Frontline is a presentation of the documentary consortium.
Tonight on Frontline, the story of a woman and her psychiatrist.
Their sexual involvement and the ethical and legal tangle that followed.
You knew that such a relationship would be harmful to her.
I thought there was a real high risk of that.
He was already my doctor and helping me.
And if he became my lover as well, he would be my doctor and he would be my lover.
Tonight on Frontline, My Doctor, My Lover.
With funding provided by the financial support of viewers like you.
And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
This is Frontline.
This is really a simple case, but a very important case.
It's a case about a physician, a psychiatrist.
Violation of the standard of care that he's obligated to follow.
It's a case about the violation of the special trust that a psychiatrist holds with respect to his patient.
In February 1989, in a trial in the Denver County Courthouse,
Melissa Roberts-Henry would sue her former psychiatrist, Jason Richter, for sexual abuse.
The defense claimed that it was his patient who was responsible.
This is a case about a person who, although he had been her therapist,
made a decision to become involved based on human feelings of caring and love for a woman.
It's also a case about a woman who feels angry, hurt, and vengeful
because after spending three years of her life pursuing a man, she ultimately felt rejected by him.
In the beginning, the case was like thousands of other sexual malpractice lawsuits.
But after two years of legal maneuvering and a three-week trial,
the Richter-Henry case would set important legal precedents while bitterly dividing the mental health profession.
Among his peers, Jason Richter was better trained than most therapists.
As a graduate of Columbia University's medical school, Richter had as a young doctor taken the ancient Hippocratic oath,
in which he specifically promised he wouldn't seduce a patient.
At the time of his trial, he had practiced psychiatry for nearly ten years.
He was married with one child when he began sleeping with his patient.
Melissa Roberts-Henry had begun to experience problems in her marriage in 1983.
She and her husband, Richard Henry, had met at the University of Georgia, where they both studied geology.
When Richard graduated and his career took off, Melissa was at home completing her master's thesis.
With Richard on business trips much of the time, the relationship was then tested.
Melissa had a brief affair. A year later, she sought help.
I had a lot of guilt about having had an extramarital affair.
I really didn't know how to deal with my guilt around that,
and I had a need to understand what was going on for me personally.
I had a lot of self-blame. I guess I felt like a bad person for having done this.
Was she mildly upset by this affair, severely disturbed by this affair?
It certainly wasn't severe. It was mild to moderate. I think it was a presenting symptom.
Often that presenting symptom is a reflection of other issues that are going on.
For the next 11 months, Melissa would go to Dr. Richter's office.
The psychiatrist's notes on their weekly sessions revealed his version of what happened in therapy.
In your notes, you describe her as having a primitive, unintegrated superego.
Could you tell us in lay terms what that would mean?
Sure. For conceptual purposes, psychiatry has described different functional parts of one's personality
and thought processes, and superego is best understood as one's conscience.
By that, I meant that I thought Melissa looked to people outside of her for a sense of what was right and what was wrong.
He started asking me if I thought about him. If he had just asked that question one time,
I might not have thought anything about it, but he asked several weeks in a row.
It finally occurred to me that if he kept asking this question, maybe he was thinking about me.
I turned around and I said to him, I'm not thinking about you, but you keep asking this, and I want to know, are you thinking about me?
I think that there was this persistent questioning by Melissa about how did I feel about her, did I like her,
about her feelings about me in the early phases of the treatment. Those feelings weren't there on my part.
Eventually, obviously, I got involved with Melissa and dated her after therapy, and at that time felt I was in love with her,
and those feelings did arise, and there was a great deal of passion to those feelings.
To make matters worse, he had isolated me from people in my life who I had been close to.
He had verbally isolated me. He told me things like if he was my husband, he would treat me better than my husband did.
It was like someone was driving a wedge between us. Things weren't getting better, they started getting worse.
Our relationship would start to, I guess the best way to describe it would be roller coaster.
It would have its normal moments, and everything would seem to be fine, and then it would take a big dip,
and we would end up at opposite ends of the court, so to speak.
I think sometime after he told me that we were both young and attractive, including himself in that,
to say that he thought he was also attractive, I started thinking of him as attractive for the first time,
and those feelings grew until eventually I just thought he was wonderful, and I thought I was in love with him.
After three months of therapy, Melissa was feeling a strong attraction to Dr. Richter,
but psychiatrists know such feelings are common and should not be taken personally.
Therapists are taught such feelings called transference should only be used to better understand a patient's emotional history.
In his notes, Dr. Richter recognized Melissa's feelings as transference, but in his defense, he insisted something else was going on.
I think that there's a duality that's going on. There's both transference and there's a real relationship there.
In some way, Melissa was sitting, meeting with me for a number of hours just as you and I are talking,
and through that interaction gets to know me, my style, some thoughts about my personality.
There may have been some feelings of attraction towards me based on who I was if I was 75 years old or massively obese,
or some other way she might not have felt attracted or had those feelings.
At the civil trial of Dr. Richter, three expert psychiatrists testified that Melissa shouldn't be held responsible for their sexual relationship.
One expert, Dr. Cynthia Rose, a past president of the Colorado Psychiatric Society,
explained that the transference feelings of patients like Melissa are so intense that therapists like Dr. Richter have a life-and-death power over them.
A physician has an obligation to maintain certain behaviors and responsibilities no matter what a patient does,
and one that a psychiatrist agrees to is not to entice or respond to a patient in an overt sexual manner, even covert to a great extent.
If a patient comes in and strips off their clothes and dances naked on the table,
that doesn't relieve the physician of the responsibility of not having sex with the patient.
Our judicial system and our inquiry system tends to blame these victims like we used to blame rape victims,
as if somehow this patient or this woman or this man even had invited this kind of behavior.
But that's not why they were there. They were there doing what they were supposed to do, sharing their feelings, sharing their stories.
And the therapist did something wrong, which is to begin to respond on a personal and sexualized level
and take advantage of the situation for their own needs without considering what the needs of the other party are.
That is exactly what a rapist does.
