Though he told her a relationship would be unethical, he eventually initiated sexual contact in February 2016, she said. In a recent interview with The Associated Press, the 61-year-old woman said she developed romantic feelings for Stone about six months after he began treating her for anxiety, depression and alcohol abuse in June 2013.
Such behavior also is prohibited by the American Psychological Association’s ethical code of conduct. Last July, he was charged with five counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault under a law that criminalizes any sexual contact between patients and their therapists or health care providers. “I stand as evidence that people can change,” Stone wrote to state regulators in 2013. He was released from prison in 2002 and eventually set up shop as a licensed drug and alcohol counselor in North Conway.
Two years later, he legally changed his name to Peter Stone.
Both Massachusetts and New Hampshire responded with new laws, and The Boston Globe called him “the most notorious drunk driver in New England history.”īut over time, he dedicated himself to helping people recovering from addiction, earning a master’s degree in counseling psychology and leading treatment programs from behind bars. He held a valid driver’s license despite five previous drunken driving convictions, and it was his third fatal crash - though the others didn’t involve alcohol. Lacey Packer, a fourth grader on her way home to Massachusetts with her father, died two days later. Stone, then named Peter Dushame, was 33 years old and drunk when he plowed into a parked motorcycle in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Oct. “Should every therapist be forced to reveal to any incoming patient that they’ve been convicted of a crime?” “To what extent do we want to tar somebody for the rest of their life?” said Albert “Buzz” Scherr, a professor at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law. What happened in between raises complicated questions about the right to forge a new life after incarceration and what patients can or should know about a mental health provider’s past.
It was the latter that led to the discovery that Peter Stone was once Peter Dushame, a drunken driver convicted of manslaughter more than 30 years ago. New Hampshire is one of 10 states that allow people to change their names while incarcerated, but the public has no way of knowing someone’s earlier identity unless they go to the courthouse where the change was approved, or do some serious sleuthing.