The sham of self-regulation

(This is a guest post by Howard Martin, the original complainant in the Derek Gale case. His previous guest post, describing the experience of bringing Derek Gale before the Health Professions Council, can be found here.)

Having a female client simulate masturbation with a cushion while also doing so yourself. Pressuring clients to strip naked in front of the therapy “family”. Having clients provide pornographic videos and then pressuring the “family” to watch them en masse. Photographing female clients topless while on holiday with them and also having them pose half naked for so called art therapy. Punching a female client in the stomach during a singing lesson. Repeated, consistent and demeaning verbal abuse. Running a charity to screw more money out of your clients’ employers. Grabbing a male client by the crotch and attempting to kiss him. Attending client parties in nothing but your underpants and a jacket. Impersonating a mentally ill person while out shopping with your clients. Stealing milk from the local supermarket to impress your clients. Making malicious complaints to the police about complainants. Having bank accounts in another person’s name. Recommending a divorce lawyer to clients who turns out to be nothing more than a friend who is a legal secretary. Claiming to be a world renowned psychotherapist at the cutting edge of the profession and describing yourself as “something of a guru in the world of psychotherapy” when you have no qualifications whatsoever.

Welcome to the world of Gale that the HPC hearings barely touched on. For various reasons some allegations were dropped from the original HPC list. Others never appeared due to them requiring the criminal rather than civil burden of proof as they would constitute criminal acts. It is important to have the flavour of these allegations so that there is no doubt as to the sort of behaviour that the self regulation cabal are condoning and protecting with their claims that they are the ones best placed to deal with the likes of Gale.

When I first approached the UK Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners with my complaint against Gale I mistakenly believed that their well written and clearly presented code of ethical principles and practice and their comprehensive complaints procedure would enable a quick and effective resolution to the issues with, at the very least, Gale being brought before their ethical review committee to have his practises scrutinised. I was particularly reassured by their codes that discredit dual relationships and discourage relationships with clients outside of the therapy environment.

However as Gale himself proved when he acknowledged that after being in the HPC complaints process for over three years he hadn’t bothered to even read their codes of conduct and practise it soon became obvious that the UKAPP and UKCP had equal, if not greater, contempt for their own rules and regulations. At this time the UKCP were still lobbying the government for the right to be the psychotherapy regulator of choice. James Antrican, chair of the UKCP, was wittering on about public protection and forming independent complaints committees, which I think he still is. [Editor's note: This Guardian article, published yesterday, would indeed imply that he still is - Z]

When the Gale case landed in their lap they had the ideal opportunity to prove that they could handle it. Here was a detailed and complex case that had come from the very sphincter of their self regulating arses. If they could take this case and show the world that their system could deal with it then nobody would be able to argue against their competence. Well they still have that chance as nearly four years later, and following completion of the HPC case, I have requested that they reinstate my case against Gale, which was suspended at my request and with Gale’s approval. Everybody hold your breath, but not for too long.

While the UKAHPP / UKCP have complete contempt for their own rules, guidelines and processes they are very quick to suggest that by making a complaint you, as the complainant, are bound into some ill defined contract with them to not only obey their rules but also any whim or diktats they may hand down. They use the all pervasive threat to drop the case to bully and browbeat you into how they consider you should behave. For example I raised concerns about Mr Gale’s relationship to Professor Windy Dryden and Goldsmiths University with the Warden of Goldsmiths and this was subsequently reported in the Times Higher with quotes from myself. I also participated in a Channel 4 news item on the regulation of psychotherapy which cited the Gale case as an example but never mentioned the UKAHPP or UKCP. This the UKAHPP determined was prejudicial to Mr Gale being able to receive a fair hearing from their process and that if I continued to comment they would drop the case.

Please just read that last sentence again. Yep you read it right. By their own acknowledgement The UKAHPP /UKCP self regulation process is so weak that articles in the press and on TV can easily sway their competence committees into making biased decisions! Compare that to the HPC who happily put up a spokesperson for the Channel4 piece.

