Bill Logan Long-time gay equality campaigner and Wellington-based counsellor Bill Logan has been censured by the NZ Association of Counsellors for what it calls "professional misconduct and/or conduct unbecoming a member of NZAC." The Association's finding is based on a number of issues including Logan's accepting as a client a young man with whom he had previously had a sexual encounter and "[not] establishing the purpose of [that] counselling or negotiating a clear counselling contract." The Association has criticised Logan for seeing that client for counselling "without proper consultation with him, when a referral to another counsellor would have been preferable." The Association has also reprimanded Logan, who has for many years been involved with a variety of glbti organisations and was one of the most public faces of the 1980s campaign to decriminalise male homosexual intimacy, for advising the client to "consider engaging in illegal activity, namely immigration fraud," advice it further notes is "not within the scope of Mr Logan’s competence." Additionally in its published finding, which Logan says he requested the Association to make public, he is criticised for "allowing a beginning counselling student to see clients despite [the student] not having contractual arrangements in place with his education provider" and "being involved in inappropriate intimate behaviour" with that student who was at the time an employee. Logan says that in late 2012 he had "a sexual experience over the internet by camera with a young man I had never met, on one occasion. Ten months later someone suggested this young man come to talk to me for depression and suicidal thinking connected to his particular coming out issues. He was in danger of becoming suicidal again, and at first he seemed unlikely to meet any other counsellor". He says he met the young man professionally three times and then referred him to a more junior counsellor, the student mentioned in the Association's findings and who Logan says is the originator of the complaints. He says his connection with the young client "at no point became sexual again," after the internet sex episode. "But after our counselling he sought a kind of friendship and support from me by internet chat for a short time. Neither he nor anyone else has suggested any harm was caused in our interactions." Logan acknowledges that in the circumstances around seeing the young man as a client he broke a rule of the Counsellors Association and that he must pay a price. "I broke the rule that you should not see someone as a counsellor if you have had a sexual relationship with them. There are good reasons for this rule, because mixing counselling and sex can have bad consequences. I took responsibility for breaking the rule at the earliest possible time, and I accept the penalty."The penalty decided by the Association includes that he not engage in social activities with clients, supervisees, people whom Mr Logan mentors, student counsellors or other individuals where there is an imbalance of power and age, in intimate behaviours such as flirting and nude spa parties. Logan is also required to undertake "a programme of education and supervision under the direction of the Ethics Committee." Logan says none of the other charges against him are justified. Of the immigration fraud matter the Association says he suggested to the client, Logan says there was "a lighthearted internet conversation, and I suggested that if his partner was indulgent enough in catering to his unusual sexual quirks he should marry him. The question then arose as to what to do if at some hypothetical later point the marriage started to break down. The Counsellors Association says my suggestion would have amounted to immigration fraud. Whether or not it would have, we’re talking here of harmless banter, not professional advice, which he was getting elsewhere at the time." The Counsellors Association finds Logan to have been intimate with the student counsellor and calls on him to cease flirtatious behaviour. Logan says neither the Counsellors Association "nor anyone else has ever actually accused me of being flirtatious, so it’s unclear what they mean when they say I should cease and desist from flirtatious behaviour. What their longer document argued was that I should have intervened to stop the complainant’s flirtatious behaviour, which he engaged in widely, not only with me and other gay men, but also with women." "This referred to his superficial pattern of gestures which is not intimate but a quite common way of expressing gayness. There was a danger that intervening to stop it would have had the impact of a kind of homophobia." Logan says he is also perplexed by the Association's issue regarding "nude spa parties." "For some years my partner and I had a spa pool," he says. "Sometimes, during an evening’s social activity, some of us would get into the pool, clothed or unclothed according to individual preferences. These were not sexual events, and it is a peculiar mind that sees nakedness as inherently sexual." Logan stresses that "I had no intimate interaction whatsoever with this junior counsellor who was the originator of the complaints" to the Association. "I stand for the protection of the relatively less powerful from sexual exploitation by the relatively more powerful," Logan says. "The Counsellors Association is mistaken in its finding that I have violated that norm in any of these events. Additionally, he says, the student counsellor who was the originator of the complaints "had such obvious lies in his preliminary written evidence that he had to retract them during the hearing. However, the Counsellors Association accepted his word against mine on matters which determined outcomes of these proceedings. The case involved important issues of evidence, process and cultural norms which I believe the Counsellors Association got wrong." "However, that does not excuse the very serious mistake I made of counselling someone I’d had a past sexual connection with," Logan says, "and I am very sorry for that. Of the requirement that he undertake a programme of education, he comments that "ongoing supervision and study is critical to good work, and the year’s more intense supervision and study that the Counsellors Association requires me to undertake as a penalty in this matter will not go to waste." Neither the Association nor Logan have identified either the client or the student counsellor whose complaint initiated the lengthy investigation. The New Zealand Association of Counsellors has responded that it’s confident its complaints process is considered, rigorous, fair and robust. “Hearings are reserved for allegations of the most serious ethical breaches and are instituted in approximately 7 per cent of all complaints received. NZAC hearings are conducted according to natural justice guidelines, with the support of legal advice.” It says the full complaints process can be viewed here “NZAC will not be commenting in the media on the findings and sanctions in Mr Logan’s particular case, since the process is private to the parties involved.”
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Friday, 15th May 2015 - 10:51pm