A psychologist who testified before the Criminal Code Review Board about a mental health patient, without disclosing she was in an abusive sexual relationship with him, should go to jail for two years, a judge was told Friday.
“No expert witness has ever breached the public trust in such a profound way and obstructed justice in this way ever,” Crown attorney Sivananthan Sivarouban told provincial court Judge Kusham Sharma.
Neither the accused nor her patient can be identified under terms of a publication ban.
In late 2019, the accused began working with the patient and inmate, who had been found not criminally responsible for a murder years earlier. Months later, the two started having sex.
The review board approves the conditions placed on people found not criminally responsible and can adjust their treatment or approve their release into the community based on the submissions of mental health professionals.
Many members of the public have a skeptical opinion of how people found not criminally responsible for their actions are treated by the review board, Sivarouban said.
“The accused’s actions reduced the trust that we hold in the review board and leads to questions of how can you trust any of their decisions,” he said.
Court has heard the patient began telling the psychologist about his affection for her after she had been treating him for several months, and she ultimately told him she, too, had feelings for him.
The two had sex for the first time three months later, although the patient soon turned aggressive and domineering, as he harassed her husband for several years and tried to manipulate and sexually abuse her as she tried to stop the relationship.
The woman was fired from her job when the sexual relationship came to light and has since been stripped of her professional certification.
In a decision in March, Sharma found the psychologist guilty of one count of breach of trust by a public official and one count of attempting to obstruct justice for giving misleading and dishonest information to the review board.
Sharma acquitted her of a second count of breach of trust that was related to the relationship she had with the patient while working as his psychologist at a mental-health facility.
Sharma found the psychologist kept “significant information” from the Criminal Code Review Board on several occasions from 2021 to 2022 to help the patient “achieve his goal of being released into the community,” or not be charged with other crimes or to protect her reputation.
In October 2024, the patient pleaded guilty to criminal harassment and was sentenced to three years of probation. Court heard he called and texted the psychologist’s husband hundreds of times during a three-year period, boasted about his sexual relationship with the man’s wife and sent him nude pictures of her.
Defence lawyer Manny Bhangu urged Sharma on Friday to grant the woman a conditional discharge, arguing she has suffered the loss of her career and was herself the victim of the patient’s abusive and extortive demands.
“This is an extremely unique situation that I would suggest is without precedent,” Bhanghu said. “This was not a relationship.”
The woman told court she feels “deeply ashamed and embarrassed” by her actions.
“I naively believed my education and professional training and experience would protect me from becoming personally involved… I was very wrong,” the woman said.
“Even as his behaviour became troubling and more aggressive, I continued to see the best in him,” she said. “I believed his behaviour toward me and my husband was exclusively my fault.”
Sharma will sentence the woman at a later date.
dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
Dean Pritchard is courts reporter for the Free Press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 2019. Read more about Dean.
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