IMPORTANT FACTS

1. Ten percent of all psychiatrists admit to sexually abusing their patients.

2. According to a 2001 report, one out of every 20 clients who had been sexually abused by their therapist was a minor.

3. Psychiatry and psychology have the dubious distinction of having more than 25 statutes specifically designed to address the increasing number of sex crimes committed by its members.

4. Psychiatrists and psychologists are over-represented in the healthcare industry for convictions for fraud, sexual abuses and other crimes.

CHAPTER FOUR Crime Amongst the ‘Experts’

It is an old maxim that if a person wants to break the law with impunity he must become the law—a maxim taken to heart by psychiatrists.

We have shown in this report that psychiatrists and psychologists are willing to blatantly twist logic in an effort to invent an apology for a peer’s crimes. What is left to present are the facts that demonstrate that these professions have a disproportionately high proclivity towards crime. In many cases, those who have acted as apologists for fellow psychiatrists’ crimes, were later exposed and arrested for similar criminality.

What most offends people’s natural sense of justice and understanding of right and wrong are psychiatric efforts to downplay even crimes against children. Consider the advice of clinical professor of child psychiatry, Richard Gardner, who was quoted in a 1999 Washington, D.C. Insight news magazine, saying, “Society’s excessively moralistic and punitive reactions toward pedophiles … go far beyond what I consider to be the gravity of the crime.” Gardner proposed that pedophilia serves procreative purposes.

The following statistical information throws light onto the question how such an attitude is possible among a profession that claims to deal in mental health.

According to a 2001 study, one out of every 20 clients who had been sexually abused by their therapist was a minor, the average age being seven for girls and 12 for boys. The youngest sexually molested child was three.

Of the 650,000 psychiatrists and psychologists worldwide today, at least 10%, or 65,000, admit to sexually abusing their patients. Some studies estimate that the figure is as high as 25%.

A 1997 Canadian study of psychiatrists showed that up to 10% had sexually abused their patients; 80% of those were repeat offenders. Many had already undergone personal analysis or psychotherapy in an unsuccessful effort to rehabilitate themselves.

In a 1999 British study of therapist-patient sexual contact among psychologists, 25% reported having treated a patient who had been sexually involved with another therapist.

The following is a very small sample of the types of convictions for sexual crimes:

In 1992, Alan J. Horowitz, a New York psychiatrist, was sentenced 10 to 20 years for sodomizing three boys aged seven to nine, and for sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl. Horowitz defended himself saying that he was a “normal pedophile.”

Missouri psychiatrist William Cone, sentenced in 1998 to 133 years in prison for sexual assault of two women, had told his victims they were weaned too early and required “re-parenting” by having sex with him.

Donald Persson, a Utah psychologist, described himself as a “moral” person when he was sentenced in 1993 to 10 years imprisonment for the rape of a 12-year-old girl.

On December 10, 2002, U.K. psychiatrist Christopher Allison was jailed for 10 years for the rape and sexual abuse of six patients.

On July 4, 2002, London psychiatrist Kolathur Unni was jailed for 18 months for the sexual attack on a female patient during a hypnotherapy session. Unni had a history of sexual assaults on patients and had been struck off the medical register in New Zealand for similar incidents.

On July 24, 2002, Danish psychologist, Bjarne Skovsager (54), was sentenced to six years in prison for numerous and severe sexual abuses—including sodomy and indecent exposure— against three boys between the ages of seven and 11. Skovsager was ordered to pay compensation to each boy. The judge who sentenced him stated, “You have had a relationship of trust with the family which you systematically and severely exploited.”

A study of Medicaid and Medicare insurance fraud in the United States, especially in New York, between 1977 and 1995, showed psychiatrists to have the worst track record of all medical disciplines.

Here are some of their convictions for fraud and murder in the U.S. and beyond:

In 1998, South African psychiatrist, Omar Sabadia, was sentenced to a 65-year jail sentence for murdering his wife to collect her $600,000 life insurance policy, after squandering his savings in gambling. He arranged the killing through one of his patients.

Virginia psychiatrist, Robert C. Showalter was an expert defense witness in criminal cases until he lost his license to practice for forcing male patients to masturbate in front of him, which he called “masturbation therapy.” In 1999, he was convicted of overbilling insurers, sentenced to six months of house arrest, two years probation, and fined $20,000

In 2000, German psychiatrist Otto Benkert was sentenced to 11 months in jail, suspended in lieu of probation, fined over $176,000 and ordered to pay $704,683 in compensation for defrauding the university where he worked as the Chief of Psychiatry.

On August 6, 2002, Canadian psychotherapist Michael Bogart was sentenced to 18 months in prison for defrauding the government of $924,000 in insurance billings for non-existent psychotherapy sessions— he had billed for therapy sessions while he was vacationing in Europe, New Zealand, Las Vegas and New York.

In June 2002, psychiatrist Colin Bouwer, the former head of psychological medicine at the University of Otago, New Zealand, lost a court appeal and was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering his wife.

In November 2003, Ivan Zagainov, a psychiatrist in the Czech Republic, was sentenced to 13 years in jail for the strangulation murder of a 15-year-old female patient.

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