Therapist sex abuse case reveals dark past, ethical concerns
CONCORD, N.H. — Two years after accusing her former therapist of sexual abuse, she idly plugged his address into an online directory and came across an unfamiliar alias. A search of that name turned up decades-old newspaper articles about the death of a 10-year-old girl.
“What’s that got to do with Peter?” she wondered.
A pair of obituaries she found next pointed closer to a connection. But she was still circling the perimeter of the truth when she sat down at a public library computer in January 2020. On a newspaper archive site, she scrolled past several small, blurry photos until a larger one popped up.
“Bingo,” she thought. “That’s him.”
Her next thought? “You bastard.”
New Hampshire is one of 10 states that allow people to change their names while incarcerated, though their criminal records remain accessible to police and employers conducting criminal background checks. But the public has no way of knowing someone’s earlier identity unless they go to the county courthouse where the change was approved, or do some serious sleuthing.
That allowed Peter Dushame to become Peter Stone, who faces new charges more than 30 years after he was sent to prison under his old name. What happened in between raises complicated questions about the right to forge a new life after incarceration and what patients can or should know about a mental health provider’s past.
There’s another question with no simple answer: Who is Peter Stone?
He was 33 years old, drunk and named Peter Dushame when he plowed his Pontiac into a motorcycle parked alongside the F.E. Everett Turnpike in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Oct. 1, 1989. Lacey Packer, a fourth grader on her way home to Massachusetts from a Toys for Tots benefit with her father, died two days later.
It was his third fatal crash — though the first to involve alcohol. At age 17, he pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of a pedestrian crash after killing a former fellow student at his high school. At age 22, he was acquitted of vehicular homicide after a crash that killed a 61-year-old woman.
Because he held a valid driver’s license despite five previous drunken driving convictions, the 1989 crash became a flash point.
Both Massachusetts and New Hampshire enacted new laws in response, and Dushame became the first person in New Hampshire to be convicted of manslaughter for a drunken driving fatality. The Boston Globe called him “the most notorious drunk driver in New England history.”
But over time, he dedicated himself to helping people in addiction recovery, earning a master’s degree in counseling psychology from behind bars, and leading treatment programs for other inmates.
“I have a gift,” he told The Boston Globe Magazine in 1996. “I can look at a person and feel his pain.”
Two years later, he legally changed his name from Peter Dushame to Peter Stone. He was released from prison in 2002 and eventually set up shop as a licensed drug and alcohol counselor in North Conway.
“I stand as evidence that people can change,” Stone wrote to state regulators in 2013, telling them that contrary to their concerns, his past had helped clients gain perspective on the dangers of drunken driving.
“They respect my sincerity and honesty,” he said.
Then, last July, he was charged with sexually assaulting a client who says he was anything but honest.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, the 61-year-old woman said she developed romantic feelings for Stone about six months after he began treating her for anxiety, depression and alcohol abuse in June 2013. Though he immediately told her a relationship would be unethical, he eventually initiated sexual contact in February 2016, she said.
“’That crossed the line,’” the woman remembers him saying after he pulled up his pants. “’When am I seeing you again?’”
“It was almost comical,” she told the AP, which generally does not name people who allege sexual assault. “Except that it was terrible.”
Laws related to name changes differ across the country. While 26 states have no restrictions on name changes after felony convictions, 15 have bans or temporary waiting periods for those convicted of certain crimes, according to the ACLU in Illinois, which has one of the most restrictive laws.
New Hampshire does not prohibit felons from becoming therapists, and Stone appropriately disclosed his criminal record on licensing applications and other documents, according to a review of records obtained by the AP.