24. Guest v. Finbow Day Four
GUEST V. FINBOW: DAY FOUR
“In the United Kingdom, anyone can claim to be a therapist,” Ms. Carr announces to Justice Larkin as she commences her cross-examination of Jean.
“There are regulatory bodies, such as the BACP, but one is not obliged to belong to them, in order to establish a practice. The qualifications that Ms. Guest uses as evidence of her training can be purchased on the internet this evening for under five hundred pounds.” The judge watches her thoughtfully, his pen lifted.
“Truly, in twenty-four hours, your lordship could claim to be a healer, life coach, and even a therapist, giving you direct access to extremely vulnerable people.” Ms. Carr then turns back to Jean, who regards her stonily.
“Which brings me, Ms. Guest, to my first question, if I may. If anyone can claim to be a therapist, can any type of interaction be excused as a therapeutic session?”
“Of course not,” Jean quips.
“Enlighten me. What differentiates an interaction—say, this exchange—from a therapeutic session?”
“Therapists proceed from a source of healing. Whereas you are here with an agenda: to interrogate me and, with respect, make me out to be something that I’m not.”
Ms. Carr raises her eyebrows. “You have no agenda with your clients?”
“My only agenda is to alleviate their suffering.”
Ms. Carr scoffs. “If you were only alleviating suffering, we wouldn’t be in this courtroom, would we?
” She turns and addresses the public gallery as if we are a jury.
“Look at them up there,” she booms. “Look these people in the eyes. You can’t claim that your work saves people.
On the contrary, it breaks up families. Your clients may, in a legal sense, be adults when they commence work with you, but they are eventually reduced to missing children: isolated, lost in the world, dependent on only you, their charismatic leader.
So tell me, Ms. Guest, how precisely do you do it? What happens in your sessions?”
“There are few parameters. I listen to my clients. That is my primary role. To listen and reflect back what I hear.”
“Do you seek your patients’ consent for the methods you use?”
Jean tilts her chin upward, as if summoning the higher powers she claimed to channel. “I’m not sure I understand the question.”
“You said yourself that your methods are controversial. It would make sense to gain consent, wouldn’t it? Especially in view of the complaints that have been made against you?”
“It’s not really my role to keep a record of things.”
“Are you sure? That’s certainly not what some of your ex-clients attest. They say the exact opposite, and that they witnessed you recording their private sessions. Do you confirm this?”
“I have, on occasion, recorded a session with a client for the purposes of later analysis. Or for them to return back to.”
“Is this why you ban your clients from listening to music? So they can hear themselves on repeat?”
“I don’t ban anything. I suggest improvements. And if my clients didn’t like how we worked, they wouldn’t come back to me, or recommend me to their friends. It’s as simple as that.”
Ms. Carr frowns. “Yet we have statements from ex-clients of yours who wouldn’t recommend you at all.
They were, in fact, very disturbed by the treatment they received from you.
Some claim you performed hypnotherapy on them without their express permission.
” Jean’s face colors as the lawyer studies her notes.
“According to Temerlin’s definition, hypnosis reduces the individual to a highly suggestible state, allowing any newly formed conclusions or beliefs they may hold upon waking to be easily tainted or corrupted.
Ms. Guest, in your sessions, it is clear that your clients don’t access memories that really occurred.
Under your manipulation, they fabricate them.
Ms. Guest, allow me to just confirm with you some of the memories your ex-clients have uncovered during the last two decades.
Across pages 670 to 725, we have statements from two ex-clients, who began to recall memories that suggested their parents participated in pedophile rings, committing deplorably violent and sickening acts.
From page 800 onward, we have a statement from another client who, after only one or two sessions, suddenly began to recall histories of sexual abuse from within the close family network.
When these clients terminate sessions with you—as some of the lucky ones do—and are rehabilitated, they realize that these events did not actually occur at all.
They all attest to how excruciatingly painful this realization is.
” She pauses for a moment, staring meaningfully at Jean. “Some never recover.”
Jean glances nervously toward Ms. Ibrahim. “I don’t—I don’t think I am obliged to comment on specific cases.”
“Then can you confirm the following dates upon which you received letters threatening legal action?” Ms. Carr then reads out a long sequence of dates, spanning the last twenty years. Jean confirms each one, looking as if she is having to swallow something that is spiked.
“One ex-client, who cannot be named, even lodged a statement with the Metropolitan Police, claiming that you were blackmailing her with the material you recorded. Can you confirm that you were brought in for questioning on three separate occasions?”
“Yes, but they found nothing against me,” says Jean, with her head bowed.
“And how could they?” Ms. Carr cries with exasperation. “You’re not bound to any code of conduct, are you?”
This comment provokes a hum of excitement in the gallery, though down in the courtroom, Justice Larkin issues a final warning to Ms. Carr for her commentary.
She apologizes, then changes course, to confirm the details of Mary’s property management.
I bunch my fists to hear how much rent this is earning her.
Then a far darker thought occurs: Jean, living in one of these London residences with Mary’s child.
It cannot be allowed to happen, I decide. I must not let that happen.
“I do not control what Ms. Finbow chooses to do with her financial assets. Ms. Finbow felt responsible for the loss of my other clients, thanks to her mother’s vicious campaign.
She has chosen, temporarily, to support me through her property, because that is more efficient.
I am grateful for her support, but she is not duty bound to do so. ”
Ms. Carr sighs and folds her arms. “Why did you continue working with Ms. Finbow, if the relationship impacted your earnings to the degree you have accounted for? Why keep going, if, as you say, your professional standing is being shredded?”
Jean’s lips tremble. “Because my clients come to me with deeply embedded trauma, and I make a commitment to them. This was the case with the defendant’s daughter. When we began working together, she was extremely damaged. There was a huge amount to unravel throughout her childhood.”
Jean presses her palms together. I glance at the back of Bonamy’s head and imagine, queasily, what many in the courtroom might be thinking: that he is the cause. My heart aches for him.
“All I want, all I have ever wanted, is to help Ms. Finbow,” Jean continues. “The same goes for everyone I work with.”
There is a pause, and Jean looks upward toward the gallery. I try to look away, but Jean’s gaze latches on to mine. My pulse races. Her smile is one of mutual recognition: I know you know . Then another, perhaps worse, look crosses her face.
It is a different smile, broader and threatening: I forgive you.