Maryland legislators deny abuse victims

There are times when I get help from others fighting this on what to put in here and this is one of those times.  If you have someone you would like to have in this blog then send me a message and I will help.

Here is another good article by Mike Ricksecker on how Maryland has failed us.  Can you believe that they don't want this to be law?  Why would anyone deny it?  We must all stand up and take fight to make them change their minds this upcoming year.  We will be there fighting more and we need your help.  Let's get this into the law and stop the-rapists and other professionals.  
Mike good job on your article and I wouldn't change a thing.  http://www.examiner.com/article/maryland-legislators-deny-abuse-victims

The Maryland legislative session has come to a close leaving therapy sex abuse victims stunned and wondering what happened. Bills HB 56 and HB 60 were part ofLynette's Law, legislation that was designed to prevent therapy sex abuse, a therapist's use of the imbalance of power in the therapeutic relationship to control, manipulate, and exploit clients, including their sexuality. It's a crime in 23 other states, including some that have defined it as statutory rape. While a gutted and unrecognizable version of HB 56 has passed, HB 60 was never even voted on in the Senate Judicial Proceedings committee.

The criminal portion of Lynette's Law, HB 60, passed unanimously in the House of Delegates 135-0, but it didn't even get a vote in the Senate Judicial Proceedings committee, essentially squashed by committee chairmanBrian Frosh when he exercised power by drawer veto on the bill. A drawer veto is one in which the committee chair leaves the bill in his “desk drawer,” disallowing it from even being voted on and killing the bill all by himself.

During the HB 60 committee hearing on March 27 it became obvious that some senators had no idea what therapy sex abuse really is and the effects it has on victims. Senator Bobby Zirkin's questions danced around minimizing therapist abuse and victim blaming as he tried to compartmentalize and narrow the abuse as only happening to "train wrecks" and those with "serious emotional problems": “Let's say someone is a marriage therapist … or let's just have the person that's not giving counseling one that's not such a wreck or vulnerable ... a type of counseling that's not for serious emotional problems... or something else where the person is not such a train wreck.”

Kenneth S. Pope, Phd., ABPP, author of Ethics in Psychotherapy and Counseling and considered the foremost expert on therapy sex abuse, provides the following from a national study of therapy patients: “The findings suggest that about 90% of patients are harmed by sex with a therapist; 80% are harmed when the sexual involvement begins only after termination of therapy. About 11% required hospitalization; 14% attempted suicide; and 1% committed suicide.” Dr. Pope did not classify types of patients as “train wrecks” or being more vulnerable than others, and still 90% of patients with a variety of reasons for seeking counseling were harmed.

Effects of therapy sex abuse include ambivalence between escaping the abusive therapist and protecting him or her, cognitive dysfunction (including attention, memory, and concentration), intense emotional eruptions, emptiness and isolation, impaired ability to trust, guilt, increased suicidal risk, role reversal and boundary confusion, sexual confusion (including believing their only worth is to provide sexual gratification to others), and suppressed anger which may lead to self-loathing, self-punishment, and self-destructive behaviors.

Perhaps Senator Zirkin is also unaware that less than a year ago the Maryland State Board of Examiners of Psychologists charged psychologist Mark Palmisano, Ph.D., with sexual misconduct and exploitation of a former female client who had originally started seeing him for marriage counseling, including many combined sessions with her husband. Although the combined sessions ended, Palmisano continued to see the husband individually as a patient while simultaneously sexually exploiting the wife. Therapist abuse and sexual exploitation can happen in marriage counseling, too, but instead of issuing criminal charges there's a better interest for the board to keep this a civil matter and collect fines up to $10,000 which go to the board and not the victim.

The civil portion of Lynette's Law, HB 56, which was supposed to institute background checks for mental health professionals has been hacked apart by the legislature into something unrecognizable. It has been expanded to all health professions but is not required for new applicants. Background checks will only be instituted at the time of license renewal for “selected renewal applicants” and the bill won't even be put into effect for two years. What this means is that a convicted felon could start practicing in the state of Maryland and may not be discovered until years down the road when renewal comes up if the administrating boards even decide to conduct a background check at all since they have the power of selection. The Maryland Board of Professional Counselors and Therapists, which has already had a problem with convicted felons practicing therapy and subsequently committing therapist abuse, is still not actually required to perform background checks. Under the modified bill they have the option to simply select no one on which to perform a check.

Worse, still, is that since HB 56 was ammended to include all health professions, those professions that already did require background checks have now been given a loophole to not perform them. Thus, the mutated HB 56 bill has no teeth to do much of anything to prevent convicted felons from entering these highly sensitive fields and has actually weakened the health safety of Marylanders.

Lynette's Law (http://www.lynetteslaw4maryland.com) is not done with its work to make therapist abuse a crime. Scores of therapist abuse victims from across the nation, including many in Maryland, have come forward in seek of help and in show of support, bill sponsor Delegate Michael Smigiel still supports the movement, and additional organizations are starting to get involved. Awareness of the silent, but horrific, epidemic of therapist abuse is spreading and the battle to protect patients from abusive and exploitative mental health professionals continues on.