A woman shares her story in the hope that she can save others, and professionals delineate the red flags that should never be ignored

Perel*, who agreed to speak with Mishpacha anonymously, has a sobering story. Speaking to her, I pictured a woman in her early forties, with a Midwestern accent, articulate, smart and balanced. The story she told me was anything but.

Her quest for emotional health led to ensnarement by a controlling and fraudulent mental health practitioner. Her involvement with her therapist, “Esther*,” lasted almost six years, and while Perel ultimately broke free, tragically, her marriage was destroyed along the way.

Perel’s Story

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ifteen years ago, I was in a very vulnerable place, and when a friend told me about Esther, a competent woman doing healing work, I reached out for help. In our first conversation, I shared an issue that was plaguing me.

Esther looked straight into my eyes and spoke slowly and deliberately. “That’s completely unacceptable behavior,” she intoned. I was sold. I fell right in. I had never experienced such validation before. I wanted to stay in therapy with her for the rest of my life.

I thought Esther was a therapist and never questioned my friend’s recommendation. When I asked for a receipt for insurance purposes, she demurred. I never thought to ask why. I believed she had a doctorate — everyone in the therapy group did. Meanwhile, she wasn’t even licensed.

All her clientele came by word of mouth. She held individual and group sessions, and while there were no men in her group of 15–20 women, she encouraged us to bring our spouses for couples therapy. Now I know that this is one of the many, many red flags I should have picked up on.

Esther was charismatic and compelling. Some of her clients were professional therapists and social workers, and even they fell for her. They were so taken by her that they approached her to supervise their clinical practices. They knew she was unlicensed, but they didn’t care. They thought she was brilliant and sought her support anyway.

She would mentor and supervise these professionals and then feed them clients by sending them her own clients’ children as new patients. Her clients were desperate to see their families healthy and whole and would consent when she urged them to send their children to therapy. In the end, her underlings not only became her victims, but perpetrators as well, foisting her methods and her agenda on their own patients.

Unbelievably, Esther’s husband, also noncertified, started a chaburah for the husbands of the women in Esther’s therapy group. Information was passed around between Esther, her husband, and the therapists she was supervising. Nothing was private.

Things escalated when the men in this chaburah decided they’d had enough. They disbanded and contacted rabbanim. Perhaps predictably, Esther’s response was to blame us for not taking responsibility for our own healing and our husbands’ behavior. She demanded that we defend her, demonizing the husbands and asserting they were the “enemy of the work.”

The rabbanim involved tried to shut her operation down but that backfired. We all “circled the wagons,” more determined than ever to stand behind her. We couldn’t imagine life without her, and felt we had no choice but to comply.