Sex With Patient Means Jail for Counselor : Crime: Municipal jury convicts Buena Park practitioner. State officials are seeking license revocation. His victim says she’s ‘slowly recovering’ from 1992 crime.

A Buena Park family counselor found guilty of having sex with a patient will begin serving a one-year jail term next month.

James Lisle, 67, had pleaded not guilty to nine misdemeanor charges involving the same woman. But a jury in North Orange County Municipal Court found him guilty after two hours of deliberation.

Lisle was sentenced on April 18 to a year in Orange County Jail, a $500 fine and five years’ probation, according to Deputy Dist. Atty James Laird.

The victim, now 28, said Friday that “to be validated by a jury of my peers showed me that there is hope for my recovery . . . and that this is something that needs to be made known to others for what it is: a crime against vulnerable people.”

Lisle and his attorney could not be reached on Friday for comment.

The woman, who lives in the Long Beach area, was 27 when she sought counseling for depression at a Fred Gross Christian Therapy Program in Buena Park in June, 1992, by calling a toll-free help line.

In addition to the criminal case, the state Board of Behavioral Science Examiners filed a civil lawsuit against Lisle, seeking to revoke his license as a marriage, child and family counselor.

According to the lawsuit, Lisle diagnosed the woman with “severe (lifetime) depression” and she began seeing him regularly. He had sex with her, according to the suit, after telling her that “God had chosen for her to be healed through intimacy with (him).”

“I am recovering slowly,” the woman said Friday. “An average day is very difficult.” She said she found last year that she was pregnant with Lisle’s child. She said that some of her friends have been unable to show support to her because it is too difficult for them to relate to her experience, which she described as “devastating.”

Lisle’s license has been temporarily suspended, and a hearing on a permanent revocation is pending, according to Dr. Kathleen Callanan, executive officer of the Board of Behavioral Science Examiners.