Case library / Boundary drift with no sexual contact
“Do you know where a gal could get some E?”
In short
Registration surrendered
$8,107Texted to a client after 54 documented sessions. Registration surrendered, $8,107.
Asking a client not to report you is not damage control. It is an additional charge.
What happened
After 54 documented sessions, the associate texted her client: “Do you know where a gal could get some E or Molly or some shit like that? Asking for a friend.” The conversation went on to drug types and quantities.
Asked whether she was drunk, she replied “Not drunk – high yes.” She proposed taking mushrooms with the client.
She disclosed being bisexual and “interested in swinging,” and said “When I'm high, I'll do anything, I would try to sleep with you.”
She insisted the friendship be kept secret.
The client complained to her employer and she was fired. She then asked the client not to report her to the Board.
What it was charged as
Gross negligence.
Recklessly causing emotional harm.
Violating or attempting to violate the chapter and the Board's regulations.
The outcome
Registration surrendered.
$8,107ordered in cost recovery under B&P §125.3What the rule actually says
Asking a client not to report you to the Board is not a mitigating step taken in panic; it is an aggravating fact that goes in the accusation. The Board treats obstruction of its own process as its own category — 16 CCR §1845 makes failure to cooperate with an investigation unprofessional conduct in its own right.
Discussion
Analysis, not part of the decision
After 54 documented sessions, a single text message opens a conversation that ends a registration. The content is bad enough on its own, but the instructive part comes at the end: fired by her employer, she asked the client not to report her to the Board.
That request is not treated as panic. It goes in the accusation. Title 16 §1845 makes failure to cooperate with a Board investigation unprofessional conduct in its own right, and the Board treats interference with its own process as a distinct category of misconduct with its own penalty range. The instinct to contain the damage by talking to the person who could report you is close to universal, and it reliably makes the case worse.
Note the insistence that the friendship be kept secret. Concealment appears in this library so often — pseudonyms, secrecy, a denial to an investigator — that it functions as a diagnostic sign rather than an aggravating detail.
Where insurance reaches, and where it does not
$8,107 in cost recovery on a case that ended in surrender is a useful number to hold next to a sublimit. A therapist with a $5,000 per-proceeding board-defense benefit is out of pocket before the Board's own costs are even counted — and cost recovery is not a defense cost, so no sublimit pays it at all.
What would have changed it
- Fifty-four sessions of ordinary work do not create a store of credit. The record is one text message thread.
- The moment after you realize you have sent something like this is the moment to call a lawyer and your supervisor, in that order, and not to call the client.
Questions
For a law and ethics seminar, or for yourself
- A client tells you they intend to complain to the Board about you. List everything you may do, and everything you may not.
- Where in the chain of events did this become unrecoverable? Was there a point at which self-reporting would have changed the outcome?
- The employer terminated her before any Board involvement. What is the employer's own reporting duty here?
Source. This write-up is drawn from the signed public decision in the case number above. Names, cities and employers have been removed — why. To pull the original, open the Board's quarterly newsletter archive, find the issue covering October 24, 2024, and match the case number in the Formal Disciplinary Actions section. Not legal advice.
