It was true that I hadn’t charged the woman a fee. From my early days when I was financially struggling myself, I had always had a policy to see some people at no charge. These clients were either people who had no means of paying or, on occasion, fellow professionals. I had always felt privileged to work in my profession and this was my way of returning something to the community. When I did it I experienced a warm altruistic glow. In this case, the woman’s lawyer was also a major source of referral work. At the back of my mind, I hoped that my apparent act of generosity would not go unnoticed.
And it was also true that my sessions with the woman had not always been in my consulting rooms. Our sessions at my office were sometimes interspersed with walks in an adjacent park, and I had been to the woman’s house on occasion. Home visits were not unusual for me. Much of my assessment and counselling work over the years had entailed seeing clients at their homes. Indeed, some of the occasional work I had undertaken in the family law jurisdiction had more or less mandated a home visit as part of the assessment process.
But the allegations of sexual misconduct were not true.
The case was long and involved a number of delays. The first delay was in December 1997, and then the rescheduled April 1998 hearing was adjourned again. It was not until that August that the case against me resumed.
During this time, my depression had been diagnosed and I was still seeing my psychiatrist. He ordered me off work for a fortnight and I was glad to oblige him. Frankly, I needed a rest. In addition to high doses of Zoloft, I was regularly chewing Valium and other anxiolytics, as well as Normison for my sleep. The two weeks away helped, and at the end of the period I felt reasonably comfortable about returning to essentially part-time practice.
The day of the case resuming was an important one for me. After nearly two years of waiting, I was finally poised to enter the witness box to give my account and to be cross-examined. I was well prepared and keen to get on with it. The hearing was scheduled to commence at 2 p.m. I was in conference with my legal team that morning when the call from Carla arrived.
‘Sue’s in hospital. It sounds serious,’ she said.
I immediately contacted the Box Hill hospital where my ex-wife was being prepped for theatre.
‘I’m really scared, Tim,’ she said. ‘The scan shows two large growths on my ovaries.’
‘Hang in there, sweetheart,’ was all I could muster before ringing off and bursting into tears. I was sent home for the day and the case was adjourned yet again.
Sue was forty-one years old at the time. Several days beforehand, she had presented to her GP with stomach pain. Before that day she had been asymptomatic. After a brief examination, the doctor had ordered an ambulance to convey her to the local hospital. He evidently suspected ovarian cancer. A scan later in the day confirmed his worst fear, revealing two ovarian tumours ‘the size of grapefruits’.
There was worse to come, as discovered during emergency surgery that night.
‘I’m afraid it’s all bad news, Tim,’ the surgeon gently advised. ‘The ovarian cancer is secondary to a primary cancer of the ascending colon. We lost her a couple of times on the table. There will be no further operations, mate. We’ll keep her as comfortable as possible until she goes.’
I was gobsmacked, shocked and rapidly dissociating from the world around me.
‘How long?’ I asked, tears pouring down my cheeks.
‘Can’t say, mate. Four months would be a miracle. She’s riddled with it.’
Visions of our two children, Jessica and Thomas, came to mind. Jessica had just turned thirteen and Tom was eleven. They adored their mother. How would we tell them? What would we say?
I couldn’t escape the anticipated vision of the terror, bewilderment and despair in their eyes upon hearing the news that their mother was gravely ill, let alone their reactions on the inevitable day of her death.
And what of Susan? She didn’t even know yet. She was still in post-operative recovery. How was she going to deal with this devastating and unexpected news?
It was all too much for me. I broke down and relentlessly sobbed. Nothing could spare me from the anguish and sense of hopelessness I felt that night.
When I returned to the hearing, the press was there for the first time. A scribe from the Sunday Herald Sun had evidently been tipped off. Sue was still in hospital. The last thing she needed was to learn of my problem complements of the Sunday papers. And so we applied for and, after much aggravation, were granted a suppression order. With the cumulative stresses of Sue’s illness, the need to give evidence and now the added fight with the press, I thought that I was losing my mind.
Up until this moment, I had enjoyed a good working relationship with the media. I felt a longstanding debt of gratitude towards them. It was because of their extensive and generous coverage of my career over the years that my profile and reputation had mushroomed. And for my part, whenever they had been attacked I would come to their defence. Arguing the case for public interest, I had always been a vociferous advocate of freedom of the press.
‘How the table has turned,’ I reflected as my then lawyer Robert Redlich QC (he was later appointed to the Supreme Court of Victoria) mounted a scathing attack upon their intrusive and unwelcome presence.
‘How can exposure of this man’s tragic situation possibly be in the public interest,’ he had argued. I could not escape the irony. I had flown too close to the sun and, despite my self-righteous indignation, I knew that I was now fair game.
‘You can’t have it both ways,’ I silently mused, praying at the same time that it would all go away. I felt like a hypocrite.
