Politics

They are apprehending those that have been found liable for sex crimes? They should go to this house I know, it's white, in DC, you can't miss it.

He has a history that is highly suspect and it’s absolutely shocking he didn’t get blown up during the metoo era

When he had a practice he had a 19 year old patient. He allegedly molested this patient. He denies these claims. What is undeniably true is that he made this patient an intern at his practice

Because of his inappropriate hiring practices he was required by the licensing board to hire another psychologist to sit in on all of his sessions. This rendered his practice no longer financially viable

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/dr-phil-disciplinary-file-isnt-what-radar-online-makes-it-out-to-be/

This article pushes back against some of the more sensationalized reporting of the time this blew up but (imo) it’s somewhat of an issue to do so. The issue being that a licensing board generally requires a substantial burden of proof even now to substantiate claims like sexual molestation of clients, especially so in 1988 Texas. What I’m saying here is that to the licensing board the sexual molestation claim was likely a “he said, she said” moment, where dr Phil steadfastly denied any wrongdoing and there was no evidence other than the woman’s testimony. Given that the board was probably reticent to issue discipline on this matter out of fear that it would result in legal response from dr phil, and somewhat understandably so as the justice system’s burden of proof for sexual assault victims is often quite high. Essentially if they had say, suspended or even stripped his license over this he could have had this action easily reversed and even sued for damages

This is almost certainly why the licensing board took the action they did. They 100% believed that girl. The requirement to have your sessions monitored by another professional is extremely severe and fairly unprecedented. It is their way of saying “we absolutely do not trust you at all, we know you are a scumbag, but legally we do not have the authority to revoke your ability to practice”. Ethics boards will do things like this: now you, at your expense, have to pay another professional to make sure you don’t groom any more women. And if you try to do so we will have testimony that you did. But most likely you will recognize that we don’t want you around anymore and give up (which he did, for a bit. He even let his license lapse. He is not licensed, to be clear. He has not been in some time). When you do his show you sign a contract saying you are receiving “advice” from some guy and not psychotherapy from a psychologist. I bet they do not make this clear to guests because they probably aren’t big on informed consent.

He found a loophole. Doctor is not a protected title. “Psychologist”, “professional counselor”, “lawyer”, “surgeon”, etc are legally protected titles. If you practice under these titles without the associated licensure and credentials you can go to jail. But if you’ve earned your doctorate and say “I have years of experience” you can do whatever. If Oprah props you up to a national stage that’s fine too, even if your style of “therapy” is not really therapy at all but really just confrontation and bullying. Also they obviously leave out he had to close his practice in disgrace.

That said, he was accused of changing in front of the girl often. And she was quoted as saying:

"He'd be running his hand up and down the inside of my thigh all the way up to my panties. He'd put his hands between my legs. He'd reach in my blouse and touch my breasts. He pulled my breasts out of my bra and kissed them."

So yeah, real piece of shit and not just like “oh he rubbed her shoulders and made her uncomfortable”, though even that would be fucked up and gross. He genuinely sexually assaulted this girl

This is like, day 1 ethics for a therapist. Dual relationships. Clients are clients are clients. You don’t hang out with them, you don’t go to their birthday parties, you don’t friend them on social media, you certainly don’t hire them for a fucking job in your practice. This is in part so you can try to remain impartial as a clinician but mostly to protect clients as there is an inherent power imbalance in this relationship that can easily be taken advantage of (as seen here, plus he was like 38 when all this happened to the 19 year old girl so that power dynamic too)

scumbag

I sort of suspect that there is going to be a wild period of time when the civilian cops in the US start doing some messed up stuff, but they still have bodycams and there are still mechanisms where the footage can go up on YouTube, for an excited commentator to be emoting about how this entitled illegal immigrant learned her lesson the hard way.