SJ Spero & Associates, P.C. in
the news .... 
It hasn't escaped notice that the ethical codes of other professions -- doctors, psychologists and social workers -- impose a complete ban on sex with clients, while the legal profession has been reluctant even to acknowledge.
Surely, embarrassment is one reason that sexually exploited clients
choose not to come forward.
Linda Jorgenson of Spero
and Jorgenson in Cambridge, Mass., who represents plaintiffs
in psychiatric malpractice, believes that the situation in legal malpractice
is comparable. Lawyers often are privy to intimate details about the client's
vulnerabilities, sex life, marriage and finances, she points out.
"We [lawyers] take on more than just to do the case in an appropriate
fashion," says Jorgenson. "We
take on the responsibility not to harm and that means if we do something
to gratify ourselves at our client's expense, we should be held responsible."
Top
After a prominent Miami attorney was sued for malpractice last month by a client with whom he'd had an affair, the debate of the propriety of sex with clients moved to center stage.
A recent study published in the Arkansas Law Review by Cambridge, Mass. lawyers Linda Jorgenson and Pamela Sutherland, concluded that while some lawyers believe sexual relationships with clients should be absolutely prohibited and others believe they already are under other provisions in the ethics codes, "the vast majority of attorneys and bar associations hold the opinion...that sexual contact between attorneys and their clients is not a problem, and therefore, it does not need to be addressed in any systemic manner."
"A top psychiatrist at University of Massachusetts Memorial/Marlborough Hospital took nude photographs of one patient and made 12 loans to another, the state medical board said yesterday in a ruling that revoked his medical license."
"A lawyer for the victim called that a tpical evasion, and said [doctor's name] took a bizarre approach to treating the Marlborough woman, using sex and beatings to 'treat" her depression, which stemmed from childhood physical and sexual abuse."
"He believed that helping her meant replicating
the abuse she suffered as a child, " said the lawyer,Stanley
Spero of Spero
and Jorgenson, a Cambridge firm that specializes
in psychiatric malpractice cases."
Top
The
Boston Globe September 5, 2000, Tuesday ,THIRD EDITION
All of which is mystifying to Cambridge lawyer Stanley
Spero, who filed complaints against Bustamante with the state
board and in Hampshire Superior Court. Only a "tidal wave of manipulation"
unleashed by Bustamante, Spero said,
can explain why people would support any adult, let alone a therapist,
who would demean and exploit a teenager and refer to her using profanity.
"His argument is, 'I'm somebody who has this new technique. I'm a creative
therapist and I'm being punished for it,' " Spero
said. "I do believe that every field requires some creativity. But
there are certain principles and ethics that are mandated, that you must
stand by."
HEADLINE: Law closes psychiatrists' loophole; AG can cite misconduct, halt practice
Linda Jorgenson, a Cambridge attorney who helped draft the bills, said she does not understand why the Legislature has not acted on the two other bills, considering support for the legislation by professional medical and therapist organizations.
The Boston Globe
July 6, 1993, Tuesday, City Edition
HEADLINE: Licenses revoked, therapists still practicing; Disciplinary
system is called flawed
"We have tried to get an injunctive relief bill passed for three years now, and it has been not been reported out by Rep. Sal DiMasi," said Linda Jorgenson, an attorney and member of the legislative commission on sexual misconduct by professionals who helped draft the legislation.
"Why make this a law?" asked attorney Linda Jorgenson. "Because of the numbers, because of the harm, because this is a fiduciary relationship. We have the numbers. We have the harm."
The Boston Globe
December 12, 1990, Wednesday, City Edition
HEADLINE: Push is vowed to outlaw client abuse
The legislation filed last year has several purposes. The main intent is to criminalize sexual misconduct by physicians and psychotherapists, making sexual intercourse with patients punishable by up to 10 years in prison and indecent sexual contact punishable by up to five years.
