Client Mariam complained from relationship distress. She claimed that she experienced this throughout her life and precisely intimate relationships with men.
Client back ground
Mariam is a successful professional marketing manager for an international software provider. Divorce after 7 month of marriage, she has problems in all her relationships but relationship with men is the most problematic one. Voluntary decided to have an assessment session with Richard who is a qualified counsellor. After agreeing of the contract where they discussed the fees and how will be paid (to be paid in advanced for block of eight as he requested, she agreed to this and he also talked about review the contract if they were going to continue therapeutic work and at the seventh session she has to pay for the next eight sessions). Richard discussed confidentiality, his way of working with client, counselling supervision, cancellations and missed session notification. The therapy went well and Miriam felt happy to renew the contract and take another block of eight sessions. Therefore she paid him in advanced for another block of eight sessions. However the session she said she was thinking of visiting the dating websites, Richard said websites are common and he used them before. Miriam went home and started to look for Richard name and after hours of searching she found his pictures posted on a website with some sexual tools and also she found some sex videos for him and other women. She felt that she has been deceived by Richard and she decided to challenge him to refund her. However when she met him he didn’t deny the pictures and the sex videos but he clearly said to her he well not going to refund her because he didn’t done any harm to her and because she is the one who breach the contract by ending the sessions. At that points Miriam said she is going to report him and telling the police and she will take him to the court Richard replay back she is free to do whatever she want including come back to finish the sessions.
How ethical or un-ethical Richard’s professional behaviour went on this case?
Richard was being trustworthy and his past shouldn’t concern his client because at the time of providing the service to his client he wasn’t involved on what Mariam saw. He like any person held his