The Herald and Weekly Times were mightily pissed off. Engaging a top QC, they successfully appealed the board’s decision. I then appealed that decision to the Full Supreme Court. I sensed, in light of all the evidence and the way in which my defence had been conducted, that vindication was just around the corner. In the interim the journalist was allowed to hear my testimony and, provided that our names were not mentioned, to describe it in the paper in full. With everything else that was going down, this was without doubt the worst time of my life.
The board ultimately dismissed the substantive charges against me. But I was not home free. The board found that I had blurred professional boundaries. My approach was too cavalier and, as a consequence, they found me guilty of professional misconduct. With the benefit and wisdom of hindsight, I should have realised that I was out of my depth.
Perhaps it was the work overload, or perhaps it was my unfettered ego, which had caused my judgement to falter. My expertise has always been in the assessment of people, and yet in this case I thought that I could work miracles.
I should have adopted, as the literature strongly suggests, a clinical supervisory team in relation to the woman’s management. In the end, despite the fact that I had seen some 20,000 clients and, with the exception of this client and Gangitano, had demonstrated the maintenance of the appropriate protocols, the board suggested in its reprimand of me that all my work of a treatment nature in future should be supervised by a fellow professional.
Although I was deeply wounded by this recommendation, in the fullness of time I came to accept their wisdom. None of us is perfect. When dealing with such potentially volatile people as I did, it can only be to everybody’s benefit to have a team approach. This not only helps with generally difficult case management, but also provides a valuable opportunity for regular debriefing. My stubborn refusal over the years to accept the need for peer group monitoring and debriefing had ultimately caused my significant lapses in judgement and associated problems.
This case represented a watershed in my life. I had spent the preceding twenty years believing in what I was doing, convinced as to the legitimacy of my profession and always travelling the extra mile when it came to looking after what I perceived to be the best interests of my clients.
This all changed during the course of these two hellish years. My guts were torn apart
and my soul was shredded. I was already accelerating towards a breakdown, long before the woman’s letter of complaint had arrived. I was burnt out, jaded and undeniably depressed.
The intensity and duration of my illness, however, was unquestionably prolonged and assisted by the excruciatingly long time it took to resolve the complaint. While I never questioned the need for it to be thoroughly investigated, both in the public interest and in the interest of maintaining the standards of the profession, the process was ghastly. I came to lose faith in the world around me. I lost valuable and irreplaceable years of my life – miserable times wrought with anxiety during which I was severely depressed and even suicidal. I was also transformed from a gentle, caring and essentially generous person into a hardened and distant cynic. My family, too, suffered enormously during this time. Most tragically of all, for a time I stopped believing in my work and the profession I had given so much to over the years. And yet, unbelievably, still worse was about to come.
PIGS AT THE TROUGH
For many months prior to that fateful September day at Philip Dunn’s birthday party, I had struggled fruitlessly with my darkest and most sinister secret: my unremitting addiction to cocaine. I knew that I was hitting the wall and that I needed urgent professional help. That morning, during the course of my bike ride with Phil and David Stanley, I finally peeled away the layers of my shame, embarrassment and powerlessness. I also confessed to the deceit I had perpetrated upon my wife; Carla had long suspected that I was using but had no idea as to the extent that drugs were running my life.
Philip and David listened silently as the whole sad story came out. I felt lighter and happier than I had for a long time. Not only was my confession cathartic but David promised to help me with a program of detoxification and specialist treatment. I therefore arrived at Philip’s stately South Yarra residence with Carla later that day feeling positive; I was about to reclaim my life.
Such was my state of mind – my decision made, my burden lifted! – when the bombshell of Andrew Fraser’s arrest, and my own associated exposure, dropped. Life has a cruel sense of humour sometimes. I will never forget how I felt when the bomb exploded. I was highly anxious, fearful and cognisant of the ruinous implications arising from this life-changing event. I realised now with a strong sense of foreboding that, one way or another, it was curtains for me.
I had worked with Andrew on many high-profile cases over the years. The most celebrated of these was our involvement in the travails of Alan Bond. They were fast and heady times, leading to vast fees and unfettered egos wedded to a sense of invincibility. With the addition of one final ingredient – cocaine – this Molotov cocktail was set to explode. It was around this time that my depression was also becoming increasingly harder to deal with and it was perhaps inevitable that eventually I would be attracted to any substance that offered the hope of relief from my symptoms.
Cocaine is a stimulant derived from coca leaves. The ancient Incas of the South American Andes had chewed coca to derive extra energy (perhaps this was what ultimately led to their demise at the hands of the Spanish). At one point, cocaine use was considered legal and legitimate. The Bavarian Army used it in the late nineteenth century to combat battle fatigue. Sigmund Freud carried his own ‘medicinal’ cocaine to combat his recurring bouts of depression and he briefly became a strong advocate for the drug’s use.
My foray into illicit drug use, however, was not based upon the exotic claims of such a distinguished genius. My experimentation with cocaine commenced innocently enough one weary Friday afternoon in 1997 at a fashionable Melbourne restaurant.
