Psychologist convicted for failing to disclose affair with inmate-patient to review board

A psychologist who testified to the Criminal Code Review Board about a mental-health patient without disclosing she was embroiled in an abusive sexual affair with him has been found guilty of breaching trust and attempting to obstruct justice.

In 2019, the psychologist began working with the mental-health patient and inmate, who had been found not criminally responsible for a murder years before.

The board reviews the conditions placed on people found not criminally responsible, and can make adjustments to conditions based on public-safety factors and the person’s ability to reintegrate into society. The expert opinions of mental-health professionals — such as the psychologist — carry a lot of weight in the board’s decisions.

The patient began telling the psychologist about his affection for her after she had been treating him for several months, and she ultimately told him she, too, had feelings for him.

The two had sex for the first time three months later, though the patient soon turned aggressive and domineering, as he harassed her husband for several years and attempted to manipulate and sexually abuse her as she tried to stop the relationship, provincial court Judge Kusham Sharma said Monday.

Sharma found the psychologist guilty of one count of breach of trust by a public official and one of attempting to obstruct justice for giving misleading and dishonest information to the review board, but acquitted her of a second count of breach of trust that was related to the relationship she had with the patient while working as his psychologist at a mental-health facility.

She was fired from her job and faced significant professional repercussions.

A court-order bars the publication of details that could identify those involved in the case, after the patient pleaded guilty to criminally harassing the psychologist’s husband in a separate criminal proceeding. The patient has anti-social and borderline personality disorders with psychopathic traits.

The judge found the psychologist kept “significant information” from the Criminal Code Review Board on several occasions from 2021 to 2022 to help the patient “achieve his goal of being released into the community,” or not be charged with other crimes or to protect her reputation, the judge found.

“(The psychologist) is an intelligent, highly educated, high-functioning professional who knew the role of the (board) is to ensure the public is protected with the least restrictive conditions being placed on the patient, because she understood that the (board’s) decisions directly affect public safety,” said Sharma.

She failed to disclose the relationship to the board on several occasions and failed to report his “concerning and criminal conduct toward her,” lying to the board about his treatment progress, Sharma said.

“It’s not like she omitted information that was trivial or irrelevant conduct. She omitted to inform the (board) of acts… that involved serious criminal allegations, including crimes of assault, sexual assault, extortion, uttering threats, as well as obvious breaches of his order,” Sharma said.

On several occasions, she told the board she supported less-restrictive conditions for the man.

Although the psychologist’s failures to disclose information to the board did not appear to significantly impact its decisions, Sharma said that was irrelevant.

“What matters is what her intention was when she testified to the board,” said Sharma.

The psychologist’s husband learned about his wife’s relationship with the offender in May 2020 and, a month later, the offender sent the husband the first of what would be hundreds of phone and text messages over three years, some of which included threats to kill him and the psychologist.

The threats and harassment escalated every time she tried to cut contact with the patient.

The woman provided a police statement in November 2023, in which she disclosed the sexual relationship, as she and her husband reported the patient’s harassment campaign.

Sharma noted a police officer taking the psychologist’s statement described some of the sexual contact between the patient and psychologist as him sexually assaulting her, but she would not pursue charges against him.

That statement to the police was what led law enforcement to investigate her conduct as a psychologist and, ultimately, lay the breach of trust and obstruction of justice charges against her.

The patient was sentenced to three years of probation in 2024 after pleading guilty to one count of criminal harassment.

Sharma will sentence the psychologist later this year.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca