Today at Lewes Crown Court Gerald Peck was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment for sexual offences and has been ordered to pay the survivor £10,000 to cover the cost of the therapy she has since needed.
Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) salutes the courage of a woman who has battled for five years to bring her former ‘therapist’ perpetrator to justice. Today is an important day for her and for other women whose therapists have turned out to be sexual predators.
Therapy remains unregulated in the UK which means that anyone can set themselves up as a therapist and gain access to vulnerable people. For a therapist to claim that sex with their client is part of their treatment is the ultimate abuse of a position of trust. Therapy clients open up seeking help at a difficult time in their lives, and can be all too easily manipulated.
The woman at the centre of this case first came to CWJ in 2021 when the police closed her case. They viewed the sexual acts as consensual, showing how poorly understood sexual abuse in therapy is. CWJ assisted her with a Victim’s Right to Review and the case was re-opened three months later. By the middle of 2024 the investigation was still ongoing, the years of uncertainty taking a huge toll on her mental health. We had to resort to a legal threat against the police in order to get the case progressed to a charging decision. It has been a long road to bring this perpetrator into the courtroom.
The survivor said:
“When I reported the abuse I'd suffered from this man calling himself a therapist to the police, I didn’t expect it to take such an immense toll and five years to get him convicted. I just wanted him stopped from hurting other women. But for years after I reported him, he was allowed to continue practising his idea of ’therapy’. I came across some very dedicated and compassionate people working in the police and the CPS but the system itself is so broken and everyone so overworked that even those who wanted to help couldn’t do it without long delays.
“The case was originally closed three months after I reported it, when it was deemed to be just a case of two consenting adults. I was devastated, and so worried for his other ‘patients’. There was no recognition of the power imbalance inherent in a therapy relationship or the immense vulnerability of a client in that situation. Without CWJ getting the case re-opened he would still be free to deceive and abuse others. I’m so grateful to everyone who helped to finally get him stopped, and I am so exhausted.”
Nogah Ofer, Solicitor at Centre for Women’s Justice, said:
“We urgently need regulation to prevent unscrupulous people from exploiting vulnerable people in the therapy setting. You would not expect to see a medical or care professional who has no qualifications or oversight, and therapy should be no different.
“This is a hidden problem that society needs to address, and we hope that this case will encourage other survivors to come forward to the police.”
ENDS