[Ammi]

A hypnotherapist filmed himself sexually abusing a 19-year-old patient when she was in a trance-like state

Philip Sherwin touched the victim, who he was treating for anxiety, intimately as she lay on the couch in his treatment room whilst he was doing a “Chi massage”.

He also took provocative photos of her half-reclining in just a skimpy black vest top and underwear.

The victim told police that she had no idea of the abuse or the fact it was being filmed. She said she had felt “completely comfortable” with Sherwin.

However, she reported him to the police after he told her to remove her top whilst she was in a half-trance.

She suffered from depression afterwards and was too traumatised to take up a place at Manchester University, Leicester Crown Court heard

Police discovered the footage, along with 40,000 child pornography images, on his computer, in July 2010.

A registered member of the Academy of Hypnotic Arts, he had R. Hyp. and R Chi C. after his name, Sherwin, 47, charged £95-an-hour.

James House, prosecuting, said that Sherwin had “preconditioned her” in previous sessions before the abuse.

He said that he had warned her that during the session she might feel sexually aroused “but shouldn’t worry about it”.

A report from Liverpool University Psychology Professor, Graham Wagstaff, who is an expert in hypnotherapy, described Sherwin’s behaviour after seeing the footage as “irregular in the extreme,” clearly breaching the profession’s self-regulated code of conduct.

The images of children were among half a million legal adult pornographic images Sherwin had also downloaded.

Judge Simon Hammond imposed a restraining order forbidding any contact with the victim and banned him from ever working with children. He will be on a sex offender register for 10 years.

Jailing Sherwin for 18 months, Judge Hammond said the victim was “a vulnerable, fragile young woman”. He added: “I’m concerned about the lack of formal training required and lack of regulation for people who work as hypnotherapists.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...d-patient.html