They go for their own gratification, they act out their own hostility or their own need for feeling a certain physical pleasure,
regardless of what the other person wants.
It's a very scheming, manipulative, dangerous thing to do to another person.
After 11 months in therapy, Melissa's condition was deteriorating.
In March 1985, Dr. Richter's notes indicated she was suicidal.
She was placed on a strong antidepressant, and Dr. Richter was considering hospitalization.
According to Richter's notes, Melissa was now cutting on herself with a razor.
She was suicidal a large percentage of the time.
Many times I would come home and she'd be in bed and I'd say, you know, how are you?
And she basically would tell me that, you know, I feel like killing myself.
I didn't understand that. For me, it was really difficult.
And I couldn't fathom like why our relationship and her health had reached that point.
It just never occurred that therapy was the root of the problem.
I knew that I was becoming progressively worse in therapy,
but I never ever considered that it was my doctor who was making me worse.
I kept thinking that he was helping me, and when I was getting worse,
he became more and more of a lifeline for me.
I became increasingly dependent on him to help me.
In mid-March, Melissa, complaining of side effects, was told to stop taking her antidepressant.
She remained suicidal.
Then on March 18, 1985, she and Dr. Richter had a stormy discussion about their feelings for each other.
It would be the last paid therapy session.
In his chart, the psychiatrist made a final note.
If we had a physical relationship, he wrote, it would only end up being destructive to her.
I was really concerned that in some ways what has happened,
which is that at some point this relationship ended,
and that at the point when the relationship with me ended,
she would feel very hurt and rejected and emotionally injured from it.
So as a doctor, as a psychiatrist, as a professional,
you knew that such a relationship would be harmful to her, would be destructive to her?
I thought there was a real high risk of that.
I thought a sexual relationship would be good because he was already my doctor and helping me,
and if he became my lover as well, he would help me that much more.
I mean, then he would really care about me and really help me, and I would have both.
He would be my doctor and he would be my lover.
In 1983, a survey reported that nine out of ten patients like Melissa will suffer negative effects,
including depression, panic attacks, sexual malfunctioning, even post-trauma stress disorder.
Eleven percent will require hospitalization. One percent will commit suicide.
But psychiatrists often defend their conduct by saying that the therapeutic relationship has ended.
When you made the decision to get involved with Melissa on a personal basis,
were you then acting as her therapist?
She called me on the 21st or so and said she wouldn't continue with me as a patient,
and if I cared about her as a person, I would have some sort of friendship and some relationship with her.
And at the point that I agreed to that, I stopped relating to her as her physician.
I said to him, I just want to know one thing.
If I wasn't your patient, could there have been something between us? And he said yes.
And I said, well, if I tell you that I'm not your patient, can there be something between us?
Now, he was still my doctor when I asked this, and he said yes.
Melissa sent me this letter several weeks prior to our getting together,
and the letter says that we've dropped therapy and you're no longer my doctor.
And I think it was clear to me at that point that that professional relationship had ended by agreement.
Is that the usual way you terminate relationships with patients?
No, that's not.
I know that therapists who engage in sexual relationships with patients
sometimes claim that they've ended the therapeutic relationship.
This may even be in written form.
But in fact, this feeling of trust in the therapist and that the therapist must be doing the right thing
persists for a very long period of time after therapy ends.
And those feelings don't just go away because someone signed a piece of paper.
In the profession, six months is regarded as a minimal cooling off period
before a therapist can consider having sex with a former patient.
However, ten days after their last therapy session,
Dr. Richter and Melissa had their first sexual contact, although not intercourse.
Two months later, they had another meeting.
And you remember when you made the appointment with Melissa, you told her to come up to your office, is that correct?
That's correct.
And that was during the day, isn't that correct?
That is correct.
And that was in the same place that you had treated her as a therapist and she was your patient, correct?
That is correct.
We were sitting on his couch and then he pushed me to the ground.
And he pulled my pants down and he entered me.
It was very unexpected.
I was wearing a tampax and it was pushed all the way up.
And you had intercourse with her, is that correct?
Yes, we did eventually.
And she told you afterwards that she had been wearing a tampon, isn't that correct?
Yes, she did.
And I started crying and he looked at me and he said, what's the matter?
Isn't this what you wanted?
And I said to him, no, you said we weren't going to do this and now you're doing this
and I don't understand.
And he got really angry and he just pulled away and he got up and he walked to the other side of the room.
And then when she told you she had a tampon on, you looked at her with disgust and you refused to help her,
isn't that correct?
No, I don't think that's correct.
Well, did you help her?
No, I didn't help her.
And he started pushing me out of the office and I said to him, you can't leave me like this.
And he said, well, okay, we'll make an appointment.
You can come in next week to see me.
You know, I felt strongly, I felt deeply about Melissa.
I would have to say I was a willing participant in this relationship with her.
But I would have to say that Melissa initiating this relationship
and pursuing the sexual part of this relationship is clear.
And the next time you had intercourse with Melissa Roberts Henry,
you had her up to your office again, isn't that correct?
That is correct.
That was again during the day, isn't that correct?
Yes.
Again, it was during a session hour, isn't that correct?
Again, it was in the middle of my working day, yes.
They were usually timed and by the clock, and it was so crazy here.
This man was supposedly, at least in his mind, I guess, making love to me,
the person who he says he loved, and yet he would look at the clock and time would be up.
He'd say, time's up, just like any other appointment.
Do you give your patients 45-minute hours or 50-minute hours?
It varies, really, from person to person.
Usually 45, 50 minutes?
Yes.
That was the amount of time that you had for Melissa that day, isn't that correct?
I don't specifically recollect if it was an hour or two hours or three hours,
but how much time we spent, it certainly wasn't any more than that.
After the second complete intimacy, Dr. Richter said to me,
well, I can only see you once a month.
This is as much as I see even my closest friends, and I didn't think to say anything to that.
That was what he told me we would do, and so he was the boss, and I accepted that.
Did you have any intention to exploit her?
It had nothing to do with exploiting her.
