Customer Reviews

Sexual Abuse by Health Professionals: A Personal Search for Meaning and Healing

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Dr. Penfold is one of the very few of the professionals who themselves have been victims of professional abuse who has had the courage to share her story. Most are fearful of being subjected to negative attention. Beyond her honest and heartful story and experience, which will help other victims and professionals seeking to help them, she contributes a wonderful analysis of the problem and what is known about it in the professional literature. This is a very unusual "double barreled" approach and provides for great richness. This is a book that I have read more than once, and one which many victims of professional misconduct of all types find inspiring. As a clinical psychologist and someone who helps people with this sort of issue, it is an invaluble resource.

Penfold writes with two different "voices" for two different audiences. First, she writes for women who have been sexual exploited by health care professionals. Second, she writes for health care professionals. She was a sexual victim of a practicing psychiatrist (also her professor) while she was a medical student. Writing in two voices, one for professionals and one for laypersons, is an extremely difficult task. Penfold is impressively successful in her endeavor.

My first immediate and personal response was total disbelief. Feelings are difficult to intellectualize, but I will make an effort. The case illustrations are too bizarre and a professional observer (one without an agenda) could easily interpret these client/patient complaints as being delusional.

A long list of questions plagued my mind during the entire duration of reading this well written book. Most of my concerns have been left unanswered. Most importantly, Penfold does not come off as a sympathetic figure, but rather as someone who should have known better and responded to her difficulty with greater immediacy. The real problem with Penfold and perhaps all psychotherapists is that we possess sophisticated skills in employing rationalization to justify our mistakes and frailties to ourselves and others. At the end, I remained frustrated because Penfold never had the guts to file a complaint, but claims she is able to shepherd her sexually exploited patients to do what she could not. Her intellectual ability to explain her plight is eloquent, but nevertheless shameful. I hate myself for these thoughts because they are classic illustrations of "blaming the victim." In those circumstances, could I have done better? I like to think I could, but realistically I do not know what I would have done.

The critical question is, if Penfold could not file a complaint, how can we expect our clients and patients to do so? The bottom line is that most therapists (male and female) are going to have difficulty in believing these bizarre complaints. However, here lies the saving grace of this book. In the end, the reader will become a believer and more sensitive to the possibility of this type of sexual exploitation. If Penfold's goal was to pressure health care professionals to be more considerate of the possibility of sexual exploitation among our peers, she has greatly succeeded.

Penfold offers a significant contribution to both health care professionals and victims of sexual exploitation from health care professionals. She opens the door to the subject matter by scratching to surface of this problem. Readers, professional and non-professional, will be left with more questions than answers, but I do not believe this feeling of ambiguity is a bad experience. I strongly recommend this book to health care professionals who are on ethics boards and admissions committees of advanced training problems. In addition, I think that professionals who come in contact with patients and clients who complain about sexual exploitation should recommend Penfold's book to them. Lastly, all appropriate academic libraries should adopt this book.

SEXUAL ABUSE BY HEALTH PROFESSIONALS is an amazing combination of the personal and the professional. Not only does Dr. Penfold have the courage to come forward and describe her abuse in great detail under her own name, she also provides a professional framework for this type of abuse, including an explanation of the problem, the process, and the effects of professional sexual exploitation. This helps the unexploited reader understand the scope of the problem and the complex manner in which it occurs. In addition, it helps those victimized by health professionals understand that (1) it can happen to absolutely anyone; (2) victims are not to blame; and (3) recovery is possible. I read SEXUAL ABUSE BY HEALTH PROFESSIONALS during my recovery from therapist sexual abuse and, more than anything, it helped me stop blaming myself. Thank you, Sue.

Dr. Penfold's book was invaluable when I became a victim of therapist abuse. For one thing, it's very difficult to find material in book form on the subject. Who wants to admit to being used?! Two, its gut-level honesty helped enormously to relieve my own shame about having been duped and exploited, and to channel that into healthy outrage. Three, the fact that Dr. Penfold had been a victim herself--and was a highly educated, intelligent, and sensitive person--helped me see how easily anyone can be victimized in fiduciary relationships, where trust is an essential component of the "therapeutic" process. Finally, her painfully realistic assessment of current attitudes towards victims helped give me a clear idea of what I was up against legally. Power imbalances and old-boy (girl) CYA practices still overwhelmingly determine outcomes--but taking a stand against bullies brings immeasurable returns in self-esteem! Thanks, Dr. Penfold, for helping expose such disgusting, arrogant predators in the mental-health field. I LIVE, thanks in part to warriors like you!

Dr. Susan Penfold has made a major contribution with this book. Unfortunately, published by an academic press, I don't think that it has gotten the attention it deserves. She is not unique in being a professional who herself was abused by someone to whom she had gone for help -- but she is unusual in that she has had the courage to come out of the closet and talk about the experience in this remarkable book. For those who think "this can't happen to me, read on....." The book is important because it combines Dr. Penfold's personal experience with a thorough look at the "bigger picture" - that is, what is known about this type of abuse. It is especially invaluble for both those who have been victimized or who know someone who has, but also a very useful guide to those who treat victims of professional abuse. We regularly recommend it.

Gary Schoener, Licensed Psychologist, Minneapolis