An NHS psychologist has been branded "predatory" after being struck off for allegedly trying to seduce a male heterosexual patient. Michael Evans, a locum Practitioner Psychologist at the NHS's Croydon Community Forensic Team between 2017 and 2019, specialised in therapeutic care to adults with mental health issues and treated the unnamed male patient during that period.
A Health and Care Professions (HCPTS) tribunal panel was told that Evans tried to prevent the man, who had a child, from seeing women, including his mother, as he tried to pursue a sexual relationship with the patient. He bombarded the patient with "hundreds" of texts, took him to McDonald's repeatedly and showered him with gifts such as a bicycle, TV and a £60 shopping voucher.
Evans also took covert photos without the man's permission, offered to take him to a Fatboy Slim concert, turned up at the patient's gym to "sit and stare at him", made sexual advances and tried to encourage the "vulnerable" male to move to an "LGBTQ+ farm" near Brighton with him. As a result, Evans has lost his licence to practise and was branded "predatory" by the panel.
The patient was unsure whether Evans was gay but felt "uncomfortable" and believed that Evans was "coming on to him" despite repeatedly telling the psychologist that he was straight. He said that Evans was "trying to stop him from having any emotional ties with females" and "would try to convince him that relationships with women were bad".
Evans would also tell the patient that women were "not good for him" and tried to persuade the man from seeing his child, female friends or mother. Evans would also turn up to his house unexpectedly, repeatedly and uninvited, which left the man "weirded out" and that the persistent behaviour "derailed" his trust in NHS.
A tribunal report said: "The panel found that [the patient] did become more vulnerable. Evans achieved this by undermining his trust and confidence in the [NHS] team and thereby distancing him from support.
"He also encouraged him to distance himself from his own child and from women generally. The texts demonstrated the guilt and confusion felt by the patient, which the panel found was created and stoked by Evans to gain a level of control over the patient who, as a result, was progressively more vulnerable.
"The panel concluded [it was] all part of a deliberate course of conduct by Evans designed to isolate him, make him more vulnerable, and make him dependent on him. The panel inferred from all the circumstances that Evans' conduct as found proved was all done in pursuit of a future sexual relationship with him. It found all of that conduct was sexually motivated in pursuit of that goal."
Evans left the Croydon Community Forensic Team in August 2019 and later worked as an external supervisor for five students at City, University of London.
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