I think we cared about each other, and I guess I felt like at that point
I would be helping her by getting involved in some sort of a relationship,
and when I decided that, I didn't know what kind of a relationship that was going to become.
We went to Green Mountain Park, and we had a physical encounter,
and after the encounter I said to him, can't we see each other more often
because we were still pretty much just seeing each other once a month,
and I can't believe that I bought this, but he looked at me and he said,
you know, I think about you all the time, I think about you before our encounters,
and I think about you afterwards, and it would be just too hard on me to see you any more than this.
I felt like we were getting closer, that the relationship was progressing.
Melissa was involved in a number of new activities during that time period.
She took modeling school, and certainly at the time period when I separated
and pursuing a divorce, there was some conflict between us that arose
around how much time we were spending with each other.
I felt like I needed more therapy or that he did, and when I said that to him,
he said to me, if you ever do anything to hurt my career, and then he paused
and he said, do you like waking up in the morning and seeing the light of day?
Did you threaten her?
No.
Not at all?
No.
And then I got upset too, and I said to her, did she like waking up in the morning,
and I went and brushed my teeth, and basically I said, look, you need to stop threatening me so much.
John, I needed to correct one statement I had made to you after going back
and looking at the tapes and reviewing data related to various events.
Jason Richter requested a second interview to set the record straight
about any threats he'd made on New Year's Eve of 1986.
To destroy me in the community, I got angry and said to her,
do you like waking up in the morning, and then went and brushed my teeth
and came back and said that I wasn't threatening her, but I was very angry
at all the threats that she was making towards me.
And I think she just couldn't handle or make sense of what indeed didn't make sense,
that a doctor who set himself up to be trustworthy and to provide help to her
about problems she had with relationships had seduced her and led her to believe
that this indeed was a real and genuine relationship that could go somewhere.
And then it just all fell apart. She had a marriage that was falling apart.
She hadn't gotten the help, and she could no longer believe that she could trust anyone.
Almost always, patients will keep their sexual relationships with their therapists a secret
because of the shame and guilt they feel.
But Melissa Roberts Henry decided there was still one person she could trust.
After two years, her husband Richard finally learned Melissa's secret.
Well, I wasn't about to walk away from Melissa.
Even though we were distanced and our relationship was essentially ruined,
at the condition she was in, it would have been equivalent to someone abandoning a puppy
in the middle of the median on an interstate.
I mean, that was the fragile nature of her.
I mean, that's the easiest analogy I can make to describe the situation.
She was childlike, but with the ability to kill herself.
With Melissa depressed and suicidal, Richard decided to confront Dr. Richter.
And I told Dr. Richter I knew of the relationship between Melissa and himself,
that what he did was unethical and, in my mind, illegal.
And he says, I know.
And he said it in a way that was just recognition of the fact.
He didn't apologize. He showed no remorse about it.
I told him, whatever happened, I was going to stand by Melissa through this.
And he says, what do you think she's going to do to me?
So even there, here is a person who is supposed to help people and care for people.
The first thing that came to his mind was not to say, is she all right?
How can I help? But what's she going to do to me?
Certainly, the process of going through all of the various actions and lawsuits and complaints
related to this have been a very sad and painful experience for me.
And I certainly did not want her to do that,
but I felt like she had a right to do that if that's the course she was going to pursue.
And I told her that that wasn't going to blackmail me into staying in the relationship,
or wasn't going to force me, coerce me into staying in the relationship with her.
Did you feel that's what she was trying to do? In effect, blackmail you?
Yes.
A few months after the breakup of their year-and-a-half sexual relationship,
Melissa filed suit against Dr. Richter.
As is typical in sexual malpractice cases,
her motivations immediately became one of several issues his attorneys raised in pre-trial depositions.
Well, you've brought a lawsuit, you've sued him for punitive damages,
you've filed against him with the American Psychiatric Association,
and you've complained to the medical board of examiners about him, right?
It wasn't for the purpose of hurting him.
Was it to help him?
It was to help other potential victims.
Okay.
Once he was sued, Dr. Jason Richter was provided with the best protection money could buy.
As a member of the American Psychiatric Association,
Dr. Richter was covered from personal liability by an insurance company in which the APA owned a 25% share.
And in Paul Cooper, Richter was supplied with a top-notch lawyer
who had won a national reputation by successfully defending Penthouse and its publisher Bob Guccione,
who had printed a satirical article about the sexual past of a former Miss Wyoming.
Since 1974, Cooper has specialized in defending therapists like Dr. Richter,
and he adopted a strategy commonly used in sexual malpractice cases.
Melissa's sexual past would be investigated in order to convince a jury she was promiscuous.
Did you have a sexual relationship with him?
Kissing him, yes.
Did you have sexual intercourse with him?
No.
Did you have anything more than kissing with him?
Yes.
What?
When they started asking me explicit sexual questions about my life, about my sexual history,
and who had I ever dated in my life, unbelievable.
Who had I slept with in my life?
Name every single person they wanted the address.
They wanted to know what types of sexual activity.
Did I sleep with them?
Did I have oral sex?
If not, what type of sex did I have with them?
I mean, these are things that I didn't even discuss with my close female friends,
and to have to sit here and there and be questioned in detail about that type of thing was humiliating.
We were not attacking anyone.
We were strictly defending the case more vigorously perhaps than some people want to see,
but you learn as a defense attorney that the stronger the allegations that are made against your client,
the more work you have to do to develop the resistance to it.
When a person sues, her entire history essentially is open, and to the extent that the defense can create side issues
and take some of the heat off of Dr. Richter, they'll do it.
Who else were you dating prior to May of 1987?
Besides Randy and Bart?
Yes.
No one.
He then said, well, he was a private investigator hired by a lawyer representing a person.
Bart Kramer was one name Melissa gave during deposition,
and he soon received a telephone call from a private eye working for Dr. Richter and his attorneys.
He proceeded to poke at me to try to get me to say that Melissa and I were lovers,
and we went round and round, and it was a couple of times it was very emphatic,
no, listen to me, no, we were nothing but friends.