"We want to send a very clear message that this kind of behavior is very wrong and will not be tolerated," said Linda Jorgenson, a Cambridge attorney and member of the legislative commission that drafted the bills.
The Boston Globe
May 18, 1990, Friday, City Edition
HEADLINE: Daughters win sex-abuse case against father
"These victims have a lot of shame, guilt and humiliation about what happened," said Linda Jorgenson, a Cambridge lawyer and member of the state legislative commission on sexual misconduct. "Just as with women who are sexually abused by their psychotherapists, there is a violation of trust and a feeling of being betrayed due to the inaction of others. If your father abuses you and your mother covers it up, you begin to wonder if you're right or not; you begin to doubt yourself."
The Boston Globe
March 15, 1990, Thursday, City Edition
HEADLINE: Bill seeks reinstatement of physician's license
"If this case is retried in front of the Legislature, you might as well
not have a board at all," said Linda Jorgenson,
an attorney who represents victims of sexual abuse and who serves on a
legislative committee drafting legislation to make it a felony for physicians
and psychotherapists to have sex with patients.
The Boston Globe
January 24, 1990, Wednesday, City Edition
HEADLINE: Panel OK's therapist regulation; State bills would criminalize
sexual contacts with patients
A special state legislative subcommittee yesterday endorsed two bills that would make it a felony for psychotherapists and physicians to have sexual intercourse or indecent sexual contact with their patients, clearing the way for the measures to be filed with the Legislature. ..... "We want to send a very clear message that this kind of behavior is very wrong and will not be tolerated," said Linda Jorgenson, a Cambridge attorney who helped draft the bills. "Between 7 and 15 percent of therapists self-report that they abuse their patients, and we think the actual percentage is considerably higher. Criminalizing this behavior, we're sure, will deter these therapists." Jorgenson said it is "virtually impossible" to prosecute therapists who sexually abuse their patients under existing criminal laws in Massachusetts. In previous cases, defendants have successfully argued that their patients consented to the sexual act, and prosecutors are now reluctant to pursue cases that do not involve rape.
The Boston Globe
December 30, 1989, Saturday, City Edition
HEADLINE: Therapist accused of sex abuse, stock scam
"Right now, there is no way to touch unlicensed therapists," said Linda
Jorgenson, a Cambridge attorney who is a member of a special
state legislative committee studying the problem of sexual misconduct by
psychotherapists. Members of the legislative committee on sexual misconduct
say the most effective way to deal with unlicensed therapists who abuse
their patients would be to make it a crime for licensed or unlicensed therapists
to have sex with patients. The committee recently drafted such legislation
and is exploring the possibility of requiring all therapists to register
with the state and carry malpractice insurance. "Criminalizing this kind
of misconduct would give us a way to stopping therapists who are unlicensed
or who have lost their license but are still practicing," Jorgenson
said.
The Boston Globe
September 27, 1989, Wednesday, City Edition
HEADLINE: Panel is told to toughen penalty for therapists
Linda Jorgenson, an attorney who
is cochairwoman of the subcommittee on civil and criminal statutes, said,
"When I started, I was not in favor of criminalization. Now I'm leaning
toward making it a felony, not a misdemeanor."
The Boston Globe
July 14, 1989, Friday, City Edition
HEADLINE: Couple awarded $ 1.2m in sex case involving their former
therapist
A Cambridge couple was awarded $ 1.27 million Wednesday evening by a Middlesex Superior Court jury, which found that their therapist had taken sexual liberties with the husband while treating him singly, in a group setting and as a couple with the wife. Attorney Stanley J. Spero and his law partner, Linda Jorgenson, who represented the unidentified couple, presented evidence that Fanning had forced the husband into the homosexual relationship under the guise of therapy when the husband sought Fanning's help in coping with a succession of misfortunes and stressful events in 1971.
"The medical director of psychiatry at Marlborough Hospital carried on a torrid seven-year affair with a patient with multiple personalities, even sending seperate love notes to her different personas."
