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SPEARHEADING SOCIAL REFORM
One of the first cases CCHR investigated was that of Orange County psychiatrist, James Harrison White, who had sexually assaulted a 15-year-old boy. White was sentenced in 1990 to six years and eight months in prison. The Senior Deputy District Attorney, Dennis D. Bauer wrote to CCHR:
“I commend you and your staff for the tireless energy and unselfish commitment to solving one of society‘s neglected and secret problems . . . ’experimental psychiatry.’”
That same year, another case involved the Children’s Farm Home, a residential center for children with behavioral and emotional problems, in Oregon. Three men, William Henry Dufort, the home’s director, another counselor and a caseworker, were all charged with sexual abuse and/or sodomy of young boys under their care. Dufort was charged with forty-three counts and sentenced to forty-eight years in prison.
On July 27, 1992, Alan J. Horowitz of Schenectady, New York was sentenced to ten to twenty years in prison for sodomizing a nine-year-old psychiatric patient the previous year. Allegedly, he had assaulted a string of children from California to Israel to New York in the prior twenty years.
The problem is widespread. Each year, CCHR investigates scores of crimes such as these and ceaselessly lobbies for stronger laws against psychiatric rapists, in particular to make sexual relations with patients by psychotherapists and/or other mental health practitioners illegal. After many years of CCHR efforts, such a law was passed in California in 1989. By 1998 sixteen states had passed these laws and CCHR was actively working with other states to enact similar legislation.
 
More Social Reform Activities
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