Charlottesville Breaking News
Broken trust: Sex allegations against therapist prompt investigation
Licensed Clinical Social Worker Howard Vidaver.File photo
Vidaver allegedly had sexual contact with patients at various locations including his office on the second floor of this Ivy Road building.Courteney Stuart
Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud is the founder of modern psychoanalysis who first defined the concepts of "transference" and "countertransference."Max Halberstadt/Life Magazine archives
The proscription against sexual contact between healer and patient goes back to 400 B.C., with the ancient Greek healer Hippocrates. "In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves."Engraving by Peter Paul Rubens, 1638, courtesy National Library of Medicine
The State of California puts out an informational brochure for clients and therapists.
Shortly after founding Minnesota's Walk-In Counseling Center in 1969, Schoener and his colleagues noted frequent visits from patients who reported bad experiences with previous therapists.contributed photoPatients came to him in their darkest hours, going through divorce, struggling with substance abuse, perhaps grieving over the loss of a loved one. But while some call Albemarle County social worker Howard Vidaver a therapist of rare talent and insight, court documents suggest he has been betraying one of the bedrock rules of his profession by engaging in sexual contact with patients. If true, the allegations suggest that he violated therapist/patient trust– and that it happened after he had already been disciplined by the state licensing board for similar behavior.
In a divorce complaint filed last November in Albemarle County Circuit Court, Vidaver's wife, Laurie Vidaver, alleges her husband "engaged in acts of adultery and sodomy" with multiple female patients at various locations, including in his Charlottesville office, for more than 15 years.
"It's devastating," says Laurie Vidaver, reached by phone. "Several families have been torn apart by this."
According to experts, it's a serious problem. A 1991 study of 958 patients who had been sexually involved with a therapist found that about 90 percent of those patients were harmed by the experience– with about 11 percent requiring hospitalization, 14 percent attempting suicide, and one percent committing suicide.
Of those harmed, only 17 percent fully recovered, according to the study by Kenneth Pope and Valerie Vetter.
Currently, 23 states make sexua...Front yard slaying: Two felons arrested in dog-shooting case
Justin Riggs and Brian Tichner have been arrested in connection with a January 15 dog shooting in Earlysville.
Just 10 months old, Mattie the Siberian Husky was shot and killed in her own yard by a high-powered rifle.Two and a half months after a 10-month old Siberian Husky named Mattie was shot and killed in an Earlysville-area front yard, police have made two arrests.
Twenty-six-year-old Justin Tyler Riggs of Charlottesville was arrested Tuesday, March 29, and charged with possession of a firearm as a violent felon, cruelty to animals, and illegal hunting for his role in the January 15 shooting. Twenty-one-year-old Brian Charles Tichner of Dyke, arrested March 30, has been charged only with possession of a firearm as a violent felon, suggesting investigators believe Riggs pulled the trigger.
In the days after the incident, Mattie's owners, Yvonne and Ed Scarborough, put up a $10,000 reward and expressed their horror that someone would have killed the friendly pup, who was contained by an electric fence in their Fray's Grant subdivision yard.
"He probably called her," Yvonne Scarborough theorized of the shooter in a pre-arrest interview. "He shot her right in the chest. He just shot her in cold blood."
When the family beckoned their dogs in that night, only Max, Mattie's littermate, responded. The Scarboroughs' teenaged son went out looking for Mattie and discovered her in the yard, lying dead in a pool of blood.
"She probably thought he wanted to pet her," said Scarborough, breaking into tears.
The human members of the Scarborough family weren't the only...
nTelos Pavilion: Naming rights headed to telecom co.
The Charlottesville Pavilion is soon to be nTelos Wireless Pavilion.PHOTOS BY LISA PROVENCE
Will rights to the generically named Transit Center (right) go next?PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE
The actual unveiling of the name took place April 5.photo by Hawes Spencer
The original name remains on this 2005 stone plaque.photo by Hawes Spencer
"Thanks a lot, Henry," joked nTelos CEO Jim Hyde to broadcast journalist Graff who revealed the name a week earlier.photo by Hawes Spencer
Charlottesville Free Clinic director Erika Viccellio reacts with joy at the $5K donation nTelos offered the non-profit health-care agency.photo by Hawes Spencer
A few steps away, hired PVCC student-artist Jason Gaviria commemorates the event in chalk at the free speech monumentphoto by Hawes SpencerThe Charlottesville Pavilion is losing its old name. Henceforth the Downtown Mall landmark will be known by a more corporate (and curiously-capitalized) moniker: nTelos Wireless Pavilion. (It could be worse; the Nissan Pavilion in northern Virginia got a new name last year that sounds like something behind the counter at the local video store: Jiffy Lube Live.)
Although the site of the Charlottesville Pavilion is owned by the public, in 2004 the city leased the property to music/real estate mogul Coran Capshaw, via CEDA, the Charlottesville Economic Development Authority. And all along, Capshaw's company, Charlottesville Pavilion LLC, has held the naming rights.
