Day 594. Survivors found: 8
Thanks to one of our supporters for alerting us to this case.
Thomas A. Gill, co-founder of Kirkland-based Attachment Center Northwest, was sentenced to five months in jail and a two-year suspended sentence Friday after pleading guilty to sex crimes involving a 15-year old male client. Gill, 63, is a former social worker who counseled children with autism. After being found naked with an autistic teen in his Mercer Island home, he was charged last year with indecent liberties and communication with a minor for immoral purposes. Gill’s social-work license was suspended by the Department of Health.
Gill had been counseling the 15-year-old for three years including with the boys spending the night at his home according to court records. The boy told police that Gill taught him how to put a condom on, talked about sex and touched his penis, according to court documents filed in King County Superior Court.
Superior Court Judge William Downing suspended most of the sentence on condition that Gill receive sexual deviancy treatment.
Source: Kirkland Reporter, Washington
In an effort to cover up the child molestation that happened there, the Attachment Center Northwest has changed its name to “Attachment and Trauma Specialists.”
Its website now makes no mention of Tom Gill whatsoever, despite the fact that he co-founded the entire organization.
Suffice to say, child molestation runs rampant in attachment therapy/RAD treatment.
Not all who purport to treat attachment disorder are pedophiles.
However, given that this bogus therapy relies upon coercive body restraint, non-consensual touching and indoctrinating parents and educators that all attachment disordered children are pathological liars whose claims of abuse are always fabricated (see attachment disorder therapist Arthur Becker-Weidman’s checklist e.g.), many of these so-called specialists can and do sexually abuse children with impunity.
More on this later; it is hard enough to reveal that you were physically abused as a child by adults who claimed they would “heal” you.
Admitting that you were molested by them as well corresponds in an intellectual sense, but — speaking from a wholly personal perspective — somehow it feels like a quite different thing altogether.
Comments 18
Here are some more links re this story:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008028826_gill02m.html
Therapist accused of misconduct with minor – Mercer Island Reporter*
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/406039_counselor08.html
Posted 13 Oct 2009 at 07:52 ¶Not sure that the Mercer Island Reporter link that I attempted to give above worked, so here is another link to same:
http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/east_king/mir/news/44817422.html
Posted 13 Oct 2009 at 07:54 ¶I noticed in the comments on his blog some of the same names his socks have show up to give him praise. I really cannot comment on that further.
Posted 13 Oct 2009 at 14:00 ¶@Eastern Sky: thanks for the links!
@forthelost: Good observation – that’s Becker-Weidman’s m.o., for sure.
Posted 13 Oct 2009 at 15:27 ¶It seems that there should be a better term than “pedophile.” Perhaps something like “pedosadist” would be more apt.
Good grief, I see that besides being a counselor, Tom Gill also worked as respite provider.
There has been a rash of Attachment Therapists disciplined recently in Colorado — and now this Washington “therapist” jailed and his license revoked permanently. Gill didn’t get enough time in my opinion, but after you see so many bad therapists not punished at all, this seems like good news!
Some people think that Holding Therapy isn’t done in Washington state anymore. I won’t bet on it. It appears that until Gill was caught with his pants down, the Attachment Center Northwest was doing Holding Therapy Intensives and the whole nine yards.
AT/P certainly seems like the perfect haven for people with all sorts of criminal intent. In taped sessions, speaking to their peers, Attachment Therapists have made amazing admissions about illegal and unethical dealings: Quite a few have admitted they finagle their insurance billings (treating for the bogus “AD,” but billing for “family therapy” or some other disorder). One said that a certain grant proposal applying for government funds hid the fact that Holding Therapy would be used, and how clever the authors were to do that. Others frequently speak about omitting evaluations/interviews and going straight to the Holding Therapy. There’s really quite a lot of this, and a definite attitude that they are entitled to cut corners and over-step boundaries.
Posted 13 Oct 2009 at 16:26 ¶Regarding holding therapy being done by the Attachment Center Northwest/Attachment and Trauma Specialists, here is what Tom Gill’s co-founder, Rebecca Perbix Mallos had to say about it (she still works at the center):
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:g9q-LFceKngJ:attachment.adoption.com/bonding/trauma-and-attachment.html+Attachment+Center+Northwest&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
In the next to last paragraph she describes holding therapy as not being “violent or abusive”, but being “nudging, cajoling, challenging and for the most part nurturing.” Well what about the other part? That’s pretty important!
Their current website claims that they do not do holding therapy now, but maybe that’s just since the Thomas Arthur Gill incident. Also, just because an attachment therapist does not do holding therapy it by no means implies that they do not engage in other abusive practices. I think that sometimes critics of attachment therapy focus too much on holding therapy alone and not enough on the things like verbal abuse, rubbing saliva all over children’s faces and chests (“licking”), forcing children to rage at and malign their birth parents, etc. These practices too are abusive, even though they don’t seem to pose the same high risk of asphyxiation as holding therapy does. Let’s just not forget that even when holding therapy is not done, many, many other abusive things still are.
Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 09:51 ¶Other websites that reveal the full extent of the abusive AT methods used by the Attachment Center Northwest:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080229050839/http://www.attachmentcenternw.net/
and
http://www.attach.org/protocol/DeborahGray.pdf
By the way, Tom Gill claims to have been a founding member of ATTACh, the trade organization of Attachment Therapists.
Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 17:29 ¶I think that I saw where Rebecca Perbix Mallos, who continues to work at the Attachment Center Northwest (now Attachment and Trauma Specialists), also served or continues to serve on the board of ATTACh. She has also been associated with the Children’s Home Society of Washington, an agency that works with foster and adopted children. I have some reason to believe that they support the idea of attachment therapy. Also, I have seen the Deborah Gray piece above, before, and I believe it is down at the bottom of that article where it states that Rebecca Perbix Mallos trained with Thomas Arthur Gill. Whether she or her current co-worker Mark Coen are pedophiles too is unknown of course, but I do wonder about their judgment and decision making abilities given that they worked so long with someone who has deviant proclivities, yet they never seemed to have a clue.
Thank you, Linda.
Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 19:00 ¶It can be difficult to get a clue, sometimes. You don’t see the signs, or the signs are there, but they’re covered up.
And ATTACh was formed about 20/21 years ago (1989?). This was either 2 or 9 years after Reactive Attachment Disorder of Infancy and Childhood appeared in the DSM (III or III-R).
And: other questions. What is inordinate? What is good enough parenting (and what does it have to do with the discrepancy between developmental and chronological age)? And Elizabeth Randolph has changed the categories (again) on us with the attachment styles. For example, disorganised is now ‘psychotic’.
Wait for the themes of the intensive. “Defensive armour”: that is very Reichian.
There is also a 37-page file called “A Comprehensive Understanding of Attachment and
Posted 15 Oct 2009 at 21:50 ¶What to do when Attachment is Broken”
from 2005. It has several writers, and Gill is on the list. It is a Microsoft Word file.
Katrina, thank you for writing.
Posted 22 Oct 2009 at 13:06 ¶Can you tell us more? Please contact at waywardradish@gmail.com
Katrina, no need to apologize. Even after a decade, I am still making sense of what I went through.
Your story is extremely important. As survivors of this “therapy,” we’ve developed a tight-knit network of support. You’ll be offered all help and resources available.
Please write.
Posted 22 Oct 2009 at 13:47 ¶OMG!!!!
I can’t believe I found this!!!
I am an attachment therapy survivor and when I was 13 TOM GILL and his partner BEVERLY were my “therapists” along with KATHIE L. BISHOP.
OMG.
Posted 22 Oct 2009 at 13:01 ¶Sorry, I am kind of in shock after spending so many years tucking all of this away in my past.
Posted 22 Oct 2009 at 13:22 ¶In college I spent 4 years going to a ‘real’ therapist to try and work through what was done to me by these people in the early ’90s.
Wow.
Maybe I should share my story.
Thank you.
I sent you an email.
I feel like crying; it feels so good to not be alone in this anymore!
Please do not hesitate to contact me, and please feel free to share my story. I will write more later when I get the time.
I can’t believe that this abuse is still being done to children!
Posted 22 Oct 2009 at 14:19 ¶Please let me know how I can help.
Where is Tom Gill anyway? He is not currently listed as an inmate in the King County Jail:
http://ingress.kingcounty.gov/inmatelookup/InterimResults.aspx
Nor is he listed as a registered sex offender in King County:
http://www.icrimewatch.net/results.php?AgencyID=54473&SubmitNameSearch=1&OfndrCity=&OfndrLast=Gill&OfndrFirst=
It is my understanding that he should show up in one place or the other. He was supposed to go to jail last May or June, which would mean he will be out in late October or early November. He is required to register as a sex offender in King County immediately following his release from jail. Has he fallen through the cracks somehow? Has he gone to set-up shop in some other state, calling himself something like a “pastoral counselor”, as some other attachment therapists who’ve lost their licenses appear to have done? This guy should not be allowed to drop out of sight.
Posted 22 Oct 2009 at 17:41 ¶I saw that Katrina was a patient of Tom Gill, Beverly and Kathy Bishop. I was too. I was left Kathys home in 1997. I wonder if we were there at the same time. I dont remember anyone with that name thought to be honest I have tried to block out everything that happened there. I started crying when I found this website I cant believe more people actually understand what I went through. Most people think I am crazy when i talk about it.
Posted 09 Nov 2009 at 12:48 ¶That is sick sick! When you are in a postion of trust like that it’s even sicker! How many others were there? He belongs in jail for the rest of his life.
Posted 01 Jan 2010 at 16:33 ¶@Eastern Sky:
Posted 12 Apr 2010 at 02:12 ¶Tom Gill is now on the registered sex offenders list for King County and lives in Bothell.
I just found out about all of this and am in shock. He was my regular counselor for about 10 years and helped me a great deal. Sad for all concerned.
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