Inequity in Criminal Law Drives CCHR to Push for Greater Accountability for Rape, Drug Abuse and Fraud in Mental Health System
Excerpts:
Until the passage of state laws in the United States making it a criminal offense for psychiatrists and psychologists to have sexual relationships with or even rape their patients, mental health professionals could operate with impunity—above the law.
With studies showing that six to ten percent of psychiatrists, for example, acknowledge sexual involvement with their patients, that’s a potential 4,700 offenders in the U.S. alone.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) pressed for these laws in alignment with its founding Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights that has formed the basis of its work since 1969. The Declaration states that people have:
“the right to take criminal action, with the full assistance of law enforcement agents, against any psychiatrist, psychologist or hospital staff for any abuse, false imprisonment, assault from treatment, sexual abuse or rape, or any violation of mental health or other law.”
There are now 26 U.S. states that have criminalized various aspects of psychiatrist, psychologist and psychotherapist sexual contact with patients.
Of a sample of 120 mental health practitioners convicted for sexual crimes in the U.S., including possession of child pornography and assault of patients, more than two-thirds of the offenders were in states that have enacted such statutes.
CCHR documented at least 17 cases in California, with Michigan the next highest with 12, New York at 10, Wisconsin with eight and Texas with six.
Shockingly, some of the sexual assaults in the sample were against children as young as nine years old and one was even against a 4 year old. Still, that’s not surprising given a national study of therapist-client sex involving minors that revealed therapists had abused girls as young as three and boys as young as seven.
Psychiatrists and psychologists rarely refer to their acts of rape as rape. Instead, they redefine this as “crossing the boundaries” when members sexually assault their patients, often with the help of drugs.
In a U.S. survey of psychiatrist-patient sex, 73 percent of psychiatrists who admitted they had sexual contact with their patients claimed it was committed in the name of “love” or “pleasure;” 19 percent said it was, for example, to “enhance the patient’s self-esteem,” provide a “restitutive [compensatory] emotional experience for the patient,” while other excuses included “judgment lapse,” “therapist enhancement” and “personal needs.”
Dr. Charles “Chuck” Fischer was indicted on multiple charges of sexual assault and indecency with a child.
Dr. Charles “Chuck” Fischer was indicted on multiple charges of sexual assault and indecency with a child in 2012. For his trial Fischer paid roughly $65,000 to two psychologists whose testimony claimed a possibility that the allegations against the psychiatrist were false—the result of the accusers being mentally ill.
However, prosecutors said the victims who were being treated by Fischer at the Austin State Hospital, Texas, had been taken into the psychiatrist’s office for therapy where they were molested instead.
While on bail for these charges in 2013, Fischer was further arrested for public lewdness with another man. On November 16, 2016, the psychiatrist was found guilty of multiple abuse charges, including four counts of sexual assault.
One of his accusers said he was aged seven or eight at the time of the assault.
Read the Full Story at CCHR International.
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