Psychologist sentenced to house arrest after affair with patient

A psychologist who didn’t disclose her sexual affair with a mental-health patient under her care when she testified on his behalf before the Criminal Code Review Board has been sentenced to 18 months house arrest.

“The offence represents a significant affront to the administration of justice,” provincial court Judge Kusham Sharma said at a sentencing hearing for woman earlier this week.

A court-order bars the publication of details that could identify those involved in the case, after the patient pleaded guilty in 2024 to criminally harassing the psychologist’s husband. The patient has anti-social and borderline personality disorders with psychopathic traits.

Sharma convicted the woman last March of one count each of breach of trust by a public official and attempting to obstruct justice.

The psychologist, who is in her 40s, began working with the mental-health patient and inmate in 2019. He 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 — can weigh heavily in the board’s decisions.

Sharma found at trial the woman kept “significant information” from the review board on five occasions between 2021 and 2022 in order to help secure the patient’s release or to protect her own reputation.

“The effective functioning of the justice system depends upon the decision makers receiving complete and accurate information from those who participate in the process,” Sharma said at the sentencing hearing. The woman “was an experienced and highly educated professional who understood the role of the board and the importance of the information being sought.”

Court heard evidence at trial the woman had been treating the patient for several months when he disclosed romantic feelings for her, feelings she would later reciprocate.

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.

The woman was later fired when senior administrators learned of the relationship. She is no longer licensed to practice psychology.

“It is difficult for an outside observer to understand how a person with (her) education, training, professional experience and personal life could become involved in circumstances that ultimately ended her career,” Sharma said.

Court heard the patient was known to be manipulative in his dealings with mental-health staff and persuaded the psychologist to provide him with a secret cellphone, and to meet him at her office and home for sexual encounters. When the woman attempted to end the sexual relationship, the patient threatened to send intimate images he had taken of her to her husband.

The psychologist’s husband learned about his wife’s relationship with the patient in May 2020. A month later, the patient 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.

According to a report prepared for court, the woman described herself as a “compliant” and “conflict averse” person inclined to “always see the good in others,” personality traits she said her patient took advantage of to push her into a sexual relationship.

“She genuinely believe(d) she was the cause of the (patient’s) abusive conduct” but with the benefit of therapy and distance now knows her thinking was “significantly distorted,” Sharma said.

Sharma said she accepted the patient manipulated the woman, but also said that she willingly crossed ethical and professional boundaries to have a sexual relationship with the patient well before she became a target of his abuse.

“Her moral responsibility is moderately reduced, but remains relatively high overall,” Sharma said.

Sharma rejected a defence recommendation the woman be granted a conditional discharge, saying it would not be in the interest of the community.

“Deterrence and denunciation remain important,” Sharma said. “This is not a minor offence.”

Sharma, noting the woman’s rehabilitative efforts and her low risk to reoffend, said it was not necessary that she serve her sentence in a real jail.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca