APA Condemns Sharing of Immigrant Youths’ Therapy Notes With ICE

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From the American Psychological Association: “The American Psychological Association expressed shock and outrage that the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement has been sharing confidential psychotherapy notes with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deny asylum to some immigrant youths.

‘ORR’s sharing of confidential therapy notes of traumatized children destroys the bond of trust between patient and therapist that is vital to helping the patient,’ said APA President Sandra L. Shullman, PhD. ‘We call on ORR to stop this practice immediately and on the Department of Health and Human Services and Congress to investigate its prevalence. We also call on ICE to release any immigrants who have had their asylum requests denied as a result.’

… ‘For this administration to weaponize these therapy sessions by ordering that the psychotherapy notes be passed to ICE is appalling,’ Shullman added. ‘These children have already experienced some unimaginable traumas. Plus, these are scared minors who may not understand that speaking truthfully to therapists about gangs and drugs – possibly the reasons they left home – would be used against them.'”

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  1. Police here simply call a psychologist and tell them what information they require, and the psychologists will provide that information. What’s the point of having people trust you unless your going to exploit that trust and make some money from it.

    Police tell me that because they didn’t receive a complaint form the psychologist concerned regarding his family being threatened they will take no action. Imagine that, the psychologist who was threatened by police didn’t report that threat to police.

    I will never, under any circumstances trust a psychologist again. It was fortunate that I explained to him before we spoke that I would lie to him to ensure that if he were approached by police for information he would not know what information was true and what was false.

    It was the “who else has got the documents?” question that revealed that police wanted to know who else I had shown the documented proof of the torture and kidnapping to. They thought the documents had been retrieved, and here I was sitting in a psychologists office with the proof. Very poor attempt at a cover up, but the idea of using mental health services as an ‘information retrieval service’ really did leave me “shocked and outraged”.

    The ability to ‘coerce’ people who one would imagine you could share confidential information with was swept away in Australia back in 2010 with the High Court decision in ACC v Stoddart which flushed confidentiality down the toilet with “no spousal privilege in common law in Australia”. If a spouse can be ‘coerced’ to reveal information regarding their partner, then of course the dominoes fall.

    This is important because the case of Nicola Gobbo a lawyer who was acting as a police informant with confidential information from her ‘clients’ was breaking the law at the time. Police have since said “it can’t happen again” but have failed to tell us why. The reason is that they now have the law to allow them to threaten doctors, lawyers and partners to provide them with the information they want, and no avenue for complaint for those who find their confidential information being shared in this manner.

    So as it stands we find ourselves paying lawyers and doctors to act as snitches for police. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. With this and the ability to use mental institutions to torture and kidnap citizens we should have the place cleaned up in no time. Don’t like the facts, insufficient evidence, and here’s what we want to be the truth. Not that any of this fabrication of evidence is new to our police (there’s a long history of it) but the ease with which it can be done now is astounding. The belief that computers and cameras was going to make policing and justice balanced was a fallacy. All its done is create the space for corruption to flourish.

    It is more than the therapy sessions that has been weaponised in Australia.

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