Sussex therapist who claimed he could heal trauma with sex jailed for 11 years

A therapist who claimed he could heal birth trauma through sexual touching and oral sex has been sentenced to 11 years in prison.Gerald Peck, who has live profiles promoting his work as a bodywork psychotherapist, was convicted of five sexual offences on 2 February, after being charged in October 2024.Handing down the sentence at Lewes cown court on Thursday, Judge Mooney said: “The young woman who came to see you believed you could help her at a particularly difficult time in her life. She had every reason to believe she could trust you.“All the information you provided to her led her to believe you were a qualified bioenergetics practitioner. That was a lie.“You were banned from practising by the Bioenergetics Institute because in the late 1980s you used your position to sexually abuse women under the guise of therapy. Since that date you’ve been nothing more than a charlatan and a fraud.”Peck was also ordered to pay £9,730 in damages to cover the victim’s costs, including the therapy she has sought to help her recover.Unregulated therapists abusing clients and continuing to practise is a growing problem, and there are mounting calls for formal oversight of the profession.In a statement read at the sentencing, the victim said: “[Peck] caused profound and lasting damage to my mental and physical health, and to every part of my life. More than five years later, I still experience terrifying flashbacks that feel as though I am back in that room with him.“I have lived these past five years with constant worry that other women are likely still being harmed by him.”In a statement given to the police in 2021, the victim described how a friend had recommended Peck when she was seeking help for depression and anxiety.Peck encouraged her to come multiple times per week, with some sessions lasting several hours, she said. The so-called therapy included removing clothing, as skin-to-skin contact “helps soothe nervous systems”, and telling her that her inner baby “needed to suckle”, which would turn into kissing.The sessions progressively involved more nudity and touching, she said. On several occasions, he penetrated her with his finger to “heal [her] birth trauma”. On another occasion, he gave her oral sex and attempted to persuade her to have sex as a “form of energy release”.The victim first reported to the police in February 2021, and although it resulted in an arrest, the case was dropped two months later after receiving advice from the Crown Prosecution Service that there was insufficient evidence for a prosecution.In June, a barrister working on behalf of the Centre for Women’s Justice asked for the case to be reviewed, noting that the complaint had not considered how the woman and Peck did not have a “normal relationship, rather a relationship of therapist or carer and client or patient”.In September, the police reopened the case, which was referred to the CPS the following year. But by January 2024, with no further progress, the victim submitted a formal police complaint, and in August, the Centre for Women’s Justice wrote a legal letter warning that the delays were in breach of her human rights, and noting that the victim was “close to dropping her support for the case”.The victim told the Guardian that she had continued to pursue the matter because she wanted the therapist “to be stopped from manipulating and sexually abusing other women”, and that she hoped it might strengthen the case for a law banning therapists from having sex with clients.“He really seemed to believe he could get away with it,” she said. “There wasn’t a way to stop him in terms of getting him struck off.”She recalled how she had “assumed he was registered somewhere”, but only later found he had been previously disbarred. “It was very easy for him to lie about that.”Even after her case was re-opened, she felt that “the can was just kicked down the road over and over again for years … with lots of different detectives and lawyers picking it up along the way, but not really knowing what to do with it”.She said: “There just wasn’t a recognition of that power imbalance inherent in a therapy relationship. The first CPS lawyer who looked at it, I just think they went: ‘Oh, you’re just two consenting adults doing some kind of alternative woowoo therapy.’“The long police investigation and eventually having the trial was probably as traumatic as the actual abuse,” she said, adding: “I don’t know if I would recommend it to someone else; it was hellish.”Nogah Ofer, a lawyer at the Centre for Women’s Justice who supported the victim, said it was “completely outrageous how difficult it’s been to get this case to court”.“What is really dangerous is that there are these therapists out there, and they’re convincing clients that sexual contact is going to help them, when in fact it’s incredibly damaging,” she said.“The lack of regulation of therapists is really concerning for vulnerable people who could end up with quacks. And you wouldn’t expect that if you go to a doctor.”Leigh Day human rights solicitor Catriona Rubens said that since working with Ella Janneh, who won damages after accusing her therapist of raping her and waived her right to anonymity to campaign on the issue, said she had been contacted by about three people a month reporting sexual and emotional abuse from therapists.However, she said there were often “few options for redress”, with police struggling to “grasp the dynamics and imbalance of power in therapy settings”. She urged UK therapy and counselling membership bodies to back Janneh’s campaign for mandatory regulation to prevent harm to the public.Sojan Joseph, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on mental health, said: “I would completely support any measures put forward by the government to strengthen safeguards against this sort of practice.”