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A retired Aurora police sergeant faces criminal charges for raping his daughter and continually sexually assaulting her and his two adopted daughters, but he remains free from custody while his ex-wife is in jail for objecting to court-ordered reunification therapy meant to repair his relationship with two of his sons.
The mother, Rachel Pickrel-Hawkins, said the reunification therapy by Christine Bassett, a licensed marriage and family therapist, has been harmful, abusive and counterproductive. For now, the mother has custody of the couple’s minor children, and they are living in a domestic violence shelter. She said that she has arranged for family members to care for her children when she goes to jail.
The mother said Bassett has supported the efforts by her ex-husband, Michael Hawkins, to gain sole custody of their two youngest sons, now 10 and 13, and has psychologically tortured the children along the way.
“The very last visit with her, I told her, ‘This man now has formal criminal charges for sex assault on children and child abuse, and you need to know this,’” Pickrel-Hawkins said of one encounter with Bassett before a reunification session with the children that the father attended. “She went into the room, and the very first thing that my boy said that she told them was, ‘We need to make progress, and today you need to tell your father that you forgive him.’”
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The reunification therapist, Bassett, is conducting the therapy at Lighthouse Christian Counseling in Fort Collins, which advertises itself on the internet as “integrating faith into the counseling process.”
This is the problem. It’s likely a JD Vance-style org that places the husband / father / man above the wife / mother / woman. Get religion out of our lives. It’s toxic.
I don’t believe I’ve ever spoken about this online before, but I was in a similar situation and was in solo therapy attempting to process the trauma and my therapist legitimately told me that the reason it’s still traumatic is because I was unwilling to forgive the perpetrators. I knew they were religious before this, but I thought it had never really affected the sessions, until I realized the sessions hadn’t been helpful because he viewed me as the issue. My unwillingness to forgive. I tried to get a better understanding of what that meant and it was just circular. I found a new therapist shortly thereafter, but the interaction really made clear how bad some therapists are. I had a string of not helpful therapists and I just kinda gave up, but I hope people know they don’t have to put up with that. There are better options.
Decades of therapy, moving across the country, and having one retire means I’ve had three great therapists. And an equal number of shit therapists that I had to audition before finding the great ones.