Lesley Pilkington

The British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) has this week informed a Christian counsellor that, following her appeal, she will still lose her senior accredited status, after she was tricked into providing counselling to a fake client who was secretly an undercover journalist.

However, the Appeal Panel reversed much of the original decision against the counsellor, Lesley Pilkington, and has now lessened the original sanctions against her.

Mrs Pilkington, a counsellor with over 20 years of experience, was originally subject to a complaint made by homosexual journalist Patrick Strudwick, who approached Lesley while attending a Christian conference about sexuality and pretended to be a Christian in need of help over unwanted homosexual attraction. Lesley agreed to help him and they mutually agreed that the counselling would be based on Christian principles.

Throughout the two counselling sessions, Mr Strudwick repeatedly told Lesley that he wanted to leave his homosexual lifestyle, that it had become meaningless to him and that he wanted to change.

Following the sessions he lodged a complaint to the BACP to get her struck off. He also secretly recorded his two sessions with Lesley, and then sold his story to a national newspaper, maligning Lesley in the press.

The Appeal Panel found this week that Lesley should still lose her senior accredited status because she should not have assumed that Mr Strudwick wanted to proceed under the same therapeutic approach that she offered, despite the fact they both agreed to do so. It also found that she should not have taken his claim that he was depressed because of his homosexuality at face value.

The panel also ruled that Patrick was a real client, despite him being an undercover reporter who had approached her on false pretences.

However, the panel also upheld the following mitigating circumstances:

"Mr Strudwick was not open about his true intention in engaging the services of Mrs Pilkington and in significant ways deliberately misled her into believing that he was comfortable and accepting of her approach, such as saying Amen at the end of prayers and making statements such as, "I've become more religious again recently", lulling Mrs Pilkington into a false sense of security. In his persistent questioning he manipulated the content of the sessions to a considerable extent in order to meet his own agenda."

Mrs Pilkington contended that Mr Strudwick was never a genuine client and therefore no professional relationship existed between them. She also demonstrated that he had clearly affirmed and agreed to her therapeutic approach.

Mr. Strudwick's complaint against Lesley was in fact highly politically motivated and aimed at exposing 'reparative therapy' and attacking those who practise it.

He told 'Pink News' on 10 Feb 2010: "We want to root out therapists and psychiatrists who are practising these techniques and ultimately bring an end to them through exposing them, as well as disrupting their meetings. The ultimate aim was to prevent religious groups from offering 'counselling' which aims to change sexual orientation."

Now that the appeal panel has decided that Mr Strudwick was a real client, concerns have been raised over the vulnerability of all Christian councillors, as they are now open to harassment from undercover journalists and gay activists approaching them pretending to be clients.

Although Mr Strudwick initially tried to use his complaint against Lesley to stop reparative therapy taking place in the UK, he was later forced to drop this approach and he told the BCAP in the appeal hearing that he was not seeking to challenge the efficiency of therapy for same-sex attraction. He had no evidence to establish that such therapy is not beneficial to some clients.