He said, well, Melissa tells us that one time she was at your house swimming naked in your swimming pool.
I said, well, I don't have a pool.
Another friend, Carol Marlow, also received a call from a private eye.
She would have been at your house involved in something like that, and I said no.
Later, I did remember a time when she was at a friend of mine's party,
and they had a small swimming pool just like this one back here, and it had ice for beer in it,
and it was a real hot day, and we thought we'd just be crazy,
and three of us sat in the pool with our clothes on and everything, and it was kind of a funny picture.
That's the scariest thing about these cases for the clients.
They go into therapy and are told the only way that you will get better,
the only way that I can help you is if you tell me things you've never told anybody else,
things that no one else knows, and they do that, and they tell them intimate details,
and of course those details are later used by the doctor against the client.
At his trial, Dr. Richter used love letters Melissa had written to him during their sexual relationship.
In his interview, the psychiatrist was insistent they be filmed.
And the text in here reads, try me on for size,
and there's a fair amount of graphic statements by Melissa about wanting to,
or having a fantasy of having a sexual relationship with me.
Why did you select this type of card for exhibit six?
Because I thought that's what Jason wanted, and I was trying to be what he wanted.
The letters were like a last ditch effort to say,
I'll give you something that I've really never given anyone else.
And I can't believe that those letters have been taken,
and they've used them to say that I was this slut.
I think Dr. Richter precipitated those letters.
People don't write letters like that to someone unless there's been a suggestion by conduct, behavior,
statements that they want to receive that sort of material.
It seemed to me that Dr. Richter was in some respects like a little boy saving Playboy magazines.
It's interesting that he saved those letters.
I think I enjoyed them. She enjoyed sending it.
There were a lot of things we did that were enjoyable, of which that was one.
Why did you keep the letters?
Well, I save a lot of mail.
One of the things I've resented about the way Dr. Richter behaved was
he knew he was continuing the punishment of his patient by the way his case was being handled.
I think when you have an attorney-client relationship, it's a partnership.
And one of the partners, Dr. Richter, had a continuing responsibility to his patient,
and he made sure the harm continued.
Have you ever had any lesbian relationships?
No.
Every facet of Melissa's past was examined during 24 hours of questioning over a three-day period.
I don't think it was uncharacteristic of her to be quite sexually aggressive.
In trial, testimony of a medical student whom she had dated when he was a medical student
had said that he and Melissa had had a very passionate sex life
and that she didn't have much to learn at that time.
Since you make those points about Melissa, what indeed was your sexual history in that regard?
Had you had sexual affairs before this?
I've certainly had sex before having sex with Melissa.
Had you had affairs with other women prior to Melissa?
I really haven't had ongoing affairs.
At all? So Melissa was, what, the second woman you'd slept with?
No, but I don't think it's necessary to go into my prior sexual history beyond that,
or I'm not interested in doing that here.
No, but, Doctor, you just make the point about how sexually active she was
and her history of sexual affairs before and after your affair with her.
Why do you feel it's none of our business to inquire into your sexual history?
I don't understand that, frankly.
I can understand your interest in the subject, but there's a certain point, again,
at which I might say, look, I would like to maintain some shred of privacy
about my life, either present or past,
and I think most people could understand why I'm not interested in giving you
my complete sexual history on a national television program.
But just before trial, Dr. Richter voluntarily revealed details about his personal life
to justify a countersuit he launched against Melissa.
His attorneys argued that Dr. Richter, not Melissa, was the victim.
Melissa, they argued, had exploited a vulnerable psychiatrist.
His relationship with his wife was falling apart, and he was falling apart.
His wife, whom he had struggled for so many years with to have a child,
had just tried to kill herself, and he was feeling extremely rejected himself.
Part of taking on the responsibility of being a psychiatrist
involves self-monitoring one's own responses,
and that includes identifying times of vulnerability
and assessing whether or not you need help through your own personal therapy,
whether you ought to get a consultation,
whether a particular patient is really straining your own resources
and you need to refer them on.
And many psychiatrists have the highest divorce rate,
but not all psychiatrists who get divorced sexually exploit their patients.
While you're doing all this struggling, did you call your ex-psychotherapist?
No.
And while you're doing all this struggling,
did you call any of your colleagues and ask their opinions?
No.
How many psychiatrists do you know in Colorado?
A lot.
A good number.
How many?
50, 100.
Later in the case, your own lawyers and your own defense
would raise the fact that your wife was in the hospital,
in a psychiatric hospital, as a result of a suicide attempt.
Well, John, there's only one issue I'd ask you really not to get into with me,
and I think that there's a place for some personal discretion
or maybe respect that people aren't directly involved in the case,
and I'd really rather not answer it.
No, but as I say, it was raised as an issue in the trial.
Your own lawyers raised it in your own defense.
It seems that, you know, Melissa's own relationship with her husband
and everything else seems to be fair game, and you comment freely on it.
Why do you feel so uncomfortable about talking about your own emotional situation
with your own wife and her condition at the time?
Well, unfortunately, it's an area I'd really rather not get into with you,
so if you have any other questions.
My Doctor, My Lover will be back after a short break.
This is PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service.
Thank you.
After deciding to take action against Jason Richter,
Melissa Roberts-Henry was referred to Dr. Martha Gay.
Dr. Gay was an expert on sexual abuse and had been involved in over 400 court cases
as a forensic evaluator of victims and offenders.
Melissa was the 12th patient Dr. Gay had seen
who had been sexually involved with a therapist,
but she soon found herself under attack from Richter's lawyers.
They argued that because the patient had not been diagnosed
to have post-traumatic stress disorder until she was under my care,
therefore I must have caused the post-traumatic stress disorder.
This is certainly a very odd argument and would have been harmful
to all treating professionals if it had been successful.
It would have been akin to saying that if you go to see an orthopedic surgeon
for a broken leg and he diagnoses you to have a broken leg
that he must have broken your leg because you weren't known
to have a broken leg prior to entering his office.
Seven, eight months after she had broke up her sexual relationship with Jason,
she lost the ability to do 90% of what she'd previously been capable of.