"She had over 20 personalities, and he would encourage and give life
to all of them," said Stanley J. Spero
of Spero & Jorgenson in Cambridge, the woman's lawyer. 'He
did have sex with a number of her different personalities.' "
Top
Corporate
Legal Times
December, 1995
"Sexual Abuse by Professionals: A Legal Guide," by Steven B.
Bisbing, Linda Mabus Jorgenson and
Pamela K. Sutherland, is a treatment of the legal issues surrounding
sexual misconduct cases. It explores causes of action from fiduciary
relations, and demonstrates how sexual exploitation occurs and how
it can be avoided. 950 pages. $ 105.
A Rockland County woman who said she was sexually exploited by her marriage therapist has helped prompt lawmakers to form a panel of experts to study tougher sanctions against patient-therapist sex.
A Massachusetts legislative panel noted in a report last year that between
4 percent and 13 percent of mental-health and health professionals have
had sex with their patients - 80 percent of them with more than one. Linda
Jorgenson, an author and legal expert, said Monday that 95 percent
of the victims are women.
"To help B* in her civil suit, ...... arranged for her to be represented by Stanley Spero, a Massachusetts-based lawyer who specializes in exploitation cases.
'Physicians, mental health workers, anybody who gets involved in this
kind of work, they can identify people who are very, very vulnerable, and
they take advantage of these vulnerabilities.... B* was there for simply
a consult. That's all she was there for. And look at the life
that took on.' "
If a therapist betrays this trust, a patient often can't say no to the
seduction, says Linda Jorgenson,
a Cambridge, Mass., attorney who has written numerous law review articles
on the subject. "It's worse than your first teen-age infatuation," she
says.
Massachusetts
Lawyers Weekly
November 27, 1995
Sexual Abuse by Professionals: A Legal Guide represents the first book-length treatment of the legal issues surrounding sexual misconduct cases by professionals. Authors Steven B. Bisbing, Linda Mabus Jorgenson, and Pamela K. Sutherland demystify the clinical underpinnings of abuse and chart a practical approach for recovering and defending against damages.
Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly
April 15, 1991
HEADLINE: Making Sex Abusers Pay;
Linda M. Jorgenson, one of the plaintiff's
lawyers in the Riley
case, also was aware of the Plymouth County award and predicted that more
such suits will follow. The application of the Riley decision to child
abuse is a logical one, she says, because of the "power imbalance" that
exists between therapist and patient as it does between adult and child.
The problem for plaintiffs lawyers seeking civil damages for child sexual-abuse,
Jorgenson
points out, is "where they're going to get the money." Property attachments
won't always be available, she says.
Read the decision
Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly
February 4, 1991
'Discovery' Applies To Abuse By Therapist
The Supreme Judicial Court extended its "discovery rule" to psychotherapist
malpractice, concluding that the statute of limitations does not begin
to run until the plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known that he
may have suffered injury because of his therapist's conduct. Cambridge
lawyer
Linda Jorgenson, who represents
the plaintiff together with partnerStanley J.
Spero, said last week that the SJC's extension of the discovery
rule to psychotherapist malpractice is significant because it sometimes
takes victims of therapist abuse many years to discover the nature of their
harm.
The
National Law Journal 10/16/95
October 16, 1995
SECTION: WORTH READING; Agency; Pg. B16
JORGENSON, LINDA MABUS, ET AL, Transference of Liability:
Employer Liability for Sexual Misconduct by Therapists,
Brooklyn Law Review: 1995, Vol. 60, No. 4, pgs. 1421-1482.
The
National Law Journal
June 15, 1992
HEADLINE: Lawyer-Client Sexual Contact: State Bars Polled
BYLINE: BY LINDA MABUS JORGENSON and Pamela K. Sutherland,
Special to The National Law Journal; Ms. Jorgenson is a partner
in Cambridge, Mass.'s Spero &Jorgensonand
a member of the Massachusetts House Committee on Sexual Misconduct by Physicians,
Therapists and Other Health Care Professionals.
