Psychiatist pleads guilty to criminal sexual conduct

From Grand Rapids, Michigan, from about middle of the month

Psychologist Robert Eardley of Ada Township plead guilty to two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual contact and no contest to two counts of sexual penetration Monday in Kent County Circuit Court. Eardley was charged in two cases of sexually assaulting patients, one deaf and the other with multiple personalities. He plead guilty and no contest in exchange for other charges being dropped. He is to be sentenced August 7. He also will lose his social work and psychology licenses and must register as a sex offender.

See also this local TV station report, with much more information here.

Here are nore details from the earlier report:

A psychologist who police say slept with his patients is in more trouble. 53 year old Robert Eardley was charged in July with sexual assault for having a relationship with a patient.

Now more serious charges have been filed, and another woman claims she was a victim.

Police say 53 year old Robert Eardley, a psychologist who at one time worked at Touchstone Innovare's mental health clinic on Sheldon Avenue in Grand Rapids, turned one of his patients into a victim. "He manipulated these women to get to what he wants," says Detective Les Smith of the Grand Rapids Police Department. What Eardley wanted, according to Detective Smith, was sex.

Smith says it started in 1997, when Eardley worked out of an office on Lafayette Avenue in Grand Rapids. He treated a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder, sometimes known as Multiple Personality Disorder. After forming a doctor-patient relationship, Smith says, he convinced the woman to have a sexual one. "He took it upon himself to pray upon their weakness and use it to his advantage," says Smith.

A few years' later police say Eardley did it again, this time at the Touchstone innovare clinic. Like before, it was a woman who was getting help for past sexual abuse which caused the identity disorder. When she came forward this year after the five year sexual relationship police arrested Eardley and charged him with fourth degree criminal sexual conduct - a misdemeanor.

Detective Smith and Prosecutor Helen Brinkman thought Eardley should get more. "Myself and the prosecutor were kind of amazed that the only thing he could face was a CSC 4th charge for the crimes he committed," Smith says. So the prosecutor researched it and found a somewhat obscure law called "Sexual Intercourse under Pretext of Medical Treatment."

That's a felony and now Eardley is charged with five counts for the two women. He will turn himself in at the county jail Thursday to be arraigned on the new charges.

Some details have been edited for space