Since that time, she's been suicidal, needed medication for anxiety,
can't go grocery shopping, can't get out of bed, takes tranquilizers,
has homicidal, wanting to kill thoughts toward Jason.
What does Melissa need? I think the evidence will show
that the last thing in the world that she needs is more therapy from Dr. Gay.
Melissa was examined by three other experts on sexual abuse,
including two past presidents of the Colorado Psychiatric Society.
All three independently confirmed Dr. Gay's diagnosis,
and a fourth expert testifying for Dr. Richter also approved of Dr. Gay's care.
Their own doctor said that after his evaluation of Melissa,
in his opinion, Dr. Gay was doing everything that she could, appropriately, properly.
There was no substantiated allegation that Dr. Gay wasn't in any way hurting Melissa.
That idea was coming straight from the defense lawyers,
and it was never substantiated anywhere.
Originally, Dr. Gay planned to testify about Melissa's condition,
but when Melissa learned that her therapist's notes would be turned over to the defense,
Melissa decided to forfeit the benefit of Dr. Gay's testimony.
Dr. Richter's attorneys asked the courts to order the notes released.
I was in a position of not having my patient's permission to release the notes,
and she was very emphatic about that.
And if I had given the notes up without my patient's consent,
I would have been acting in a way that was detrimental to the patient,
and I believe unethical.
Because therapy at that time was, aside from my house, my only safe place,
and the only place that I could really go and talk about the trauma in detail,
I decided that it was far more important that I have that safe place
than I have Dr. Gay as a witness for me at trial.
In a controversial decision that pitted the rights of a defendant
against the rights of a patient's privacy,
the Colorado courts decided Dr. Gay's notes would remain confidential.
In turn, the defense filed an appeal
urging that Dr. Gay had manipulated Melissa in treatment for her own personal reasons.
I was very upset.
To say that I would deliberately work against the best interest of my patient
is probably the worst thing that I think anybody could say to me.
I take the interest of my patients very seriously,
and I had, in this case, worked particularly hard
to ensure that this patient got excellent care.
Christian Richter's attorneys questioned Dr. Gay for two days about her treatment of Melissa.
But when they attempted to ask the psychiatrist questions about her own sexual past,
the Colorado courts ruled such questioning was intrusive and unwarranted.
Were you on a fishing expedition, or did you have knowledge of some bias?
Just as you're asking me questions based on your judgment and gut reaction of me,
I, in a deposition, will kind of explore based on what I know
in combination with a gut reaction of,
gee, it seems like there's something here.
Let me ask some questions and try to find out what's going on.
And you hear rumors in every case that, in this case, heightened our interest,
but aren't, you know, to be dignified by repetition without some basis for it.
The allegation was based on this rumor that Dr. Gay had...
On two different occasions, the Colorado courts had ruled that questions about Dr. Gay's past were inappropriate.
But in this interview, Dr. Richter tried to do what the courts would not allow,
publicly air an unsubstantiated sexual rumor about Dr. Gay.
The accuracy of which I do not know...
I did not want to set a precedent that when a patient sues someone,
that her psychiatrist voids their right to personal privacy,
especially when they are clearly identified as not being a witness in the case.
I think that's a dangerous precedent to set.
I think it would be harmful to psychiatrists across the nation,
as well as other mental health professionals.
And I believe very few mental health professionals would be willing to treat victimized patients
who are likely to become engaged in lawsuits
if they were aware that taking on the treatment of such a patient
meant that they were giving up their right to personal privacy.
I think it was done for two reasons.
One, because Dr. Richter has consistently refused to acknowledge his own responsibility
and wants to pass it on to everyone and anyone else.
And that's the primary cause.
And the other is some advocates don't know when to stop.
It would be helpful to say that to you.
Martha Gay's right to personal privacy and Melissa's right to privacy with her therapist
were important precedents set in the case.
But that only led to an escalation in the defense's attack on Dr. Gay.
In a motion filed just before trial,
defense charged that Melissa's condition was worsening because of Dr. Gay's care.
At that point, it appeared that there was mounting an all-out attack on Dr. Gay.
She, as a lot of physicians, has malpractice coverage.
There is a clause in her insurance contract that requires her to report to the insurer
any claim that is made or might be made against her.
Under that provision, I advised Dr. Gay to contact her insurance company
and to advise them of the attacks that had been made on her,
principally the allegations that she was guilty of malpractice.
Like most psychiatrists in America, both Martha Gay and Jason Richter
bought malpractice coverage from an insurance company
owned in part by the American Psychiatric Association.
When Dr. Gay called the company, she discovered the claims manager assigned to her defense
was also handling the Richter defense.
When I spoke with the claims manager for Colorado, who was Dave Torrance,
he indicated to me that he was quite well aware of the attacks against me
because he was the person who had authorized them
and that he had been approached by attorneys for Dr. Richter for permission to attack me
and he had been behind it 100%.
If they successfully defended Richter
by attempting to make Dr. Gay look to be the culpable party
responsible for most of Melissa's injuries,
then the insurance company would have a much smaller judgment to pay.
Under the vagaries of the legal procedures,
there would be no judgment entered against Dr. Gay
and the judgment entered against Richter would be reduced.
Dr. Nanette Gartrell of San Francisco is just one of several leading psychiatrists
deeply concerned about the attacks on Martha Gay.
Dr. Gartrell, a former chairperson of the APA's Committee on Women,
resigned from the APA to protest the Richter defense.
The Richter-Henry case was really the final straw for me
in terms of my involvement with the American Psychiatric Association.
I had been a leader in the effort to document the prevalence of psychiatric sexual abuse
and educate the profession about this problem since 1982
and to have my efforts followed by this case in which an acknowledged defender
receives all of the resources of the association
and the defense tactics involve attacking and libeling the subsequent treating psychiatrists
as well as further victimizing the patient was really unconscionable.
And I could not stay a member of an association
which placed a higher value on economics than patient care and ethics.