There is an insidious and all pervasive culture of secrecy and disregard for complainant integrity embedded in the AHPP / UKCP process. The late Chair of the AHPP, Eric Whitton, who was a business associate of Gale and personal friend, suddenly wrote to me out of the blue and told me the case had been dropped. Within two days he had re written to me apologising for his “mistake” and the case was in fact going ahead. I won’t bore you with the details of how high the handle was that I flew off. However this was compounded by the fact that Bill Stanley the follow on Chair lied to me in writing as to the make up of the investigative panels when he wrote that the board had no input or influence despite it actually being in their rulebook that a board member must sit on the panel!. By now it was becoming very obvious that there was an agenda being played out that I was not a party to and it certainly was not for my benefit.

Poor old Bee Springwood, UKAHPP complaints co-ordinator, the person charged with dealing with all this. As an arts therapist she is ironically an HPC registrant as well as a voracious signer of anti regulation petitions. I’m sure she is very happy with her lot painting pictures of the countryside outside her cottage in Norfolk. Her long rambling e-mails, sometimes incoherent, conflicting and nonsensical, are little better than her snail mail letters that tell me, the complainant, how stressful she is finding the whole Gale case. You know I almost felt sorry for her until I asked exactly what her qualifications were to be a complaints co-ordinator dealing with very serious issues of sexual and psychological abuse. Then she went and ruined it by changing the tone of her letters and communications so radically that my adviser, a former military intelligence officer and expert in toxic groups, suggested that although her signature was on the letters it may actually not be her writing them. The threats and implications that my questions were disrupting the process, the demands that I provide undefined additional evidence over an Easter Bank holiday weekend, demands that I provide letters of verification from witnesses who had long ago abandoned the process, the constant shifting of the goal posts particularly when it came to dealing with Mr Gale and his ever changing demands. All ramped up and underpinned an implicit threat that if I didn’t comply and acquiesce then the case would be dropped. It was clear that these people spend their lives screwing with peoples’ minds and they were definitely pushing my buttons in the hope that I would drop the case. You may wonder how Bee Springwood ever got into such a position that she is clearly incompetent to hold. Well all I can say is that in the Wild West world of psychotherapy self regulation if you are the fire water flogging carnival medicine man then you vote for the village idiot to be town sheriff.

What was that I hear you cry; “where are the UKCP in all this?” Yes you are right, the AHPP are a member organisation (MO) who operate under the auspices of the UKCP and as such they should deal with complaints against the AHPP, particularly ones as serious and high profile as this. You would have thought that considering they had been previously dragged to the door of the High Court for failing to deal with complaints they would be mad keen to make sure they are seen to be doing the right thing. Sorry, major presumption error number one. The UKCP only exists at the behest of its Member Organisations; they are in effect its paymasters so there is no power nor interest in the UKCP to in anyway deal with renegade MOs. Mike Bowen, Professional Conduct Officer for UKCP and master of the oxymoron job title, has flatly refused to take any action other than that that seems to suit their agenda to protect Gale. He has now even refused to communicate with me since I refused to take (yet) another phone call from him without him giving me consent to record it. The UKCP have created a wonderful catch 22 whereby you can’t complain about their MOs until both the UKCP and the MO have determined that they have completed the complaints process. If I pull out of the complaints process due to their bullying then the UKCP have stated that I cannot make a complaint against the UKAHPP however badly or abusively they have treated me. Get out of that one without moving as they might say.

The debate has now moved on. The UKCP / UKAHPP may well soon be where they should be, regulated out of business or restored to their suitable positions of making cups of tea for charlatans who whinge that they are now losing money due to regulation. Of course I fully expect that the UKAHPP will cite this blog and other publicity as making it impossible for them to continue with the Gale case, thereby achieving what I believe they have always intended to do, which is protect the interests of one of their founding members above the interests of his victims or the public.

However, there is another way forward for the self regulators. Grasp this opportunity to prove that your system works. Instead of attacking the HPC prove that your system is robust enough to deal with the likes of Gale. Pressure the UKCP and AHPP into taking the case forward, make it public and invite everyone to see that you can indeed fulfil your promises of public protection. I personally doubt you can get your heads out your arses long enough to do that because it would mean taking your eyes of the inside of your navel and actually doing something rather than just theorising and expecting everyone else to pay you for the privilege of your company. But we live in hope.