Laurie Ann Martinez, a prison psychologist, has been arrested in Sacramento, California in a bizarre alleged hoax where she staged a rape by splitting her own lip with a pin, scraping her knuckles on sandpaper, ripping her clothing, and having a friend punch her in the face. The reason? According to police, it was to convince her husband to move to a safer neighborhood.
The friend was also charged for her role in filing a false police report of a rape and burglary. The friend and two co-workers later admitted that the rape was staged.
Martinez, 36, is a psychologist for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. She told police that she found a man burglarizing her home and was raped. Various computers, games and valuable were also taken, according to her statement to the police. Those items were actually at her friend’s house, Nicole April Snyder.
Snyder, 33, is charged with the same conspiracy counts, and a warrant has been issued for her arrest.
What is most interesting about this bizarre crime is that Martinez was arrested after co-workers went to police to tell them that she had been talking at work about faking a crime at her home. Exactly how stupid is that? You fake a burglary and rape. The police spend hundreds of hours searching for the culprit and you then go to law enforcement facility to brag about your elaborate and felonious hoax. The first thing she should do upon admission is to see the prison psychologist.
What is also striking is that she was able to get another supposed adult to go along with this dubious plan, even going with her to buy the boxing gloves needed to bruise her up.
It appears, however, that she may get her wish and have her husband move out of the home. He filed for divorce six weeks after the April 10 incident. For her part, she is likely to be moving to a rather bad neighborhood if sentenced to jail time, which would appear likely if convicted. As someone associated with the criminal justice system, a court is likely to be rather unforgiving in sentencing.
Source: CBS
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“Don’t count on it. Psychology boards in particular have a track record of being pretty heavy handed even for minor transgressions. That of course does not apply to all the state boards, because each board has a collective personality, but in general, psychologists are often pretty hard on each other.”
Some things are very hard to prove, such as verbal abuse of the more subtle kind. Some psychologists are just inept and nasty, It is easy to convince a depressed person of personal faults, they blame themselves for many things they shouldn’t anyhow. My point is that it is something very easy to abuse. Mentally unstable people are vulnerable people and thus easy prey for predators.
O Scribe –
I hope you are right.
If indeed it’s true. that psych boards are better at properly weeding out their own medical miscreants, than the typical peer review groups & state med boards that I come across in general medicine, then that is a reality to celebrate.
PatricParamedic:
Don’t count on it. Psychology boards in particular have a track record of being pretty heavy handed even for minor transgressions. That of course does not apply to all the state boards, because each board has a collective personality, but in general, psychologists are often pretty hard on each other.
Psychology boards are quite different from state medical boards, both in style and substance.
Otteray Scribe said:
“. . . even if she only gets probation or diversion, her professional career is over.”
Would but that only be true.
This woman works in the parallel universe known as the medical profession. Those at the higher tiers in that universe are held to some of the lowest behavioral standards of any professional extant.
So the short answer is – regretfully – no, her career isn’t over.
She’ll be back treating folks for money in an appallingly brief period of time.
Just as this fellow was:
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/feb/17/doctor-drug-case-regained-license-after-murders/?partner=RSS
Like Conrad Murray, her stretch of unemployment will be brief indeed.
Hahaha
some are, some aren’t! Stereotypes are hell.
— another lawyer/psychologist here
Tough on psychologists, here.
But, easy to understand why lawyers look for another profession to demonize, particularly the one that understands why lawyers are generally narcissistic and dollar driven.
asIcit,
I’m not a lawyer, but I am an institute trained psychotherapist, who has dealt extesively with psychiatrists and psychologists. Many who were practicing depite, or perhaps because, they hadn’t resolved their own serious issues.
Anyone ever met a psychologist who wasn’t either a complete nutso or a well meaning, zealous, credulous, agenda driven fool?
Anon,
Perhaps the weirdest two people I’ve met were psychologists. Except for my mother, of course.
“Anyone ever met a psychologist who wasn’t either a complete nutso or a well meaning, zealous, credulous, agenda driven fool?”
Anon,
For once I partially agree with you. There are many, but not all, crazy people in the psychiatric/psychological profession.
Anyone ever met a psychologist who wasn’t either a complete nutso or a well meaning, zealous, credulous, agenda driven fool?
She is not only going to have to face the criminal charges, her license to practice is now in jeopardy. In fact, even if she only gets probation or diversion, her professional career is over.
Psychologist, heal thyself.
No wonder recevidism is an issue…