In 1982, Dr. Gartrell and a team of Harvard University researchers
wanted to conduct a national survey into the prevalence of therapist patient sex.
But the APA refused to fund the research because it felt
that unless all health professionals were surveyed,
psychiatrists would be unfairly singled out.
There were a substantial number of powerful prominent male psychiatrists
who were sexually involved with their patients.
And that created an internal unspoken standard
that it was acceptable behavior in some circles.
And it's taken women psychiatrists many years and months of effort
to expose and document this problem primarily because
we are the ones who treat the victimized patients.
Thanks to contributions mainly from women psychiatrists,
Dr. Gartrell was able to complete her study in 1986.
The results showed that two out of every three psychiatrists
knew of a colleague having sex with a patient.
And seven percent of psychiatrists acknowledged
that they had engaged in sex with a patient.
I think that there's definitely a conflict of interest
within the American Psychiatric Association
in terms of defending acknowledged offenders like Dr. Richter
and keeping the premiums low for the insurance
and attempting to prevent this behavior from occurring in the future.
And in this case, I think that the Psychiatric Association
put its resources behind the defense in order to make an example
of Dr. Gay and intimidate and harass other women psychiatrists
who might consider supporting their patients
who have been victimized by psychiatrists
away from filing complaints against them.
I was one of the most vocal people about this disgusting practice.
I don't like it and I feel that it is not appropriate.
But I'm a very silent voice in a room full of lawyers and insurance brokers
and insurance captains of industry.
And they want to talk about a zealous defense.
The answer they would say to you is,
if anything happens to you and you need a lawyer,
you want him to use the most zealous defense.
I can't deny that.
Melissa's case was by now unusual.
Few patients in Melissa's situation ever file suit.
And half of those settle or drop their cases before trial.
In October 1988, the trial of Jason Richter was scheduled.
But it was postponed for another three months
so the defense could have more time to prepare.
After a year of investigation, Melissa was weakening.
I hated to go to work in the morning
because I never knew what I would find when I came home at night.
I didn't know if I'd find her in a puddle of blood on the floor
or in the bathtub or dead from an overdose of pills.
She's never committed suicide.
To my knowledge, she's never even committed any serious attempt on suicide.
Again, as trial approached, Melissa was, I think,
there's a thing called secondary gain syndrome
which means symptoms tend to increase when you want money for the symptoms.
Melissa wanted money for her emotional distress.
I don't think it's any coincidence that her symptoms,
which no one can verify according to her,
increased as the trial got closer.
There were three or four times that were equally intense
where I was not sure she was going to be alive for our next therapy session.
And where I talked with her about coming into the hospital
and put beds on hold for her in the hospital in case,
I felt that I needed to put her in the hospital against her will.
She could have dropped the case.
I mean, if they really thought she was going to kill herself by going to trial,
I would assume they would have told her to not go forward with the case
because no amount of money she was going to win would be worth that.
And in fact, Melissa did seriously consider dropping the suit
because of how stressful it was.
Even late in the case, she considered simply dropping the case,
and I supported her in that.
The Colorado courts had ordered Melissa to turn over her personal address book,
and the defense began calling friends, teachers, and rabbis dating back to her childhood.
Melissa's 62-year-old father, Alan Roberts, a Manhattan attorney,
would be questioned for a day about his daughter's sexual past.
I was subject to a massive heart attack back in the early 1970s,
and my family has tried to shield me from shocks which occurred
within the activities of the family.
I heard nothing about some of the things that were revealed to me
for the first time at my deposition.
And I wonder if that might not have been one of the principal purposes of the deposition
to put Melissa in a position and perhaps my family in a position
whereby they would try to shield me from hearing of these things
and thus make for perhaps an easy settlement
or maybe even a dropping of the action.
There's no way that I can delve into any attorney's mind to find out
if in fact that's the way it really was,
but I know how these things operate, and that is the conclusion to which I have come.
As the trial approached,
the defense decided to place Melissa and her life under closer scrutiny.
The hardest thing about surveillance was that when I reported it to my attorneys at first,
they thought I was being totally paranoid, and I couldn't get anyone to believe me,
and my attorneys were very straight and honest about what they did,
and they didn't feel that defense would do certain things that I said they were doing.
That created a lot of difficulty.
I was concerned about the development of paranoia in this patient,
as I had never seen her as paranoid prior to that,
and this certainly would have indicated that she may be getting psychotic,
which I had never known her to be or thought that she had a tendency to be that ill.
I think it was another form of intimidation that they were trying,
and it did shake Melissa, and she was unnerved by it and upset by it, rightfully so.
Surveillance can be particularly obtrusive, and I think it was so in this case.
You know, there's been a lot of criticism by Melissa and by Dr. Gay
that somehow my attorneys overstepped their bounds, and frankly it's baloney,
and that in my opinion, in every situation,
my attorneys acted solely to provide me with sensible legal representation,
and it's important for people to understand that when you're being sued
and have a potential risk of losing everything you have, as well as your license,
that you're entitled to a strong defense.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what he did was to try to reach out for her at a time
when she said she needed him in the way she said she needed him,
and at a time in his life when he needed somebody, too.
It's a very human thing to do.
Melissa's actions since then should not be rewarded.
This is a court of law. It's not a court of revenge.
The defense of Jason Richter cost the APA Insurance Company over $100,000.
During his three-week trial in February 1989, Dr. Richter knew he could be asked
only one question about his sexual past.
Jason, have you ever before had any type of romantic involvement with a patient?
Absolutely not.
The trouble that you have on the plaintiff's side is if someone's been sexually intimate
with a patient prior to the case and issue, how do you find out?
There's a physician-patient relationship or a psychiatrist or therapist-patient relationship
that needs to be honored, and how do you find out about those patients,
and how do you get that information?
So you ask the defendant.
In this case, the defendant said he had not been sexually intimate with a patient before.
I have no way of checking the validity of that statement.
Melissa, to take up where we left off yesterday afternoon.
But the validity of the answers Melissa gave about her sexual past
would be tested time and again during her three days on the stand.
You had previously had adult romantic relationships with men in the past, correct?
