And hey howdy, it only took six years for pretty much everything Cenk predicted to come true, and then some:
And yes, I am kink-shaming, because this is fucking perverted.
“He began to hit me when we engaged in sexual activities,” wrote one plaintiff, a New York woman, in a sworn affidavit filed with her lawsuit. “He would have me on my knees and begin to beat me with his hands on my breasts,” she wrote, “occasionally saying, ‘I own you,’ or ‘You are my slave.’”
The malpractice lawsuits, two of them filed on Thursday in Essex Superior Court and a third filed last year, paint a picture of a therapist who encouraged women to trust and rely on him, then coaxed them into humiliating sexual activities, often during treatment sessions for which they were charged. When the New York woman had trouble paying her therapy bills, she said, Ablow advised her to work as an escort or stripper because the work was lucrative.
[…]
In all three cases, the women say they relocated from other states, at Ablow’s request, to be closer to his Newburyport office where he used a controversial treatment for depression: infusions of Ketamine. The drug, an anesthetic that can induce a trance-like state and memory loss, is sometimes abused but is also used by some clinicians to treat chronic depression.
Andrea Celenza, a Lexington psychoanalyst who interviewed the women and reviewed their medical records as an expert witness hired by the plaintiffs, said in a letter filed with the lawsuits that Ablow’s behavior in the case of the New York woman “was sadomasochistic, anti-therapeutic, and constitutes a perverse use of his status and power.” The former patient said that, during their seven-year sexual relationship, Ablow persuaded her to get his initials tattooed on her arm.
Another expert said that Ablow appeared to be using Ketamine in conjunction with talk therapy to gain control over a third patient, a woman from Ohio.
“The patient appears to have become very dependent on this medication and dependent on Dr. Ablow to supply it,” wrote Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, in expert testimony filed with the lawsuits.
I am shocked, SHOCKED to hear that a quack I have wanklisted so many times for the ugly things he has said about women, LGBT people, etc. turns out to be a bona fide pervert.
And that, as Cenk said, he pretty much literally had somebody tied up in his basement. Or two somebodies. Or three. Hell, it even makes sense from a strictly metaphorical angle, because having someone hooked on ketamine is indeed a kind of mental bondage, and this not-so-good doctor’s creepy mind is indeed a basement. An oubliette, if you will:
The patient from Ohio said she came with her mother to see Ablow in early 2015, when she was 25, receiving Ketamine infusions from him. When she returned home, she said, Ablow encouraged her to e-mail him or text him daily.
“I had never had a therapist or any professional take such an interest in me,” the woman said in her signed affidavit, adding that Ablow told her to send him even her most trivial thoughts. “At some point, it became normalized and frankly necessary for me to communicate with Dr. Ablow several times a day.”
During therapy sessions conducted over Skype, the Ohio woman said, Ablow would compliment her on her appearance and tell her he missed her. Soon, he raised the topic of sexual preferences and asked his patient whether she preferred to be submissive or dominant.
The woman said the conversation made her uncomfortable. Still, in March of 2015 she traveled to Newburyport again, this time alone.
“I asked Dr. Ablow why he had such a terrifyingly strong effect on me and he told me it was nothing to be afraid of,” the woman said. “It was then that my sexual encounters with Dr. Ablow began.”
The Ohio woman said Ablow soon persuaded her to move to Newburyport. As a further inducement, he allegedly offered discounts for the Ketamine infusions and promised to arrange job interviews.
“He told me he could convince anyone of anything,” she said.
The Ohio woman said Ablow would have her undress and perform oral sex, although he was careful to stop her before climaxing.
“Much later, when I confronted him about this, he informed me that he had a lot to lose and did not want to leave evidence,” the Ohio woman said. The Ohio woman said Ablow asked her to get a tattoo with his initials, but, unlike the New York patient, she declined.
The woman also said Ablow would sometimes beat her as she kneeled.
“Sometimes he would use his hands and other times he would take off the belt he was wearing and use that to strike me,” the woman said. “This belt had a metal buckle with a skull on it.”
Ugh. Fortunately, this one eventually started seeing another therapist — a REAL one — and freed herself from him and his perversions. But he still haunts her nightmares, and those of others too:
The Ohio woman said she still fears Ablow and is plagued by nightmares in which he chases her with a gun, because he discussed guns with her during their therapy sessions.
The former employees said Ablow could be threatening, displaying his handgun or making subtle hints that he would retaliate if they provided anyone with unfavorable information about his practice. Dixon, who said she had a manipulative sexual relationship with Ablow off-and-on for years, said he once pointed his gun directly at her. During sex, Dixon said, Ablow could be so rough that “he often left bruises and abrasions.”
And again, UGH.
Most sickening of all, there’s the fact that he was a very conscious predator:
Janna McCarthy, who worked for Ablow from May 2014 to July 2015, said Ablow would ask her to schedule appointments with attractive women who were “sad, lonely” and struggling with past trauma at times when no else would be in the office. “I was concerned that he was engaging in sexual contact with some of these women,” she wrote.
One couldn’t very well call that conduct sexual. Violent and abusive is what it was, and an abuse of ethics is what it is. I don’t know what medical school graduated him, or how on Earth he was granted a licence to practice.
But if there is any justice in this world, he will soon be without that…and with it, the means and opportunity to prescribe horse tranquilizers to any more struggling women.
