by Stephen Gray
28 May 2012
28 May 2012
A
Christian psychotherapist lost her appeal last week against a ruling by
the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy that her
behaviour in offering to therapeutically change a patient’s sexuality
was negligent.
A decision given last week confirmed that Lesley
Pilkington had been described by the BACP as “negligent”, “dogmatic” and
“unprofessional” in her behaviour after she was approached by
undercover journalist Patrick Strudwick.
In 2009, Mr Strudwick had
pretended to be a gay Christian struggling with his orientation who
wanted to become straight and received two counselling sessions from Ms
Pilkington. Ms
Pilkington was found guilty of professional malpractice in 2011 and
filed an appeal against the decision, which was rejected last week.
Although
it did not address gay conversion therapy directly, the appeals panel
said the counsellor’s behaviour amounted to “professional malpractice in
that Mrs Pilkington had failed to provide the complainant with adequate
professional services that could reasonably be expected of a
practitioner exercising reasonable skill and care.”
The BACP appeals panel
said it was “of the opinion that, given that the complainant presented
with depression and unhappiness, it is incumbent upon a practitioner to
explore why he was depressed/unhappy and not to take at face value his
assertion that it is because of an unwanted same sex attraction. Not to
do this and to rush in and assume that the complainant’s depression and
unhappiness must follow from his unwanted same sex attraction was below
the standard expected of a reasonably competent practitioner.”
Stephen
Evans, Campaigns Manager at the National Secular Society said Ms
Pilkington was “guilty of religiously inspired bigotry parading as
psychotherapy.”
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