Even sexual contact after termination of therapy can lead to a charge
of malpractice. "The APA has said sex with a patient is not okay
since 1973," says Linda Jorgenson
of Cambridge, Mass.'s Spero &
Jorgenson. "It automatically gives rise to a cause
of action for malpractice. In 1988
the APA passed a rule that sex with a former patient is almost always
never okay."
Also favoring plaintiffs is a trend found in recent court decisions to extend the time allowed for psychiatric patients to bring suit, according to Ms. Jorgenson and Paul S. Appelbaum, professor of psychiatry and director of the law and psychiatry program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
In a case in which Ms. Jorgenson was a plaintiff's co-counsel, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided last year that so-called "tolling," or suspending the state's statute of limitations, could be applied to a case of psychiatric malpractice. In Riley v. Presnell, 565 N.E.2d 780 (Mass. 1991), the court held that if a psychotherapist's sexual exploitation impairs a reasonable patient's ability to realize he or she has been injured, the statute of limitations would not begin to run until the patient discovered the injury.
New England
Jury Verdict Review & Analysis
Vol. 6, No. 5, Page 181
September, 1995
Pamela Bartels vs. Jeffrey Leighton Case No. 91-233
$ 550,000 verdict
PLAINTIFF ATTORNEY: Stanley
Spero, Cambridge, Ma.
On July 6, 1994 the Court applied 93A and doubled the award to $
1,100,000. In addition, the Court enjoined defendant from practicing
hypnotherapy until he presented the Court with a proper supervision proposal.
Sex between therapists and patients is specifically forbidden by the Hippocratic oath and in the ethics codes of the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and other mental-health groups. Yet the practice clearly goes on.
For the last three years, the Massachusetts Legislature has been considering
a bill to make
therapist-patient sex a felony. "The legislators are opposed," says
attorney Linda
Jorgenson. "One of the issues frequently raised
about patients is, 'They're adults, they're not psychotic. Why can't
they say no?'"
A California Murder Case Raises Troubling Issues
By CAROL POGASH DATELINE: ORINDA, Calif., Sept. 15
.....a big element of Ms. Polk's defense will be what happened in the therapist's office decades ago and whether ethical and other boundaries were crossed that poisoned the couple's relationship.......
The trial will pit mother against son and brother against brother...
The trial of Ms. Polk and the looming questions about her treatment will refocus attention on relationships between patients and doctors.
The taboo of sex between doctor
and patient was written into the Hippocratic oath in the fifth century
B.C. But the American Psychological Association did not list sexual behavior
between therapist and patient as unethical until 1981......
''This
is probably one of the greatest acts of betrayal that people can experience,''
said Stanley
J. Spero,
a
Massachusetts lawyer who has represented about 150 patients who said they
had had sex with their therapists.
''Most of the time,'' he said, ''therapists are aware that this is inappropriate, but because of their own narcissism or midlife crisis they think of it as a special relationship.''
(Excerpted from New York Times 9/18/05)
Top
Perhaps, one state bar disciplinary official speculated, this is because
lawyers are asexual. More
likely it is because until very recently lawyers have been reluctant
to acknowledge, much less discuss, what one judge has called the bar's
"dirty little secret": that however sex between lawyers and clients complicates
and compromises zealous representation, it is hardly extraordinary.
Never has the academy, the American Bar Association or any other lawyers'
group sought to chart the dimensions of the problem. The task fell, instead,
to two Boston lawyers, Linda Jorgenson
and Pamela Sutherland. Their findings, based on reports from cooperative
bar officials in every state except Michigan, Nevada and Rhode Island,
will appear next month in the Arkansas Law Review.