"That's pretty standard in arenas and pavilions," says CEDA director Aubrey Watts. "That's part of the revenue stream for developers and promoters."
The name has to be approved by City Council and CEDA, and Watts sees no reason that won't happen– unless the sponsor happened to be Marlboro, Trojan, or another corporate brand that might be considered unseemly for children.
The city lent Capshaw $2.4 million to build the pavilion, contributed another $1 million, and demands that he operate the place for 20 years with at least 10 days a year for city-sponsored events, according to the lease [PDF below].
While Capshaw's...
Equinoxer to activist: The making of a soldier in the war against the war on drugs
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The fraternity seizures made national news and got hefty coverage in the Daily Progress.Albemarle-Charlottesville Historical Society
On March 22, 2011, Graham revisited the scene of his arrest, what had been the TKE house.photo by hawes spencer
George H.W. Bush awards the Medal of Freedom to Ronald Reagan, who asked Congress to expand the death penalty from murderers to "drug kingpins."George Bush Library
Nancy Reagan launched "Just say no" in 1982 (Click on photo to see her and slogan) when an Oakland schoolgirl asked her how to respond if offered drugs.White House Photographic Office
President Obama, the first president to admit some cocaine use, eliminated the five-year mandatory minimum penalty for crack cocaine possession when he signed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.Obama-Biden Transition Project/Pete Souza
Retired Police Chief John deKoven "Deke" Bowen: "If I had to do it all over again, would I? Yep."file photo by Lisa Provence
When Bill Clinton signed welfare reform, he made drug felons-- thousands of whom had merely possessed drugs-- ineligible for government assistance.U.S. Government
Graham returned to Charlottesville on the 20th anniversary of Operation Equinox to denounce the War on Drugs.photo by Hawes Spencer
TKE sold this house to pay government fines. It now serves as a satellite house for another fraternity, Phi Delta Theta.photo by hawes spencer
Delta Upsilon got its house back late in 1991 by paying an undisclosed financial settlement. (In 2011, the fraternity moved to a new structure on Chancellor Street.)photo by hawes spencer
Phi Epsilon got its house back without penalty and later rejoined and took the name of a national parent, Zeta Beta Tau.photo by hawes spencer
Former CPD narcotics agent Chip Harding now regrets getting life sentences for drug dealers.photo by hawes spencer
The drug war continues, as Governor Bob McDonnell just signed legislation making possession of more than half an ounce of synthetic marijuana, aka "spice," a felony carrying a potential jail term of 10 years.file photo by Jen Fariello"Just say no." –First Lady Nancy Reagan
Jamie Graham did not say no. He said yes. In fact, he said yes many times. Yes to that bottle of champagne his friends were passing around in high school at a New Year's Eve party, yes to the guy who said "chug it." He said yes to trying marijuana on that very same night, though it never actually got him high the first few times. And, in the summer before college, Graham said yes to LSD. He'd been reading all about Ken Kesey and the Day-Glo acid trippers of the 1960s, and he'd gotten curious.
The only problem was, this Eagle Scout, debate team captain, and high school track star with a 4.5 GPA didn't know anyone who did acid. So he bounced the idea off of some of the students he tutored after school. Some of them had long hair, smoked, and looked like they knew how to get a hold of the stuff. Most of them laughed at their clean-cut 18-year-old math tutor when he asked about getting acid. But one did not. And within a few weeks, Graham had the first of what would be many experiences with LSD.
He said yes to the University of Virginia when he was offered an academic scholarship. And he said yes to Tau Kappa Epsilon when they asked him to pledge. He said yes to parties and long hair, yes to Grateful Dead concerts and Gulf War protests, and yes to the new world of freedom that is college life. And of course he said yes to his studies, maintaining a...
Wet zero: Worrell's wastewater gadget cleans up in SF
Thanks to an Albemarle company, this new San Francisco building may release no sewage at all.photo courtesy Worrell WaterOnce again, Worrell Water Technologies, the company founded by ex-Daily Progress owner Tom Worrell to develop earth-inspired wastewater re-use technologies, has sold one of its state-of-the-art Living Machine systems to a major buyer. This time, it's the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which wants to display the system in its new 13-story headquarters.
Back in December, the U.S. government purchased a Worrell system for a new border control facility in Otay Mesa, California; and another Living Machine is operating in the 10-story headquarters of the Port of Portland, the entity that runs Portland International Airport, where water from sinks, showers, and toilets is reused for use in toilets (and where about only 20 percent of the water typically used in a conventional office building is consumed).
“The new San Fransisco office building shows how we can begin to transition to decentralizing energy and water systems, even in a dense urban area,” says Will Kirksey, senior vice president at Worrell Water Technologies, in a release that notes that the company now has more than a dozen major systems in operation around the world.But there are none in Al...