The mood was relaxed. The team at the luncheon table was formidable. Leading lawyers, doctors, a number of Queen’s Counsels and myself. As the afternoon progressed, gallons of wine were consumed, followed by endless ports and liqueurs. In this state of relaxation my judgement drifted away, leaving me vulnerable to the solicitations from one at the table to ‘try a line’.
‘One couldn’t possibly hurt,’ I mused, quickly recovering from the initial shock which the invitation had caused.
Faster than shit out of a slingshot, I was in the washroom, nervously waiting outside cubicle number two while my ‘mate’ eagerly chopped up a quantity of Colombia’s finest. It seemed harmless enough – what could possibly be wrong with snorting a line in the dunnies of one of the city’s trendiest lunch venues? I had an overwhelming urge to cut loose.
I was staggered by my friend’s generosity. What confronted me in the john was not so much a ‘line’ in the traditional sense but, rather, a super-highway of coke extending along the lid of the can into the distant horizon. The effect was immediate. My mood lifted, I was energised and I felt both all-knowing and very powerful.
‘Welcome to Falls Creek,’ my mate chuckled, alluding to the pristine nature of the ‘snow trail’ we had just devoured.
‘Fuck’n grouse,’ I muttered as I strode back into the restaurant with renewed confidence.
Passing my reflection, I observed my eyes, which appeared to be protruding on stalks. Back at the table I sat silently grinding my teeth while I struggled with my escalating and lascivious thoughts. Sigmund was on the money. Dangerous stuff, indeed!
Although I was well aware of the huge clinical and legal risk I had taken, I felt secure that unlike others who had surrendered their souls in order to dance with the devil, I could and would handle it and never develop a habit, let alone an addiction. Little did I understand the power of cocaine to unleash dark and destructive forces that had hitherto been safely caged deep within my unconscious mind.
It wasn’t until several months later that I used again and, for the first few years or so, I managed to contain my use of coke to social dabbling, generally about once a month. Hand in glove with this, my depression remained relatively stable – unpleasant at times but never crippling in the way it would eventually become.
The danger of cocaine arises from its immediate effect on mood. Typically, this is experienced as a ‘rush’ of euphoria. Cocaine has a very short half-life, generally little more than fifteen to twenty minutes. This establishes the basis for the next ‘snort’, which is usually less pleasurable than the first.
Coke is terribly moreish. Users are rarely able to leave ‘a little for later’ as with, for example, a bottle of fine Scotch whisky. No, snorting cocaine is more like devouring a bowl of salted cashews in a state of hunger – you just keep ‘hoovering’ until it’s all gone. It is said ‘one line is too many and a thousand is never enough’.
Following the binge, it is impossible to sleep. Cocaine is a stimulant which keeps its host awake well into the night. Then follows the crash. I used to be angry with myself at this point. At first, I would be annoyed that I hadn’t left any for the next day. Then I’d promise myself I wouldn’t use again, but inevitably I would, rationalising that I would have one more session and then I would completely stop. Gradually, but with absolute certainty, the habit strengthens, with a correlating decline in one’s insight and resolve.
For some, this process can occur within a period of weeks to months. For others, as was my case, the insidious surrender of my free will and judgement took years.
Life had not always been so miserable for me. Back in 1995 the world was my oyster. In June of that year I appeared on the front cover of the Bulletin magazine, featuring in an article on expert witnesses. Sharing the photograph with me was disgraced tycoon Alan Bond and his attorney, Andrew Fraser. Sometime later, Andrew kindly gave me a framed blow-up of the photograph, which continues to grace my study wall. The exquisite irony of that fateful moment serves as a constant reminder of our respective falls from grace and the power of karma to catch you out, if you take too much for granted.
After the Bond case, other big cases followed. So did big bucks and the development of a disproportionately large ego. There was little doubt that Andrew and I were considered leaders in our fields and a couple of blokes to be watched. I certainly believed that I was dancing with angels and
that I was virtually invincible. Little wonder, then, with these well-fortified delusions of grandeur in place, that I was unconcerned about the enormous risks associated with my cocaine use which, at that time, I rationalised as being ‘only experimental’. Such is the hubris of the latent addict.
Andrew and I would regularly get together for lunch with some of the elite of Melbourne’s professional world. Someone would arrange the venue, specifying that a private function room be provided for at least twenty-five guests. Given our respective profiles, privacy was essential. The entertainment at these lunches could assume many and varied forms, ranging from performing musicians through to scores of naked women executing silent cartwheels around the table while we dined. Between 12.30 and 1 p.m. aperitifs would be served, before we would retire to our private function room, where entree, main meal and dessert were consumed. Luncheons rarely finished before 6 p.m., with the boys then returning to the public bar for further refreshment and conversation.
During the lunch, bad manners, rudeness and hurtful jibes couched in a thin veneer of intellectual jousting were the order of the day. There was no place for sensitivity, nor indeed the heinous sin of being polite.
At some point in the afternoon a speech would erupt, seeking an audience in competition with voluble interjections and put-downs. Speakers were expected to embrace an unusual or exotic topic. Requests to discuss the more esoteric aspects of forensic psychology were often made of me.
Dancing with Demons Page 18