Sunday, August 20, 2023

Tamar Epstein's Heter: News flash - the therapists that saw Tamar and Aharon deny discussing Aharon with anyone - is R Shalom Kaminetsky lying?

Updated and expanded
One of the problems with R Shalom Kaminetsky's case against Aharon Friedman is the priviledged information about Aharon that one of the therapists is alleged to have shared with others without permission from Aharon. R Shalom claims that this information was shared with another therapist who then claimed that he also was certain that Ahron had two serious personality disorders that rendered him unfit for marriage.

Thus the discussion has been about the ethics of sharing the information, having a therapist make a diagnosis based on second hand information,  the validity of the diagnosis and whether in fact these diagnoses disqualify Aharon from marriage.  In sum, it has been accepted as fact that the information originated with one of the therapists who had actually met with Aharon.

I have been informed that R Shalom's report is in fact a fabrication and a fraud. Aharon and Tamar did in fact go to two different therapists. However both of these therapists have denied sharing information with anyone. Furthermore both of these therapists have Psy.D degrees and are not psychiatrists.

So apparently either the therapists are liars or R Shalom Kaminetsky is.

Rav Feldman mentions in his letter that Rav Greenblatt received a psychiatrists report on Aharon - but that psychiatrist never met Aharon. But Rav Greenblatt was also told by R Shalom that two other therapists had made reports that Aharon was incurable. The first one R Shalom claimed had met with Aharon and Tamar and had told Tamar that Aharon wasn't going to change and that therefore since that hope had kept her in the marriage she should leave the marriage. The second therapist never met with Aharon but basing himself on what Tamar and R Shalom told him - he produced a report that Aharon had 2 incurable serious mental problems - paranoia and OCD - that made him incapable of being a husband. There is no mention anywhere that Aharon gave permission to share the information - in fact the 2 therapists that he and Tamar saw deny discussing him with others - or that the therapists gave permission for their reports to be used

To summarize: It has been accepted as fact that the information about the purported 2 incurable mental conditions that invalidated Aharon from marriage originated with one of the therapists who had actually met with Aharon. This is apparently a lie. Nobody should have accepted this as fact.  It would have been completely against the legal / ethical obligations regarding confidentiality of the two therapists whom Tamar and Aharon visited.  There has been no reason to suspect the honesty / decency and ethics of these therapists.  On the other hand, there has been plenty of reason to question the same with regard to R' Shalom, including that R' Shalom's claims about Aharon are completely contrary to R' Shalom's own testimony to the Baltimore BD.

In addition, if the therapists Tamar and Aharon saw together actually believed that Aharon had paranoia or OCD, that presumably would have come up in therapy.  But that subject never came up, because those claims are completely without any basis whatsoever.  In addition, if these therapists thought Aharon had paranoia or OCD, Tamar would have mentioned this either in BD or in one of the many court cases that Tamar insisted on dragging the parties through. Tamar never did so.

Thus we can conclude that not only were the claims made in the name of various therapists an indication of gross incompetence, they were made without meeting with Aharon and at most were totally dependent on Tamar's and R Shalom's negative reports about him and thus they are clearly not true. Further proof is that Tamar never mentioned any concern about Aharon's mental health to anyone including beis din and the secular courts. Finally even if true the diagnosis was not justification for a ruling of mekach ta'os.

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