A REPORT OF ABUSE Robbed of Innocence

In 2000, Oakland, Michigan Circuit Court Judge Alice Gilbert denied psychologist Julian Gordon�s bail request, ordering him to remain in jail pending an appeal of his conviction for molesting and sodomizing a teenage boy. Gordon, appointed by a county probate court to work with troubled teens, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The judge stated, �There is no civilization if we don�t protect our children.�

The same year, Robert Bruce Craft, a Georgia psychiatrist treating abused and emotionally disturbed children for the State Department of Family and Children�s Services, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for felony sexual exploitation of a minor and child molestation. The prosecutor called Craft�s crimes �deliberate acts that stole children�s innocence,� and said that the sentence was too lenient. �If [Craft] served every day [in prison] it wouldn�t be enough,� he stated.

Dr. Burnell Gordon Forgey, a California psychiatrist who worked with troubled youth in group homes, employed convicted pedophiles. The 82- year-old member of the American Psychiatric Association pleaded guilty to five counts of oral copulation with a 15-year-old patient at one of the homes. The prosecuting attorney pronounced: �Sexual assault against young people is bad enough, but when that person is a physician in a white coat � he is the devil in disguise.�

On July 24, 2002, Danish psychologist Bjarne Skovsager 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 pronounced, �You have had a relationship of trust with the family which you systematically and severely exploited�.�

In 1997, Kansas child psychiatrist John Buckles Lester was sentenced to 41 months in prison for the molestation of two boys, aged 14 and 15. Lester was treating the boys for physical and sexual abuse.

Psychiatrist Paul Bridges was convicted of assaulting two boys, aged 15 and 16, both vulnerable runaways. In 1996, the 15-year- old had visited Bridges at his home, where Bridges photographed him naked and indecently assaulted him. Three years later, a 16- year-old boy responded to an advertisement Bridges had placed seeking �male models.� He, too, was sexually assaulted. Police discovered Bridges was part of a nationwide pedophile ring. However, the only real penalty he suffered was the suspension of his license.

In 1992, Alan J. Horowitz, a New York psychiatrist, was sentenced to 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.� Police investigations found a trail of sexual abuse of patients dating back to the late 1960s when Horowitz worked for a community organization that helped impoverished, inner-city children.

In 1993, Donald Persson, a Utah psychologist, described himself as a �moral� person when he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for the rape of a12-year-old girl.

As reported in 2001, a national U.S. study of therapist�client sex involving minors revealed that the rapists abuse girls as young as three years old, and boys as young as seven.

The average age of abused girls was seven and of boys, 12.

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