KEY POINTS:
In a case of one person's word against another's, the Human Rights Review tribunal has found a counsellor sexually exploited a woman by sleeping with her while s he was his client.
In a decision issued today, tribunal chairman Royden Hindle and members Jennifer Binns and Winston McKean said the counsellor, Damien Peters, and his client had conflicting accounts of the relationship which took place between February and July 2001.
Although both agreed it was a consensual relationship, Peters, 52, said the sex did not happen until after the counselling sessions stopped.
The woman disputed this, and said she had told him about her eating disorder, self-mutilation problem and that she had been raped in the past, over three initial sessions.
After this, they started sleeping together, either at the woman's home or on the couch in Peters' office, she said.
The relationship ended when he rang to ask her out, but then called back later to cancel the date, saying "a girlfriend had arrived unexpected, and they were going to have a night in, in front of the fire".
She said the relationship and break-up left her devastated and humiliated.
"It has taken me a long time to accept that it was (the defendant's) responsibility to maintain the boundaries rather than mine... I felt that it was all my fault. I had returned to regular bouts of self-mutilation as a way of punishing myself."
Peters said the first time the woman came to see him she told him she hadn't come to him as a client, but thought he was cute and wanted to get to know him better.
After this, the first three sessions with the woman had involved "just talking", he told the tribunal.
He said they only had sex four times, and after several months he decided to stop seeing the complainant, because he didn't like her lifestyle or dysfunctional background.
After the break-up Peters felt sorry for the woman and agreed to start counselling her, against his better judgement, he told the tribunal.
After a number of professional sessions with the woman, he decided he couldn't help her any longer, and told her this, on July 13, 2001.
The tribunal members said Peters had been working as a qualified counsellor for about four years when he met the woman, but didn't realise he had specific legal obligations under the Health and Disability Consumer Rights code.
"He does seem to have had an inkling that there might be ethical considerations raised when a counsellor has an intimate, romantic or sexual relationship with a client."
The tribunal found records showed the first three sessions were paid for, after which there were no more payments.
This was more consistent with the complainant's evidence that the sessions involved counselling, before the relationship turned into a sexual one, the tribunal said.
The members rejected a suggestion by the defendant that the woman had made her complaint as a way of exacting revenge after he ended the relationship.
They said Peters' account of a visit to the woman's house where he saw a whip on the wall and vibrators on display came across as "a self-serving attempt by the defendant to convey the impression that somehow it was he who was the victim, and that the complainant should be seen as having been the predator in their relationship".
The tribunal members also said they weren't convinced by his evidence that the woman had "vigorously ... thrown herself at him" from the day they met.
"His description of events seemed to us to have been reconstructed after the events, and somewhat far-fetched."
They said the complainant's evidence, on the other hand, had the hallmarks of an honest attempt to recall what happened.
"The complainant made appropriate concessions when confronted with the possibility that exact details of events might have been different than she had remembered them. She also candidly accepted her part in the interactions that led to the sexual relationship."
The woman was articulate and composed, and told the tribunal she had "come a long way" since the period in question, the members said.
The tribunal ruled Peters failed to provide services to the woman which were free of sexual exploitation, and ordered him to pay her $23,000 in compensation and exemplary damages.
His application for permanent name suppression was denied.
- NZPA