Correct.
And you had had boyfriends in college, correct?
Some.
She enjoyed the limelight in a sense.
I mean, she enjoyed portraying herself as the victim.
And I don't mean enjoyed in the everyday sense of the term,
but she was driven to do this and did not.
She wanted to go to trial.
And I think you have to really look at it as a human being
and look at whether women are simply going to try to get ahead
by holding themselves out as victims when that serves their immediate need
or whether we women are going to stand up and take responsibility for our actions
even if it is in a situation where you can get away with being a victim.
Why did you write those kind of letters to Dr. Rivett?
I thought that was what he wanted from me.
I wanted to please him.
Litigation is hell.
It was like being sexually intimate with someone
and then having it projected up on a movie screen in a room full of people.
And then he injured me.
Did you have a tampon in?
Yes.
Well, so why didn't you take the tampon out?
It was too fast. It happened too fast.
Unfortunately, I've become all too well-educated about how lawyers coach you,
how your attorneys tell you how to dress, what to do.
Even coming up here as an example in the elevator,
my attorney said, now be careful not to smile too much on camera.
And it's important to understand how incredibly much things can be distorted
from what actually happened to what is said in a courtroom,
to the staging and the theatrics of it.
You were recently remarried?
Yes.
Are you trying to start a new life with your wife and son at this point?
You know, I am, and I would agree with the testimony that says
it's hard to get on for me and it's hard to get on for Melissa
with this kind of suit and other issues going on.
And I guess I want to get on with my life.
And I do care about her, and I guess I hope she gets on with hers.
I was surprised by Dr. Richter's testimony at trial.
At the deposition, he had been much less repentant,
much less concerned about Melissa, much more cocky.
At the trial, he started crying and telling the jury
that he genuinely loves Melissa.
You're being sued for punitive damages in this case.
Do you feel that you've already been punished?
I certainly have suffered a lot,
and I guess I think we both suffered.
Maybe the saddest thing for me is that this has been so painful to the two of us,
that we loved each other and that we're both in so much pain from it.
No further questions.
After three weeks, the trial of Dr. Jason Richter was nearly complete.
A three-man, three-woman jury would now decide the case.
As in most sexual malpractice cases,
the jury verdict was controversial and open to interpretation.
The jury found Dr. Jason Richter 82% responsible for Melissa's damages.
Melissa was found 18% responsible.
If you ask me what do I think precipitated that 18%,
I think it was the letters probably played a large part of that,
and to that extent the defense strategy worked.
The jury awarded Melissa $218,000,
but since they found her 18% responsible,
the monetary award would be reduced to $180,000.
The money which would be paid by the APA insurance carrier
would only be enough for Melissa to pay her medical expenses
for the years of therapy she would need recovering from her post-trauma stress disorder.
I was disappointed that it wasn't for a larger sum of money.
I wanted to send out a bigger signal to other abusive therapists
that this sort of conduct was going to be severely sanctioned by our community.
The fact that the jury in this case was able to deal with these issues
without becoming emotionally carried away
and to return a verdict within $10,000
under what the company had offered in advance of trial
I think was very reassuring, if you will, to lawyers and carriers
that it is possible to get juries to consider these issues
without their emotions running away with them.
That's the sense in which I think it was a very important precedent
for the carriers and to the psychiatrists who have to pay premiums.
When you first receive the money, it almost feels contaminated.
You don't want to touch it.
It's like, I don't know, it's like is this supposed to compensate for my life?
It can't.
I think that there were some errors they felt I'd made, and I respect that.
I think they felt that some of the issues that the plaintiff was alleging
were just not proven or untrue,
and I thought it was a very reasonable verdict.
As I said in the previous interview,
I felt that the system worked fairly in this case in terms of the outcome of it.
A month after his trial, Dr. Jason Richter faced a far more important verdict
on his professional conduct in the case.
This time, the jury would be the Colorado Medical Examiners Board,
a state regulatory agency with the power to cancel or suspend
his license to practice medicine.
I had made a complaint to the Board of Medical Examiners
as I was required by law to do.
I was never even contacted by them, which I find quite surprising.
How do you investigate complaints of unethical practice
without talking with the people who've made the complaint?
The Board's investigator also didn't talk to the three expert psychiatrists
who examined Melissa, but did spend a day interviewing Dr. Richter.
In April 1989, the Board ruled Jason Richter was guilty
of one act of substandard care,
a misdemeanor that would bring no disciplinary action.
I think I felt good about the way the medical board
both conducted the investigation in terms of the thoroughness of it,
and secondly, I'm certainly happy to be practicing as a doctor now.
They did find that you had committed one act of substandard care.
What was the act?
I guess you'd have to ask them.
Do you have any idea what it was?
I really don't know.
Again, I don't know.
No one will ever know.
The Board's panel, consisting of four doctors and a member of the public,
will not discuss the case without the permission of Dr. Jason Richter.
He refused.
Anyone who calls or writes to the Board of Medical Examiners
to inquire about the status of a physician is entitled to know
whether the physician is licensed,
where he went to medical school, those sorts of things,
and is also entitled to know whether or not any public disciplinary action
has been taken against a physician's license.
That's available to any inquiring party
with respect to any physician licensed in Colorado.
In the case of Dr. Richter, such an inquiry would yield the result
that Dr. Richter is in fact licensed in the state of Colorado,
and his license is active without any restrictions or encumbrances.
This is Dr. Richter answering by recording.
Please leave your name and telephone number.
Dr. Richter's practice is flourishing today.
His new office is across the street from one of four Denver hospitals
which renewed his privileges after reviewing his conduct in the case.
One professional survey claims 80% of offending therapists
will repeat their offense.
Do you still get referrals from other colleagues,
other psychiatrists in Denver?
Yes, I do.
And that's not to say that my colleagues who make these referrals to me
don't say to me, look, I'm critical of what happened
in this case and in this situation,
but that this was an isolated incident
and that they feel that I've tried as best as I can
to resolve my own emotional issues.
Would you refer a female patient to Dr. Richter?
