The experience of making a complaint in a case of professional sexual misconduct: towards a safer profession

Abstract

This paper brings together the vexed issues of sexual boundary violations in psychotherapy and counselling and how our professions should be regulated to protect the public from harm. IF writes anonymously about her painful experience of making a complaint against her former psychotherapist. JH brings his expert perspective in supporting perpetrators and victims, including his co-author. Reflecting on our experience together, we explore disturbing flaws in the current regulatory system. We use this exploration to raise troubling questions about institutionalised corruption at the heart of our professional ethics whenever we face up to abuse. Finally, we jointly endorse proposals for fundamental reform. By following a complainant through the complaint process we highlight how their position is largely ignored, creating an impression that the purpose of the regulator in protecting the public is undermined in favour of protecting the reputation of the regulator, the Counselling and Psychotherapy professions. Additionally the failure to teach and provide ongoing training about ethical boundary issues, absence of an effective reporting structure, paucity of research into harm in psychological therapies and inadequate regulatory framework leads to failure to protect those in need of our help and is a corruption of the ideals of the professions.

Keywords:

• Sexual boundary violations
• complaints process
• institutional corruption
• regulation
• reform

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).