A Volunteer's Story

I worked at a high security forensic hospital housing some of the country’s most notorious mentally-disordered offenders. An enthusiastic new counsellor, I ran therapy groups based out of our Health and Wellbeing Department. Our supervisor had recently left, spurred by increasing chaos in the organization due to a “clinical model change” rolled out by senior management. While beautifully situated in a park-like setting, the hospital was rife with violence, interdisciplinary battles, union disputes, disrespectful interactions, resentment towards senior management, and professional burnout. Morale was at an all-time low. Nevertheless, I fiercely loved my job.

I was nervous about the prospect of a new supervisor, rumoured to be an outside applicant. Cindy, who sat on the hiring panel, said “We were going to go with Candidate A, but the panel slept on it overnight and decided to go with Candidate B. We think the department needs a firm hand.”

Candidate B, Jess, confidently swept into work on her first day. She was petite and spunky, a youngish 32, with a beautiful head of loose blonde curls. She had a smooth sing-song voice with a warm accent. Dynamic, irreverent, and charming, you couldn’t help but like her.

She let us know senior management had given her free reign to take our department in any direction, and she went to work like a newly hired Wall St CEO. Within days, she had severed our extensive relations with our colleagues in other departments. All correspondence was to go through her. A dictatorial regime ruthlessly and efficiently descended, shutting down the entrances and exits.

I caught her in a huge, disturbing lie on Day Four of her tenure. I confronted her, stupidly, when we were alone. Her eyes narrowed as she blocked the door to my office. She was on fire. “It’s your word against mine”, she said. “And they’ll believe me.” She marched out, and I locked myself in my office and cried.

I snuck off-site to meet our chaplain at a coffee shop. “She’s a bad apple and she doesn’t belong in this organization,” I told him. He looked helpless. “Give her a chance,” he said.

Over the next several weeks, she continued to throw out our carefully chosen evidence-based forensic mental health patient programs, introducing unfettered psychodynamic groups with herself as guru. Twelve steps, chanting in the dark, and “shame them until they puke” attack therapy were the new norm. It was clear she didn’t think much of our hospital. “They should just drop a bomb on this place and start over,” she said.

Her face was a kaleidoscope: brief bursts of anger, irritation, interest, pleasure. I steeled myself against her, but sometimes, when she had done something particularly cruel, she could see the microscopic flinch I couldn’t hide. The lust flashed across her face. “She’s a sadist”, I thought. You couldn’t win with Jess.

After years of austerity in the office, she began spending, splashing out large sums on furnishings for her office, expensive reference texts, and colourful workbooks for the patients. She took a helicopter to a trauma conference on the hospital’s dime.

She was a bully, and, after the initial effort of seizing control, she grew bored in the afternoons. She would call us at random into the office, and close the door. What followed was a bewildering to-the-death-mind-game, which left each one of her subordinates the loser.

She told us to approach the patients, in their bedrooms if necessary, wearing low-cut tops. “Make them come to group.” “You want us to wear low-cut tops to convince the patients to come to group?” I asked. “Yes”, she confirmed. I went back to my office and added it to the growing document listing ethical concerns I had regarding Jess’s conduct.

We didn’t know much about Jess at all. Management told us she was from abroad and in possession of a Masters Degree. “I worked in a jail once,” she announced, “but it didn’t work out.”

She bullied the patients too, making one cry. He begged to be let back behind the heavy steel door to his living quarters as she berated him. Another patient Steven, committed suicide just hours after one of his therapy sessions with her. All we knew was that he walked out of the session, no doubt angered by her confrontational style. The rest -- her explanation, her clinical notes -- only the organization knows. She gathered us first thing in the morning to tell us the news. We all burst into tears. Steven, a much-loved, long-time patient was dead, hopeless and alone by his own hand. Irritated by our response, she flounced back to her office, “He was constitutionally incapable of change!” she pronounced, as if Steven’s death was inevitable, as if he was better off, and there was nothing she could have done.

What was maddening was how popular she seemed to be. She palled around with senior management and top forensic psychiatrists. From Day One, she spent hours circulating on our large hospital campus, “stopping by” people’s offices, building alliances. Later, they said she had taken off her sweater and had acted seductively with the men. They felt uncomfortable, but what could they do? She was so fun, relaxed, and engaging, with her brassy slang. Jess knew everybody.

She was clearly abusive, and nothing she said was true, yet she held a strange fascination for me. She was so pretty. So confident and strong. Jess. My colleague later called it Stockholm Syndrome. The organization was supporting her. They loved her. I would get on board. I would please her. Patients came to our groups, intrigued by Jess’s unconventional therapeutic approaches. “Thank God Jess is here!” they said.

I worked tirelessly in the day to keep up with her demands. At night, I would drink a great deal of wine and obsessively review the events of the day. Her undeserved triumphs, the injuries she inflicted on the department and the patients. The injustice of it all. I read Snakes in Suits by Babiak and Hare. Yes. This was Jess. She had to go. When victory came, if it ever came, I would not celebrate. But each day, she grew in stature.

