Around the time I moved into my very first place of my own a 3rd exposé appeared in our local paper about the founder of the only eating disorder treatment center in a 200 mile radius. It noted more boundary violations, some that I did not register at the time because I was ignorant of being a similar victim, and was, like Garner’s prey, grateful to be violated.
For instance, one anorexic victim (excuse me – cough!clientcough!) named “Jan” was quoted praising him for taking her calls “at all hours” – that’s another very important lesson that I’ll get into under “the therapist” section. For now, just know you should FLEE, and QUICKLY!, from ANY mental health professional who allows this. Your therapist should ABSOLUTELY have some method of contact between sessions but they should ABSOLUTELY have very clear and fair boundaries that allow them to care for themselves and you in a professional, ethical manner. You can be as grateful as you want to be for being mistreated but the only impact that will have upon the inevitable consequences you will suffer is to make them even more difficult to move beyond.
We also learned about his (boring) board game (that I later discovered multiple copies discarded and abandoned around his clinic. (Interesting graduate-level study tool? MAYBE. Fun “game”?!? NOT!) Also, this was where we learned both his and his mistress’ name were both on the deed of the condo he helped her buy. In this third newspaper article one of his supporters defended his right to his (quote) “lifestyle.” We learned that shortly before the first article came out, he defiantly refused the Ohio State Board’s demand he relinquish his license, which led them to file no less than 15 ethics violations. We learned so many good clinicians had quit their jobs, there, because of the environment.
Well, “Duh,” I thought. This guy and his clinic actually kind of made my unstable life appear relatively calm via comparison, a thought that rendered any notion of getting treatment there a ridiculously moot idea. If you read only one of these articles about the man that founded this clinic and trained the people that still work there, today, and developed the treatment protocols that it is only just recently in 2020 barely began to stop following, then read this one from late December of 2004, the most thorough of them all:
These 3 articles were all written by the same Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, and 7 months after this one he wrote his fourth and last, when the Ohio Board finally succeeded in suspending David Garner’s license – this is the first one Garner “declined” to comment:
Around this time, therapy had turned into the most stressful thing in my life. And I thought this was normal: a logical byproduct of making a voluntary effort to engage oneself in an intense process of change to be a better human and grow and recover.
Lesson Number Five: Therapy is NOT supposed to be “the most stressful thing” in your life. After years of rehabilitative therapy for my therapy, from an ethical clinician who has boundaries, I can tell you with assurance that this lesson is viable. In late spring of 2007 I finally gave up on recovery. Not only did I lack the support I needed to do so, this therapist was clearly not able to help me. And after 5 years of trying to recover I clearly did not have the kind of support system needed to do so, nor was I able to cultivate one on my own. I told her I was only staying so that I would not have to terminate with so many issues between us, saying it would be easier to resolve them directly with her than take them to another provider. She agreed. However, after that difficult session I lost my nerve to confront her over and over again. And she never brought it up. And because it was a sick relationship under the care of a woman I suspect was the borderline she accused me of being, I stupidly stayed 2 more years, until she (supposedly) “retired.” (…yeah right…)
What happened in that office is a different part of my story, but it made checking River Centre’s website a regular part of my life, still watching for indications they were dealing with their scandal in a healthy way. But the same names remained: The two Garners. The same unique last name. A 4th name I had seen for quite awhile. I hoped and watched and waited especially for David Garner’s name to disappear. The same for any female who left, hoping it could be his wife or the “assistant” with whom he had an affair. No luck. The wife continued to work together with the husband and his mistress at the same clinic they opened together, reparenting young eating disorder victims, one big incestual happy family.
How could anyone get help at that place? Now that his secret was out, how could these therapists continue to help providing new victims for this predator to exploit? How could the scorned wife continue to work with him and his girl-on-the-side?
In 2008 the last article about Garner and his clinic came out in the city paper. It was written by a different journalist. They finally took his license away for good.
Like most predators, I correctly guessed he was a re-offender incapable of rehabilitation.
He did it again.
And this time, it was another, eating disordered, vulnerable, young, malleable
patient.