Star
Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
October 15, 1992, Metro Edition
HEADLINE: Therapists who have sex with patients betray a trust
Circling on the edge of sex-with-client situations are plaintiffs' attorneys
such as Linda Jorgenson of Boston,
who has represented more than 200 patients in sexual
misconduct cases against therapists.
She has been successful. "My biggest judgment was $ 1.4 million," she said.
Gabbard and Jorgenson were
in Minneapolis recently as lecturers at the second national Conference
on Sexual Misconduct by Clergy, Psychotherapists and Health Care Professionals.
Today, 21 years later, the Baltimore homemaker serves on a Maryland task force that says it should be a crime for a mental health therapist to have sex with a client. If the legislature agrees next winter, Maryland would become the 15th state to make such relationships illegal.
But Linda Jorgenson, a Boston
lawyer who has sued numerous therapists on behalf of abused clients, said
the stricter regulations certainly would deter some professionals from
having sex with clients. "And those who continue to do it, you would be
able to discipline," she said.
January 23, 1990, Tuesday, BC cycle
HEADLINE: Heavy sentences recommended in sexual abuse
cases
Doctors or other health care professionals who sexually abuse their patients would face prison sentences of up to 10 years under legislation given tentative approval Tuesday by a special commission.
The Committee on Sexual Misconduct by Physicians, Therapists and Other Health Professionals was appointed by the Legislature last May to find ways to curb the sexual abuse of patients, which appears to be on the rise.
''We're saying that professionals cannot use consent as a defense,''
said Linda Jorgenson, a
lawyer who helped draft the bill. ''We're saying that consent is irrelevant.
It's can't be your fault if you're the victim.''
Margaret Bean-Bayog, the Harvard psychiatrist who national headlines portrayed as having an affair with a patient, has quit practicing medicine rather than face a public hearing that was to begin today.
Eight states have laws making it a felony for therapists to have sex
with patients, with or without consent: Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota,
Georgia, Colorado, California, Florida and Iowa. Lawmakers in Massachusetts,
New Mexico, Pennsylvannia and Maryland consider such laws
next year.
''Consent is the sticking point,'' says lawyer Linda
Jorgenson, an expert on such cases. ''Many victims of
such abuse return time after time to their therapists, and since they return,
prosecutors assume that's consent. The only way to get a conviction is
if the victim is drugged or raped.''
The
Washington Post
August 18, 1992, Tuesday, Final Edition
HEADLINE: Spanking and the Lawyer; After Years of
Allegations, a Misconduct Suit Is Filed in Maryland
Advocates of restrictions on lawyers' sexual behavior say such limits
are analogous to lawyers'
restrictions on financial activities with clients, intended to avoid
conflicts of interest that would violate
their fiduciary responsibilities.
"The Arnie Becker syndrome is not cute and it's not harmless,"
said Cambridge, Mass., attorney
Linda M. Jorgenson, citing the unctuous bed-hopping divorce
lawyer of TV's "L.A. Law."
"I won't say we need a rule 'You may not spank your client,' but we
do need some clear ethical
standard that says sex or suggestive behavior with a client is inherently
wrong," said Jorgenson,
whose recent article on the subject in the Arkansas Law Review was
widely reported. "The Arnie Becker syndrome is not cute and it's not
harmless," said Cambridge, Mass., attorney
Linda M. Jorgenson, citing the nctuous bed-hopping
divorce lawyer of TV's "L.A. Law."
Top
The girl, who was receiving therapy for post-traumatic stress syndrome, told the state Board of Registration of Psychology, which oversees licensing, that the 49-year-old Bustamante had made sexual advances during therapy when she spoke of feeling attracted to him. In April, the board found that Bustamante told the girl he wanted to have sex with her. The board said he appeared to have a personal relationship with her that went beyond any conceivable needs of therapy. The board ordered his license revoked for at least three years. "The man is a rogue," McVey's lawyer,Stanley Spero, said Monday. "He has no sense of limits or boundaries."
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