At times, I was rewarded for my loyalty and hard work with some laughs and moments of genuine camaraderie. Our department was doing well. Our programs were thriving. After considering leaving the organization, and turning down a new job offer, I decided to stick it out and stay. To see what would happen.

Only once did I hear any vulnerability. She was in her office, making a phone call. Things were hard at work. The person on the other end picked up. “Hi Dad,” Jess said. Her voice was soft, and wavered for a moment, like a little girl trying to be brave. Maybe she’s not a psychopath? I wondered.

As my clinical supervisor, she oversaw my tenuous therapeutic efforts with a developmentally challenged, severely personality disordered violent offender. The staff were terrified of this patient, who was a constant, immediate threat. Jess called me into her office. “You force him into treatment and get results, or I will personally take him as a patient”, she said. I went back to my office and cried. He couldn’t do therapy, and a directive approach would be incredibly harmful to him. If he became destabilized, he would attack, and he might kill someone this time.

Jess ended up attaching herself to another, even more notorious patient with a hair-trigger temper. The forensic nursing staff became alarmed as she insisted on seeing this patient in a private interview room. Like a dominatrix thrilled with her power, she controlled his every move. If he turned his head, she would shout “No! Look at me!” She really believed she had him in hand, but I warned her. “Even you are no match for this patient.” After she left, the nurses found a book in his possession, The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene. “I think Jess gave it to him,” the patient’s psychiatrist said.

One day, she announced to us that she had been approved by our regulatory council to practice as a psychologist in our jurisdiction. “They grandfathered me in”, she claimed.

“I don’t believe it,” I told the others. “She doesn’t have the required qualifications.” We looked on the council website each day, but her name was not among the list of registrants. Each patient had a large binder on their living unit, where detailed medical case notes were kept. These binders were considered Prima Facie legal evidence. I began to notice that Jess started signing herself as a registered psychologist after each patient interaction. I started photocopying these pages and taking them home. It made me feel better.

Word got around that all was not well in our department, and Jess’s unconventional tactics did not go unnoticed. A bullying investigation was opened by upper management, and, unbeknownst to us, one of the hospital psychologists was leading an inquiry regarding Jess’s claims to be a registered member of the regulatory council.

Despite this, all the doctors in the hospital believed her, and she ingratiated herself as the head psychologist on the high-security women’s ward. As the investigation continued, Jess spent less and less time in our department.

I barely remember the interview with the outside investigator. I cried a lot, and used many Kleenexes from the floral patterned box she provided. I had my list of the things Jess did wrong. “I love my job,” I sobbed. “I trusted the senior management. I feel so betrayed they haven’t protected us.”

The uneasy peace we had over the summer was broken. One day she forcibly confined me in the boardroom. On another, she called me into her office and tried to close the door for one of her now familiar mind-game sessions. I opened the door again. “I’m not comfortable in your office with the door closed,” I asserted. “But the door MUST be closed” she countered. I would not agree. “Well let’s go into the boardroom then, and we can close the door.” I relented, tired.

I remember I was wearing a white shirt. I was battle-scarred but gaining strength. Her words didn’t have the same crippling effect they had in the past. I waved my hand dismissively in her face, like a wand, freeing me from her clutches. “I see you”, I said. “I know what I’m dealing with. It will never be a good fit. But if I have to work with you, I can.” She was quiet. It was the last conversation we ever had.

The days took on a tense rhythm as we awaited the results of the bullying investigation. Jess arrived before us in the morning. Her previously controlling management style was now characterized by complete neglect. Seasoned, we ran the department by ourselves, while she held court on the women’s ward. We only saw her in the late afternoon, when she came to get her purse before she left for the day.

It was October, in the late afternoon. Jess had been with us for nine months. “Jess hasn’t come back for her purse!” my colleague noticed. We waited for a while, then checked the parking lot. Her car was gone! We entered her office, no purse. She was gone! Abandoned were her clinical notebooks, shoes, snacks.

The next day, our whole department was called to the front to speak with the director of the hospital. After insinuating we were disgruntled employees, she told us that Jess had resigned, “effective immediately.”

She’s gone! We jumped up and down and hugged once we got back to the department. Our precious department where she would never set foot again. I popped an imaginary bottle of champagne. The moment of victory. It was my only celebration, and I prayed for all of those victims of psychopaths who never enjoy the taste of justice.

We heard later through the grapevine that, when HR had called her up to the front, “to discuss her credentials”, she had just grabbed her purse and left.

Sadly, it was not the last of Jess. After being run off the property by HR, she had the nerve to call up and insist that the fancy books and office furniture she bought be returned to her. We were able to find the receipts and prove that the organization had paid for these items. Her shoes, and her incendiary sweater, we boxed up and left at the front for her.

We thought that was the end of it, but the regulatory council was aggrieved that the hospital had allowed one of their staff to impersonate a psychologist. They went to the local news. It was a bank holiday, and I had just returned from the theatre after seeing a new film. “Jess is on the news,” my colleague texted me. Sure enough, there they were on the news: The head of the regulatory council, the director of the hospital, and Jess’s full name plastered throughout the broadcast. The reporters even went to her house. Her father answered and said she was getting a lawyer.

We never heard anything more. Who Jess is, and where she is, we still don’t know.