TV REVIEW : ‘Frontline’s’ ‘Doctor, Lover’ a Searing Story

Is “Frontline” getting swept up in The Sweeps?

At first blush, the scheduling during ratings frenzy of John Zaritsky and Virginia Storring’s report on the explosive affair between a psychiatrist and his patient, “My Doctor, My Lover” (at 9 tonight on KCET Channel 28 and KPBS Channel 15), looks like PBS’ answer to the networks’ flesh peddling. Last Friday’s “Matlock,” for example, depicted the bloody end of a similar affair.

With some big differences. The female patients in “Matlock” were vengeful black widow spiders. Melissa Roberts-Henry, in “My Doctor,” finds herself trapped in the real world of barracuda-like lawyers, an unprincipled psychiatric profession and stunning injustice.

Roberts-Henry, unhappy with her marriage, came to Denver psychiatrist Dr. Jason Richter for therapy in 1984. Rather than resolving her marital strife, the sessions with Richter gradually grew more emotional; the patient was falling in love with the doctor. Ultimately, after several sexual encounters, things soured, and Roberts-Henry became suicidal. She sued Richter for sexual malpractice.

To be sure, Zaritsky and Storring, veteran TV investigators of rape and wife-beating cases, reveal that their sympathies are with Roberts-Henry. By the end of the hour, so are ours, but it’s not a case of the manipulation of evidence.

It’s a case of a private citizen (Roberts-Henry) up against a doctor (Jason Richter) backed by the full weight of the American Psychiatric Assn.

And, like the kind of rape cases Zaritsky and Storring know so well, it’s the alleged victim who is put on trial: Roberts-Henry’s sexual past is scoured by Richter’s relentless attorneys, while Richter’s is barely touched.

Far from a sleazoid expose, “My Doctor, My Lover” serves up a resoundingly damaging and serious critique of a professional medical association that appears more interested in protecting one of its own--even if the doctor broke his Hippocratic oath--than in helping patients. But no professionals come off worse here than lawyers: The extraordinary lengths to which Richter’s attorneys go in his defense send out a chill that won’t go away.