Osteopath struck off over sex acts in his ‘therapy room’
A RENOWNED osteopath has been struck off for conducting a sexual relationship with a ‘vulnerable’ patient in the treatment room of his £1.3million home.
A court heard that physical therapist Michael Kern, 62, has written about the importance of maintaining boundaries with patients – but failed to follow his own advice.
He repeatedly engaged in sex acts with the woman during treatment sessions between 2006 and 2007, telling her after one occasion that she ‘did not have to pay him’.
When their sexual encounters stopped, he tried to re-establish contact in a late-night phone call a year later, inviting her to his home in Highgate, north London.
The woman, who was ‘emotionally distressed’, said she felt like he was trying to ‘use’ her. She reported him in 2017 and last year he was found guilty of ‘unacceptable conduct’ by the General Osteopathic Council (GOsC). The disgraced practitioner appealed the decision but his name was taken off the register yesterday.
Mr Kern, who first qualified in 1988, is highly regarded in his profession as an osteopath, educator and writer. In 1989 he set up the Craniosacral Therapy Educational Trust as a school of excellence in the alternative practice.
His victim, known as Patient A, said she went to him because she was interested in his techniques. The judge, Mr Justice Martin Spencer, said most of the sex acts took place in the ‘therapy room’ at the house, which he used as his treatment centre.
Last November, the GOsC’s professional conduct committee said Mr Kern’s behaviour was a ‘gross abuse of his professional position’. It added: ‘On his own admission, he had not only engaged in sexual activity with Patient A, but had done so repeatedly in the context of professional consultations.
‘Patient A was vulnerable, yet he knowingly and repeatedly engaged in sexual activity with her, notwithstanding her evident emotional distress in treatment sessions.’
At the High Court in London, Andrew Faux, for the GOsC,
‘Gross abuse of his position’
said the misconduct was of ‘an extremely serious nature’. But Mr Kern argued his career should not be ended by what he did over a decade ago.
His barrister, Matthew Paul, said the decision to strike him off was ‘excessive’ and that the panel had not looked at his ‘merits as a practitioner’.
But Mr Justice Spencer backed the panel’s ruling, saying that a sexual relationship ‘undermines the fundamental trust which patients put in their therapists’.
He went on: ‘Undoubtedly, the erasure of his name from the register of osteopaths is a loss to the profession.
‘But that is the price that this profession is prepared to pay to uphold its reputation.’