I would not refer a patient to Dr. Richter at this point.
Do you find it surprising that four, by his account,
four Denver hospitals have examined his behavior
and recredentialed him?
That is pretty appalling to me, but I know that has happened.
As the medical director of a hospital, I think these kinds of situations
present some of the most painful struggles that I've ever had to deal with.
I don't believe such individuals should be in practice.
I don't believe they're safe to be around other patients.
And yet the laws sometimes force us to do things
that are not in accord with our personal beliefs.
Laws require us to give licensed physicians access to using hospitals.
The federal government calls doing that without good cause restraint of trade.
And so a hospital, because the laws written by the legislators are inadequate,
can get into a position in which they're required to let someone practice,
even though they might very much wish that they could say no to that individual.
Mary Asterson Johnson in Human, Sexual and Inadequacy
did address the topic of therapists...
Although Martha Gaye didn't testify in the Richter case,
she still found herself under attack.
Jason Richter and his attorney Paul Cooper filed complaints against her
with the Colorado Psychiatric Society, and she was forced to resign
from her position as vice chair of the society's ethics committee.
It was a very difficult experience.
The individual who gets an extensive education
spends her life building a good reputation,
a reputation that was very well deserved.
And suddenly people make allegations.
And those allegations don't just stay in the court record.
They find their way out because of the number of parties involved,
because the way the allegations in this case were used.
And unfortunately, allegations have a way of sticking.
In September 1989, Dr. Martha Gaye asked the ruling body of the APA in Washington, D.C.
to render a verdict on the tactics of the Richter defense.
After a two-hour meeting, the board of trustees decided
no changes would be made in the defense strategy of future offenders.
Subsequent treating psychiatrists would be offered no further protection
from the APA insurance company, and Dr. Martha Gaye would not be reimbursed
for the $30,000 in legal fees she spent defending herself.
We were under an enormous pressure, and we tried to be as judicious as we could.
Obviously people have criticized us for it.
My personal reaction was disappointment,
and I wish that it had gone in different directions.
And I believe that we—I believe everybody lost.
That upsets me tremendously, that the perpetrator's name has gotten lost,
that he has been essentially forgotten, that it has not affected his reputation or career.
And yet I have been repeatedly the focus of the discussion at the APA,
and it is referred to as the Dr. Gaye case.
Referrals by other Denver psychiatrists to Dr. Gaye dropped by 75 percent
during the year after the trial.
And in June 1990, she decided to close down her Denver practice.
She and her husband moved to the Midwest.
Before leaving Denver, Dr. Gaye tried to get another therapist to look after Melissa.
Ten therapists she approached refused to take the case.
Seven to ten percent of psychiatrists are sexually involved with their patients.
That means that there's a sizable number of patients who have been sexually abused by psychiatrists.
They need further mental health care.
They need to have psychiatrists available who can help them through the healing process.
I think that this case has frightened enormous numbers of psychiatrists
away from ever being willing to treat these patients.
Today, Melissa, under the care of a Denver psychologist,
has co-founded a self-help group for victims of therapist sexual abuse called IMPACT.
Melissa's group is typical of several that have sprung up across America during the last five years.
Groups like IMPACT help victims deal with the shame and guilt they feel.
But even today, few will take any action against their abusers.
I would definitely still do it all over again.
No matter what happened in litigation, no matter how much they tried to humiliate me, by doing this I lived as I believe.
I did what I thought.
No, I did what I know was right.
And I still have my dignity.
Victims of therapist abuse need a voice, and Melissa feels she must speak out publicly about her own painful experience.
In 1987, I filed suit against a therapist who had sexually abused me.
Without ever mentioning Jason Richter by name, Melissa tells legislators that since the civil courts,
medical licensing boards, and professional organizations have failed to stop offending therapists,
sex with a patient should now become a crime.
Today, Colorado is one of seven states to make sex with a patient a criminal offense.
In April 1991, a Colorado legislature passed a law drafted by Melissa to limit defendants' power to inquire into a victim's sexual history.
She said, I have the courage to do this, so maybe you'll have the courage to do this as well.
And together, we can help change this.
And I think all of us, the rest of us, should be pleased that there was a Melissa out there who felt strongly enough to take this on.
Melissa Roberts-Henry and her husband Richard still live together.
Everyone knows what future there is, if any, for their 12-year marriage.
It'll certainly be a scar on my life for the rest of my life.
It's not something that you get over easily.
Hopefully our relationship might be salvaged, but if it's not, obviously there's another scar that this whole experience will have put upon us.
We're all victims. None of us will ever again lead the kind of life that we led before Richter intruded into it.
We don't need him, and nobody needs him.
I despise him. He's got no character.
I wish for him the same kind of trauma that he caused to Melissa.
In the end, the judgment was covered by your insurance company, correct?
That's correct.
Your lawyer's fees were covered by the insurance company, correct?
That's correct.
The medical examiner's board took no action against you?
That's correct.
Four different hospitals took no action against you?
Basically, yes.
On a personal level, you've subsequently remarried?
That's correct.
What happened to you, doctor? What was the punishment, if any?
Certainly, the emotional trauma for me has been an ongoing one.
When you and I had lunch the other day, I said, you know, it's hard to sleep thinking about these interviews and this upcoming show.
That's correct.
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Coming in January on Frontline, the story of Reverend Sun Young Moon in America.
Ten years ago, Moon was known as little more than head of the Unification Church.
His followers called themselves Moonies.
My mind was totally coerced into leaving home, into leaving my parents, into dropping out of school, into thinking that I was working for God.
In 1982, Moon was convicted of conspiracy and filing false tax returns.
I must tell you that I am innocent.
He went to prison for 13 months, and there he faded from public view.
But Reverend Moon has come back quietly, and today he is more conglomerate than cult, emerging as a powerful player in finance, politics, and the media.
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The Washington Times has become a Mooney newspaper.
Frontline investigates the extent and influence of Moon's empire and the foreign sources of his funding.
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The resurrection of Reverend Moon on Frontline in January.
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