The Associated Press
March 8, 1979
Dateline: Minneapolis

Psychiatrist Jerome M. Bach says he will accept an order of the Minnesota Board of Medical Examiners placing him on indefinite probation for engaging in sexual activites with four female patients.

Bach, 45, founder of his own psychiatric centre and a clinical associate professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, said Wednesday he will not appeal the decision.

The board suspended Bach’s right to practice medicine but stayed that order and put him on probation on the condition that he discontinue practicing “touch therapy.”

The medicial board said Bach admitted “substantially every allegation” of sexual contact with four former patients.

The most serious acts involved “genital contact” with a woman, 31, the order said. It said both Bach and the woman were “at least partially disrobed” in the doctor’s treatment room and, at one time,”the contact involved manually stimulating each other to orgasm.”

The other three women testified that Bach engaged in kissing, hugging, lap-sitting and touching of breasts.

The board’s order in February 1977 reversed the finding of Howard Kaibel Jr., a state hearing examiner, who had recommended no action against the doctor.

Kaibel had said Bach suffers from tunnel vision, is legally blind, and “depends on physical contact as an additional means of communication and of obtaining information about his patients.”

Kaibel’s report said the 31-year-old woman had engaged “in a concerted, unilateral and subtle campaign” to seducing of therapy. Bach refused her demands that he become her lover, the board’s order said the woman sought therapy primarily because of sexual difficulties with her husband and that during her initial session, Bach “instructed her to kiss him and to feel sexually aroused.” The sexual nature” of contact increased throughout the sessions, the order said.

The record in the 3-year-old case was released Wednesday by Bach’s attorney after Hennepin County District Court Judge Donald Barbeau ruled the board had not exceeded its authority. Barbeau had sealed the record while Bach considered whether to appeal Barbeau’s ruling.