It is no secret I have no love for the APA and this story just shows the true colors I've seen from them since the seventies.
A psychologist that actively used their psychological training to torture another human being is seen by the APA as not having enough evidence of ethical wrongdoing.
Documented acts such as sleep deprivation. Making the prisoner behave as if they were a dog. Being given intravenous fluids and not provided facilities. And instead telling the prisoner must soil themselves first. Sensory deprivation restricting sight, hearing, smell, and touch.
The APA has no problem with their professionals using their training to cause permanent psychological damage.
Of course I knew that from being "treated" for my Queerness as a child.
“With Leso, the evidence of his participation is so explicit and so incontrovertible, the APA had to go to great lengths to dismiss it,” said Steven Reisner, a New York clinical psychologist who unsuccessfully ran for the APA presidency last year. “The precedent is that APA is not going to hold any psychologist accountable in any circumstance.”
Trudy Bond, an Ohio psychologist who filed the complaint against Leso, cited APA’s policy on interrogations and torture as she said the organization had sent the message that “psychologists are free to violate our ethical code, perhaps, in certain situations”.
The APA’s communications chief, Rhea Farberman, told the Guardian that a seven-year ethics investigation could not meet the burden of finding “direct unethical conduct” by Leso, and said it was “utterly unfounded” to fear the organization has condoned professional impunity.
What are they going to do when Gitmo finally
closes and the truth can finally be told?
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