GGZ Drenthe wants the disciplinary court to take measures against a psychologist who entered into a relationship in 2019 with a TBS officer of the Forensic Psychiatric Clinic (FPK) in Assen. According to the care institution, she manipulated TBS leave to meet the man in hotel rooms outside the clinic.
The woman was sentenced to community service by the Northern Netherlands court at the end of last year because she entered into a relationship as a care provider with a client entrusted to her. It concerned a Groningen man sentenced to prison and TBS with conditions in 2018.
In their relationship, in which they meet in and outside the clinic in Assen, they had sex with each other 200 times, the psychologist admitted. She has appealed that decision. She is also trying to persuade the Public Prosecution Service to prosecute the TBS prisoner. He forced her to have sex, she believes.
GGZ Drenthe now wants the disciplinary court to take measures because it believes that the psychologist made serious mistakes in her work. According to lawyer Gerard Beernink of GGZ Drenthe, she misled her colleagues in Assen by manipulating TBS leave. Safety has also been compromised.
She was able to go out with him by giving the concerned TBS prisoner leave. She has also never raised the alarm about the relationship. Only when the TBS’er opened a book about the relationship did she tell about it, said the lawyer today at the disciplinary case in Zwolle.
According to lawyer Sierd Roosjen, the clinic in particular can also be blamed. The woman was thrown into the deep end in the TBS institution, he said. While the clinic thought she was too open-minded for this work, she was nevertheless advised to build up a relationship with the TBS prisoner in question and to go on leave alone with him.
The woman does not blame herself for the relationship because it was forced on her by the TBS patient, the lawyer said. She only blames herself for not leaving the institution sooner. Moreover, Roosjen said that GGZ Drenthe almost blindly accepts what patients say. Her story is not believed.
“It says in my medical file that I was raped,” the psychologist said in tears to the disciplinary committee. She knew she should have acted differently as a mental health psychologist. “But I was so stuck that your survival instinct determines how you act and unfortunately not the professional code.”
Yet none of her colleagues knew about the relationship. To the company doctor, the confidential advisor, other psychologists also outside GGZ Drenthe; she told no one else about it. That was because she said she didn’t trust anyone. She no longer works in forensic care.
As a measure of last resort, the medical disciplinary committee can remove a care provider from the profession. The verdict in this case will follow in six weeks.