A Broken Trust : Patients Who Accuse Therapists of Sexual Misconduct Are Often Left Feeling Battered by Courts, Ethics Panels

Juanita Benetin vividly remembers the kind of questions that boomed across the courtroom during her civil trial against the therapist she had accused of seducing her. Questions such as: Tell us all about having sex with your stepfather when you were a child.

Benetin, now an attorney but at the time an airplane factory worker in Seattle, says of her testimony: “I just turned into a robot and did it.”

During the civil case against her psychiatrist, Melissa Roberts-Henry recalls a private detective following her until a judge finally ordered the surveillance halted. It was as terrifying, the Denver geologist says, as the anonymous message on her answering machine one day: “I hope the next time you menstruate, you bleed to death.”

An Oregon woman remembers being ordered to surrender her diaries, journals and medical records dating to childhood. Her friends and family were asked if the mother of three was a slut. Did she talk about sex? Did she describe in detail what she did in her bedroom?

What all three encountered was the legal system that settles disputes when women--and occasionally men--allege that their therapists have sexually exploited them. Benetin and Roberts-Henry both won lawsuits against their former therapists. The other woman is seeking to have the license of a prominent psychologist revoked through Oregon’s Board of Psychology Examiners.

These women and many others who have complained about amorous therapists before state licensing boards, professional ethics panels and in the courts claim that the process is often humiliating, intrusive and vindictive. They say they are portrayed as emotionally unbalanced, femmes fatales or as women who could have doubled for the crazed lover in the movie “Fatal Attraction.”

One woman compares it to “being a rape victim 20 years ago.”

Yet ironically, the system’s brutality often helps women who have dodged the legal punches realize that they aren’t china dolls after all. Survivors discover that they possess a resilient inner strength, says Gary Schoener, director of the nationally recognized Walk-In Counseling Center in Minneapolis, which has counseled more than 3,000 victims of therapist sexual abuse. But, he adds, a minority of women are further devastated by their legal odyssey; some have even committed suicide.

Many experts agree that reforms are needed in an area of law that is still in its adolescence. Before 1975, sexual malpractice cases against therapists were almost unheard of; it wasn’t until the 1980s that these cases began pouring into the courts.

And change is coming. Some states, including California, have passed civil rape shield laws, protecting victims in certain cases from having to answer irrelevant questions about their sexual history. Other states are extending the time women have to file lawsuits against the alleged perpetrators. It often takes victims years to realize that what went on behind closed doors was emotionally devastating and not their fault.

California and eight other states have criminalized patient-therapist sex, although many therapists and attorneys contend that California’s law, which took effect in 1990, is something of a joke.

But while politicians in state capitals and policy-makers at such organizations as the American Psychiatric Assn. and the American Psychological Assn. grapple with this issue, not everyone is satisfied with the pace of change.

“I think one has only to look at the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings and the very highly public rape trials to be reminded of the fact that men take their sexual prerogatives very, very seriously and they don’t give them up without a fight,” says Judith Herman, a psychiatrist at Harvard University Medical School.

Herman, a co-author of national studies on psychiatrist-patient sex, reduced her involvement with the American Psychiatric Assn. to protest its controversial malpractice defense of the psychiatrist who seduced Melissa Roberts-Henry.

Those who defend therapists in sex cases, however, worry about protecting the accused’s rights. These therapists, often prominent in their field, can become sitting ducks when accusations are made, attorneys contend.

“One of the concerns the defense bar has is that in the rush to ensure that people who shouldn’t be practicing are taken care of, the innocent person isn’t trampled,” says Brandt Caudill, a Tustin attorney who has defended dozens of therapists accused of sexual misconduct.

Denver attorney Kay Rice says that as more high jury awards get publicity, unwitting therapists can be easy targets for cranks. She says that she has settled some lawsuits for $200,000 even when she believes a client is innocent: “There are some legitimate cases that should be brought, but the last few cases I’ve seen, I’d let these guys baby-sit my kids.”

Sleeping with one’s therapist can’t be compared to a fling with a co-worker, a neighbor or the mailman.

Sexual abuse experts say trysts with therapists can be as emotionally devastating as incest because the therapist acts as an authority figure--a substitute mother or father to whom the patient divulges secrets. Through this intimate sharing, many patients end up idolizing, even loving their therapists--a common occurrence that professionals are ethically forbidden from acting upon.

If a therapist betrays this trust, a patient often can’t say no to the seduction, says Linda Jorgenson, a Cambridge, Mass., attorney who has written numerous law review articles on the subject. “It’s worse than your first teen-age infatuation,” she says.

When the sex stops, a patient might feel suicidal, depressed, unable to work and alienated from family and friends. When the Oregon woman’s sexual encounter with her psychologist ended after a few months, she says she was too ashamed to tell her husband. Instead, she moved out of her home and cut off all ties by living in a trailer in the countryside for several months.

Her case is not unusual. About 1.2 million American women have had sexual experiences with their therapists, estimates Dr. Peter Rutter, a San Francisco psychiatrist and author of “Sex in the Forbidden Zone: When Men in Power--Therapists, Doctors, Clergy, Teachers and Others--Betray Women’s Trust.”

“Men in our culture have been told we have these rules,” he says. “But behind closed doors when no one is listening, you can make your own rules and you won’t get caught.”

Most experts estimate that 6% to 10% of therapists nationally have had sexual contact with at least one client. More than 50% of the money that the American Psychological Assn.’s insurance carrier pays out in malpractice cases stems from sexual misconduct. And in the past decade, the majority of the 113 psychiatrists disciplined by the American Psychiatric Assn. were judged guilty of sexual exploitation.

Still, most victims never make a claim and keep their encounters secret.

