Courts

Psychological therapist demoted after being wrongly accused of allowing patient to see up her skirt

The WRC recommended she should receive over €177,000 in compensation to prevent this from happening again to another employee

The WRC adjudicator criticised the three years it took the employer to make findings as 'inexcusable and egregious'
The WRC adjudicator criticised the three years it took the employer to make findings as 'inexcusable and egregious'
Stephen Bourke
Wed Apr 10 2024 - 10:30

A psychological therapist demoted after being accused of deliberately allowing a patient to see up her skirt during a counselling session – allegedly telling her to “take a good look” – has received a recommendation for more than €177,000 in compensation at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).

The therapist’s position was that her patient had leant down to pick something up and then looked up her skirt while she was unawares. The therapist said she brushed it off as an “innocent accident” on the part of the patient at the time.

In a recommendation on an industrial dispute published this week, a WRC adjudicator found the therapist “lost her position, her career and her professional reputation” because of a “flawed” investigation by an unidentified employer in the healthcare sector.

It comes nearly eight years on from the initial allegations and after 10 days of hearings at the WRC over the course of 2022 and last year, with the adjudicator criticising the three years it took the employer to make findings as “inexcusable and egregious”.

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The WRC noted the employer had made two findings against the therapist: first that the patient did see the therapist’s underwear during the session and second that the therapist “acted unprofessionally in the aftermath of the incident”.

The patient, Ms SU, was a survivor of child sexual abuse who had been receiving counselling for some time by June 23rd 2016, when the incident was alleged to have taken place, the tribunal heard. She made a complaint that her therapist, Ms AB, was sitting writing “with her legs open” which meant she could see up her skirt.

The therapist maintained that the long skirt she had on would have made it hard for what Ms SU alleged to have happened.

However, after her patient phoned her on leave the following week and accused her of inappropriate conduct, she spoke with her line manager and came to the conclusion it “might be a trauma re-enactment” and that the patient was “projecting trauma from her childhood sexual abuse” on to her therapist, the WRC recorded.

Adjudicator Emile Daly wrote that the investigators had “misconstrued” the therapist’s statement during an interview as an admission that her underwear was seen by the patient. Ms AB had stated that she “reassured SU by saying it was accidental (by which she meant SU’s accident)”, Ms Daly wrote.

“She said this to reassure SU that if SU had accidentally seen up her skirt, it was not a problem for AB. At that stage AB had no idea that SU would later suggest that AB deliberately allowed SU to see her underpants,” Ms Daly wrote.

The adjudicator also wrote that she was “very concerned” at what she regarded as the “hearsay manner” the phone recordings were used to support a finding of unprofessional conduct. The employer’s position was that secret recordings made by the patient of two phone conversations with the therapist the month after the appointment “were not listened to and were set aside”.

However, Rachel Sweeney BL, who appeared for the therapist instructed by Conor White of Comyn Kelleher Tobin, pointed out that her client’s line manager heard the recordings and was asked by the investigators if she had dealt appropriately with the patient.

The investigators found the therapist “more defensive” as the process went on as she became “highly critical” of the patient and the investigation, the WRC noted. Ms AB was demoted to clerical officer effective April 2021, the WRC heard.

Although the therapist wanted her job back, Ms Daly’s said relations between the parties were too far gone for a working relationship to be possible. Instead, her recommendation was that the worker be paid a sum equivalent to what she would have earned as if she had remained a counsellor for the 2½ years between her demotion in April 2021 and the 10th and final WRC hearing into the dispute last October.

The total sum recommended under the Industrial Relations Act 1967 was €177,618.

“I recommend this high level of award not only to compensate AB for what occurred but also to prevent this from happening again to another employee,” wrote Ms Daly.

She said that taking three years to reach a conclusion on the original allegations was “inexcusable and egregious”.

“For the employee whose reputation is being called into question, each morning wakes to a sense of dread of the possibility that they might be found guilty of wrongdoing which has the potential to ruin one’s professional reputation,” Ms Daly wrote.