THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

October 9, 1996, Wednesday, HOME FINAL EDITION

Court awards woman $ 8.4 million;
Her psychiatrist, sought on fraud counts, defended rage reduction’ therapy

BYLINE: Michael Saul, Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 25A

LENGTH: 646 words

A 23-year-old Arlington woman who accused her psychiatrist of physically abusing her during “rage reduction” therapy won an $ 8.4 million judgment Tuesday.
Human rights advocates said they hope the ruling will prompt the Legislature to ban the treatment statewide.
The court found Dr. Robert H. Gross responsible for assaulting and intentionally inflicting emotional distress on Jeannie Warren while treating her at the now-defunct Psychiatric Institute of Fort Worth.
Ms. Warren, whose mother had placed her in the facility in April 1989, won the judgment in state District Judge Ken Curry’s Tarrant County court after waiving her right to a jury trial Tuesday morning.
The therapy – known as “rage reduction” or “trust development” – involves restraining children or teenagers and goading them into a rage to expose underlying sources of anger.
That is done by jabbing the patient’s rib cage, violently shaking the person’s head or yelling obscenities at close range, according to documents filed in court.
Dr. Gross, who is being sought by the U.S. attorney’s office to answer billing fraud charges, did not appear in court and did not have an attorney represent him at the trial.
Ms. Warren was subjected to about two dozen therapy sessions in which mental health workers pinned her down, muffled her nose and mouth and prodded her abdomen with fists, according to court documents. The sessions would last as long as five hours.
“I thought these people were going to kill me,” she said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon. “I thought they were going to suffocate me to death – they were putting their hands over my mouth to smother my cries.”
Ms. Warren said the sessions centered on Dr. Gross’ repeatedly asking her to identify the source of her anger.
“They wanted me to come up with the answer that I was angry because my biological mother had left me. Dr. Gross was screaming at me, Who are you angry with? Who are you angry with?’ I couldn’t think of anything except, You! You are the one who is hurting me.’ ”
The abuse, she said, continued until she realized what Dr. Gross wanted her to say.
“I was afraid if I didn’t go along with it they would hurt me worse,” she said. “What are you going to do if you’re a child?”
Dr. Foster Cline, the leading marketer of the treatment and the physician who introduced it to Dr. Gross, defended the therapy in a January 1995 deposition as an important way to help patients express their anger in a “controlled and loving environment.”
“The main objective is not to cause pain but . . . to express rage and hate,” he said in the deposition. “And sometimes the only way a person can get there, unfortunately, is through pain.”
But the physical and verbal techniques involved could be construed as child abuse, Dr. Cline acknowledged.
Jerry Boswell, director of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Texas, said the judgment will lay the groundwork for a new effort to ban the therapy.
“The lawsuit gives us a tool to show the Legislature that the court believes this is abuse,” Mr. Boswell said. “This is just part of a collection of bizarre psychiatric treatments that should be eliminated.”
A Texas Senate interim committee investigating private psychiatric hospital abuse recommended prohibiting the therapy in 1992, but the ban didn’t pass the full Senate.
The therapy has spawned a spate of lawsuits around the country, Mr. Boswell said. In June 1995, a 3-year-old girl was killed in Salt Lake City while undergoing the therapy.
Ms. Warren, now married and the mother of a 10-month-old, said she continues to suffer frequent flashbacks and nightmares. She plans to move from the Dallas-Fort Worth area because she fears bumping into someone from the institute.
“No matter what I do, I will always have this with me,” she said. “It is never actually going to go away.”