A Bay Area woman was awarded $3.5 million in damages by a Santa Clara County civil jury after suing a San Jose rehab facility, alleging she was impregnated by an uncredentialed counselor while seeking treatment for alcohol addiction.<\/p>\n
The mother of two, who filed her lawsuit as Jane Doe, said she trusted the rehab facility, Support Systems Homes,\u00a0would keep her safe and get her sober when she signed up for treatment in 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would just be in bed drinking, passed out,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was definitely something that I didn\u2019t want to do and keep doing, and I knew I couldn\u2019t just stop on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a residential client, she was supposed to be \u201cpaired with a credentialed counselor\u201d to guide her through the detox process and set her on the path to long-term recovery, according to the facility\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not what happened, she said. Instead, she was paired with a counselor who wasn\u2019t certified and was supposed to be working under supervision, according to her lawsuit. He was referred to as John Smith during the trial and had not yet worked enough hours to earn his counseling credential.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was not allowed to do one-on-one counseling under these circumstances,\u201d said Mark Hooshmand, Jane Doe\u2019s attorney. \u201cHe was not a licensed or certified counselor. He should never have been alone with her whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doe said the relationship with her counselor quickly became unprofessional.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would make comments like, \u2018yeah, I can\u2019t focus right now,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cHe put his hands on my thigh.\u201d<\/p>\n
The interactions escalated, she said, with the counselor regularly having sex with her in his office.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was crying a lot, and he just leaned in and then started to kiss me,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re in that moment, it\u2019s hard to explain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Jane Doe said it\u2019s hard to explain what happened, a facility supervisor acknowledged in a deposition that counselors at the facility are routinely trained to deal with romantic feelings involving patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is something that we talk about weekly,\u201d the supervisor said in his deposition. \u201cAt least once a week, and possibly every morning. Be careful of counter transference. It\u2019s a huge issue in the industry in general.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the National Institutes of Health, transference is a phenomenon where a patient displaces their emotions, often romantic, onto their counselor or therapist. It can also work in reverse and can be dangerous if it\u2019s taken advantage of or mishandled.<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA woman who accused a rehab counselor of taking advantage of her shared her story with NBC Bay Area\u2019s Investigative Unit to warn others. Senior Investigator Candice Nguyen spoke with the woman and examined the case.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
In California, counselors are prohibited by law from having a sexual relationship with a patient being treated at a rehab facility.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite that, Doe said the sexual encounters became a regular occurrence while she was at the facility, which led to an unplanned pregnancy and derailed her recovery.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did relapse,\u201d she said. \u201cJust from being stressed out and finding out that I was pregnant.\u201d<\/p>\n
When her husband found out, he reported it to the facility, according to an incident report obtained by Doe\u2019s attorney, and the counselor was immediately fired.<\/p>\n
Doe went on to sue the facility and the counselor in 2023, alleging she was taken advantage of, and that the facility was understaffed and mismanaged.<\/p>\n
\u201cJane Doe was vulnerable, there was an imbalance of power, and there was the fact she\u2019s going through a detox and coming off of alcohol,\u201d Hooshmand said.<\/p>\n
On top of assigning her an uncredentialed counselor, the lawsuit alleged the facility failed \u201cto properly supervise\u201d him.<\/p>\n
The facility is owned by Robert Norton, whose behavior, according to the lawsuit, \u201cdirectly interfered with the facility\u2019s operations and management.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2022, the California Department of Health Care Services investigated a complaint that Norton would show up to the rehab program drunk. While investigators did not substantiate the claim, they did cite the facility for allowing \u201cpeople onsite that act in an unprofessional manner,\u201d after multiple employees told investigators about Norton\u2019s \u201cerratic behavior while at the program.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe facility\u2019s responsible because of how badly mismanaged it was and they enabled and allowed this counselor to have this one-on-one contact unsupervised with Jane Doe,\u201d Hooshmand said.<\/p>\n
Neither Norton, the counselor, nor their attorneys responded to NBC Bay Area\u2019s requests for comment. In court filings, however, the facility denied causing any damages to Jane Doe.<\/p>\n
So did the counselor, who later testified that a supervisor asked him to work as a counselor at the facility, even though he wasn\u2019t yet qualified.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course [I] said yes, but I\u2019m short my hours,\u201d he said in court. \u201cAnd she told me that she would take care of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a recorded deposition, the counselor said he was stressed out and overworked.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the moment I clocked in, to the moment I clocked out, it was nonstop moving, and counseling, and group sessions and paperwork, and mediating,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The civil jury found in Jane Doe\u2019s favor and awarded her $3.5 million in damages. The jury held both the facility and the counselor responsible for the harm Jane Doe suffered from their negligence but assigned most of the blame to the facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt good to know that they actually understood the whole situation for what it was,\u201d said Doe, adding she wanted to speak out now as a warning to other women enduring similar struggles. \u201cBecause it was just hard for me to have to go and be open about it, you know, something that I\u2019m not necessarily proud of. Just knowing that people support you and understand that it\u2019s not my fault.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hooshmand said he believes these issues go far beyond Support Systems Homes, and that the entire rehab industry is prone to abuse.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is very common,\u201d Hooshmand said. \u201cI think it\u2019s widely underreported. I think, unfortunately, there\u2019s not enough oversight and management of the facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doe said the experience took a serious toll and led to a split with her husband. She said she is doing much better now, though, one-year sober and working to spend more time with her two children. <\/p>\n
\u201cBeing present for my kids and them not seeing me under the influence and knowing they are proud of me and my family\u2019s proud of me, it just feels really good,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Bay Area woman was awarded $3.5 million in damages by a Santa Clara County civil jury after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[348,32521,88,90,89],"class_list":{"0":"post-249736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-investigation","9":"tag-investigative-unit","10":"tag-san-jose","11":"tag-san-jose-headlines","12":"tag-san-jose-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}