Melissa Roberts-Henry didn’t. And some suggest that her case, widely discussed in psychiatric circles, illustrates what can go wrong when a woman steps forward.

Depressed and feeling guilty after ending an extramarital affair, Roberts-Henry became a patient of Dr. Jason Richter, a young Ivy League-educated psychiatrist, in 1984.

It wasn’t long, she says, before Richter began flirting: He asked her if she looked at herself in the mirror with her clothes on or off. Did she think about him often? She says she ultimately concluded that Richter could help her even more if she became his lover. The sexual liaison lasted for more than a year until others, worried about her declining mental health, interceded.

After filing a lawsuit, Roberts-Henry had to surrender all medical records since birth, tax returns, diaries, letters, address books and poems she had written. During three days of depositions, she was asked about her sexual practices. So were her friends and parents, she says.

“They made me feel like a piece of garbage, like nothing in my life was worthwhile,” Roberts-Henry recalls of the process. “They picked apart my sexual history, my personal history, they made fun of any work I had done and any volunteer work I had done.”

Richter’s attorneys, however, are not contrite. Interviewing her friends and family, paying for surveillance to see if she was as incapacitated as she claimed and poring through her private papers were all necessary to stage an adequate defense, says attorney Paul Cooper.

“We’re not apologetic,” Cooper says. “We were facing a case claiming $1 million (in damages) for having sex as an adult. That was crazy.”

A jury awarded Roberts-Henry about $180,000 in damages. Richter, who continues to practice psychiatry in Denver, declined to be interviewed for this story.

The case created a stir in the psychiatric community when the American Psychiatric Assn.’s insurance carrier paid for Richter’s defense. Critics complained that the APA should never have provided the Denver psychiatrist with legal counsel when he acknowledged that he had slept with his patient.

In response to the case, the APA has changed some of its policies and is examining its practice of defending admitted abusers in court, says Dr. Alan Levenson, a Tucson, Ariz., psychiatrist who chairs the board of the APA’s insurance purchasing group.

In many respects, Roberts-Henry says, the legal battle toughened her.

“I think I gained a lot of strength, or maybe I found some hidden inner strength from going through the process,” she says. “It put me in touch with my anger at Richter. I had turned the anger on myself.”

Roberts-Henry eventually abandoned geology and became a full-time advocate. Almost single-handedly, she successfully lobbied the Colorado Legislature to adopt a civil rape shield law to protect women from intrusive sexual questions in therapy-abuse cases. And she co-founded a victim’s support group called Impact.

But now she suffers from burnout after trying to console hundreds of victims who seek her help.

“I get burnt out to the point of tears,” Roberts-Henry says. “Sporadically, I say I can’t do it anymore . . . then I get a gut-wrenching call and I think I can’t stop.”

Juanita Benetin’s trial also changed her life. When the sex ended with her therapist, she abandoned her marriage, family and blue-collar job and fled to Colorado. Once there, a friend persuaded her to sue.

A Washington jury awarded her only $10,000. The jury’s message, Benetin concludes, was “Yeah, this happened to you, but you’re a bad person.”

She never forgot the sting, even after she entered law school in the mid-1980s. When she read about a patient-therapist sex case in the newspaper, the law student called the woman’s attorney and offered to help for free. Now, as a private attorney, she specializes in these cases.

“I think you can gain some self-esteem back by going through the civil courts because . . . win or lose, you’ve taken it to the courts and you’ve fought back,” Benetin says. “Even if the jury says, ‘Yeah, but you’re not worth anything.’ ”

Not everyone wins her case. In fact, not everyone has her day in court. With statute of limitations denying access to the courts, many women can’t experience any legal catharsis.

Instead, they can seek redress before state licensing boards or ethics panels, sponsored by such professional organizations as the American Psychiatric Assn. and the American Psychological Assn. But critics allege that some panels are insensitive and, at best, ineffective.

“The last place I’d recommend they complain is to an ethics committee of a professional organization,” says Joseph George, a Davis attorney.

But Dr. Jeremy Lazarus, chairman of the American Psychiatric Assn.’s national Ethics Committee, says he hears few complaints about local ethics panels.

National standards that would dictate how psychiatrists conduct these sensitive hearings have never been implemented because of differing community standards, he says. For instance, while the APA recommends that a woman psychiatrist be selected for each panel, that might not be possible in a sparsely populated state such as Montana.

Some suggest that the best hope for change will come through new state laws. But not all carry any clout.

In 1989, for example, the California Legislature passed a bill making patient-therapist sex a misdemeanor. The law was prompted in part by the well-publicized behavior of a San Diego psychiatrist who allegedly branded his initials onto the vaginal area of some patients.

But unlike the criminalization statutes in eight other states, the California law did not make a first-time offense a felony. Also scrapped was a six-month “cooling off” period before a therapist could date former clients.

“The law is just really misguided. I don’t know of one conviction . . . under the law,” says attorney Joseph George, who represents women in Orange County and San Luis Obispo who had unsuccessfully complained to police about psychiatrists’ alleged sexual misconduct.

The legislation was “amended to death,” concedes Barry Brokaw, chief of staff to Sen. Daniel Boatwright (D-Concord), the bill’s sponsor. Brokaw says he believes that the law prompted at least one prosecution, but he isn’t aware of others.

But laws can’t help victims contend with the prejudice they say they feel when going public with their accusations. They say they encounter the same kind of puzzled looks Anita Hill endured when certain senators expressed surprise at her inability to stop her boss’s alleged advances.

One victim flinches when she recalls her family’s reaction after she finally revealed what had happened:

“My own mother said, ‘How did he get you to do this? Did he drug you?’ ”