Sexual predators and paedophiles working in UK as therapists - somehow it's not illegal
EXCLUSIVE: An Express investigation has revealed that counsellors who had sex with or financially exploited patients have been able to carry on working with vulnerable clients.
We uncovered evidence that up to a quarter of counsellors who had been stripped of their membership of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy [BACP] were still booking sessions with patients, despite being struck off for serious misconduct.
Allegations found against these counsellors ranged from sexual advances toward vulnerable young women, to financial exploitation and dismissals for gross misconduct. Yet 13 of the 41 therapists we found rulings against were openly touting for business online.
Some of those we contacted were charging as much as £140 for a 50-minute session and others even claimed to work for the NHS. Several disgraced therapists willingly admitted to having breached ethical standards during sessions filmed by our undercover reporters, who asked them to explain the BACP disciplinary rulings they had been struck off for.
Mental Health charity Mind labelled the Express’s findings “deeply disturbing” and the “very opposite of the basic dignity and respect people with mental health problems deserve.”
Posing as a client suffering from depression, our reporter booked a session with Jeremy Parkin, a therapist who one year earlier had allegations he groomed and had a sexual relationship with a patient proven by a BACP panel of experts.
When our reporter raised his misconduct case Parkin replied that the judgment was "no barrier" to seeing clients or calling himself a "mentor". During a one-hour session in Parkin's home, the disgraced counsellor claimed to work for the NHS and disclosed personal information about other clients. Parkin also revealed he would have patients pay for sessions that took place whilst he was flying a small aircraft or playing golf.
Unrepentant about having sex with a woman whose mental health he was treating, he blamed the patient for "trapping" him in a two-year relationship. He suggested he couldn’t have exploited the client because she was "highly intelligent" and added that if the BACP classified his actions towards her as grooming then he’d "groomed every patient he’d ever had".
Parkin later denied he was a practicing therapist but offered no explanation for why he’d let our undercover reporter book and pay for a session or then send a text the following week about another appointment. He also denied claiming to work for the NHS.
We also booked an online session with Asher Quinn for £70. He'd been found by the professional body to have accepted money from a vulnerable patient who he exchanged “inappropriate and sexualised information” with. Quinn accepted breaching the organisation’s standards, but claimed he left the professional body voluntarily because it "denied his spiritual perspective".
However, he pointed out that because he did not need to be a member of the BACP to practise, the ruling against him didn’t matter. Quinn's claim is accurate because, unlike other roles which treat and access vulnerable people, like doctors or teachers, psychotherapy is not a protected profession, so effectively anyone can call themselves a counsellor.
Professional bodies like the BACP claim to “protect the public” by validating the training credentials of practitioners and having a complaints procedure enabling patients to report ethical breaches. The primary method the organisation uses to warn people about counsellors who’ve committed gross misconduct is by stripping them of their membership and publishing the ruling that led to that decision online.
However, the Express investigation found this system only offers protection to the public for, in some cases, a couple of months. There is only a brief window during which the public can read a ruling before the ruling is removed. As our investigation progressed we found online professional conduct notices being deleted from the public-facing BACP website.
How the deletion of judgements against BACP members 'protects the public' the organisation declined to explain. According to the BACP, “all published decisions (other than withdrawal of membership) will remain on our website generally until the delegated sanction panel considers all sanctions completed”.
What is unclear is how the body determines a sanction “completed”. We managed to find three decisions against BACP members convicted of child abuse, worryingly those rulings were removed from the professional body's website and would not have been found by a member of the public searching the BACP website.
When we asked the BACP how the public could be expected to rely on it to “safeguard clients and raise public confidence in the counselling professions” when it was deleting rulings against child abusers, it said: “We advise anyone seeking therapy to check the therapist is currently a member of a professional body.”
We also questioned how the public could reasonably be expected to find information on a counsellor if it was only online for a short period of time. It said: “Our publication policy determines the length of time the conduct results appear on our website and is based on the severity of the sanction. All results and sanctions are published in line with this process.”
The BACP process for handling complaints has also been criticised by a victim who alleges they were abused by their therapist. One individual we spoke to on condition of anonymity, who said they had been sexually assaulted and financially exploited by their counsellor, claimed it had taken the professional body three years to process their complaint. They added it was still to be resolved.
During this entire time, the counsellor continued to practise. Doubts about the effectiveness of the BACP’s process in protecting the public from therapists who’ve breached its ethical guidelines are also raised by several of its rulings against convicted paedophiles.
Martin Hempel, imprisoned in 2015 for having thousands of child abuse images, only had his membership revoked a year after his conviction. But the ruling against him contained other allegations of misconduct from eight years earlier, including that he entered a personal relationship with a client which resulted in him being sacked by his employer. The ruling has since been removed from the BACP website.
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Hempel was expected to self-report this information to the BACP. As a result of him failing to do so, he was able to work with vulnerable people in south London for years, until he was sent to prison. We asked the BACP when the first allegations against Hempel were filed and why it had not acted sooner. The BACP declined to comment.
Meanwhile, the BACP’s ruling against Adrian Easton, also sent to jail for offences relating to downloading indecent images of children, reveals the professional body only became aware they had a convicted paedophile among their members when an article written in the Grimsby Telegraph about the sex offender was shared with them.
As BACP notices are not shared with the Disclosure and Barring Service it is possible for members who’ve been proven to have had sex with patients to work in schools or in the NHS. We found one member who’d had their membership stripped after being sacked by their employer for gross misconduct who claimed to be employed by the NHS.
Another issue we found was that members who had their membership revoked were able to simply join other therapy and counselling professional bodies.
A spokesperson for the BACP blamed the lack of regulation in the sector as a whole, claiming: "We take our responsibilities to hold our members to the highest professional and ethical standards very seriously. But as a professional body operating in an unregulated industry, our public protection remit only extends as far as our current members.
"Counselling and psychotherapy are not regulated professions in the UK. This means anyone can say they are a therapist without having the registration or membership of a professional body.
"We rely on clients, the public and members to bring poor and unethical practice to our attention so we can take appropriate action to protect the public."
Responding to the Express’s findings a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: "Anyone seeking therapy deserves to have confidence and trust in the system and individual providers, which is why we urge the use of qualified practitioners accredited by the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care.
"Access to trusted providers is vital and we’re helping an additional two million people get NHS-funded mental health support by 2024 by investing £2.3 billion extra a year into mental health services."
For those struggling with their mental health the following resources are available from Mind:
Mind has a confidential information and support line, Mind Infoline, available on 0300 123 3393 (lines open 9am - 6pm, Monday – Friday)
Mind's online mental health community Side by Side is a safe space where anyone aged 18 and over with experience of a mental health problem can share their story, connect with others, access Mind’s wider information and resources, and give support in return. Find out more at www.sidebyside.mind.org.uk
