More Victims of Psychiatrist Come Forward

Report from the Rutland Herald, out of Vermont.

Additional charges could be coming against a Bellows Falls psychologist who pleaded innocent last month to charges he molested and sexually assaulted one of his mentally ill clients.

Bellows Falls Police Sgt. David Bemis said police had received a couple of calls from other potential victims after news about Donald E. Sanborn III became public.

"We're looking into that; I'm not saying they are victims, they are potential victims," said Bemis.

Meanwhile, the Vermont attorney general's office filed amended charges against Sanborn which took note that he was a "caregiver" and thus could face a more severe penalty if convicted.

Linda Purdy, an attorney with the Medicaid fraud and residential abuse unit, said the charges called for a slight increase in the potential jail sentence, from five to seven years.

Purdy refused to comment on whether additional criminal charges might be filed against Sanborn because of the continuing investigation, and she declined to say whether Sanborn would be facing charges of Medicaid fraud.

"I can't confirm or deny that," Purdy said, but she noted the victim in the original case was a Medicaid recipient and that Sanborn was a Medicaid provider.

Sanborn, 65, of Bellows Falls, is charged with having the woman engage in sexual activity during a one-on-one individual mental-health treatment session in Sanborn's office in Bellows Falls.

The complaint against Sanborn became public when the woman's lawyer reported to Bellows Falls police last year that Sanborn was doing "naughty things" with her during her sessions.

The woman, who suffers from dissociative identity disorder and agoraphobia, had been seeing Sanborn since 2003. According to court records, the woman's husband said she acts like a 5-year-old when she is threatened, because of those disorders.

Around November 2006, Sanborn suggested the husband not attend the therapy session, and that continued for about six to seven months. The husband told police his wife would often act like the 5-year-old after sessions with Sanborn.

The husband found socks balled up and shoved into the back of a drawer, where they shouldn't have been and his wife told him they were socks "dirtied" by Sanborn.

The woman's lawyer, Robert Fisher of Brattleboro, later turned over the socks to the Bellows Falls police, who found they tested positive for Sanborn's DNA, according to court records.