Thomas Morris

The Boston Globe
Panel likely to clear doctor of sex abuse;
Critics decry handling of women’s complaints
By Alison Bass, Globe Staff
July 3, 1992

— Excerpt

In the latest turn in a byzantine case that has triggered bitter complaints from patient-advocates, the state medical board is expected next week to drop charges against a psychiatrist accused of sexually abusing two women patients during the 1970s.

Advocates for sexual-abuse victims charge that the process was stacked in the doctor’s favor because the board refused to hold a joint hearing on the two women’s complaints; following separate proceedings, two hearing officers both ruled in favor of the doctor on the grounds there was insufficient corroboration of the charges.

The case has been wending its way through the system since 1985, when Kathleen Martin, a licensed psychologist, filed a complaint charging that Dr. Thomas A. Morris Jr. had sex with her on numerous occasions while she was in therapy with him in 1979. Morris was then practicing in the Back Bay…