The rhetoric coming out of the Maryland Psychological Association during the House Bill 33 hearing in front of the House Judiciary Committee was that psychologists that sexually exploited their clients lost their livelihood and by being reported the the National Practitioner Data Bank they couldn’t hop states to practice elsewhere. Both statements are incorrect.
American Live Wire has been working with Lynette’s Law for Maryland to rummage through the debacle that is the state of the board’s disciplinary records, and what’s there is completely contradictory to the statements that were made during HB 33. For one, there have been psychologists that have be reinstated after serving a suspension for their sexual misconduct. You have to really dig through these documents — a number of them are labeled incorrectly and some broken links exist (thankfully, Google has been able to find some).
The other problem lies in the state-hopping. During the HB 33 hearing, the MPA’s lobbyist tried to provide a sense of security that by reporting to charges to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) there could be no state-hopping. According to a report by Public Citizen, the NPDB contains 50,000 incomplete records. There’s no way to make informed decisions with that type of gaping hole. Also, a bit of searching around can find plenty of state-hoppers taking their sexual exploitation to other locales.
For more, read Lobbyists use National Practitioner Data Bank to provide false sense of security
Enigma Underground's American Live Wire 