behavior, the habit of seeing causes and sources of problems as external to the profession, and other less-than-perfect traits of therapists that have made it hard to address issues of therapist-client sex effectively.

The time is overdue for the mental health professions to put an end to the "quintessence of sex-biased practice," in the words of Jean Holroyd, that puts female clients, both minor and adult, at far greater risk than male clients for damaging sexual exploitation by a therapist. Adults and children who are hurting, confused, vulnerable, sometimes desperate, who come for help and place their trust in therapists deserve more than to be used to gratify therapists' sexual impulses.

To help others who come to them with their problems, the mental health professions must first take care of their own problem of sexually exploitive therapists.

http://kspope.com/sexiss/sexencyc.php

Lawrence v Texas would seem to suggest that the government is supposed to keep out of people's bedrooms.