D.C. officials are reviewing the license of a former Sidwell Friends School psychologist who had an affair with the married mother of a 5-year-old student he was allegedly counseling. The D.C. Department of Health’s board of psychology will decide whether to revoke, suspend or further investigate the license of James “Jack” Huntington at its closed meeting Thursday, said spokeswoman Dena Iverson.
A phone call to the psychology board in Maryland, where Huntington is also licensed to practice, was not immediately returned Friday evening.
Arthur “Terry” Newmyer III filed suit against Huntington and Sidwell Friends for $10 million, saying that the elite Quaker private school’s staff — including the head of schools — knew of the affair that played out while Huntington counseled Newmyer’s daughter
but “despite repeated objections” did nothing to stop it for a year.
Huntington’s ex-wife told Newmyer of the affair out of concern for his daughter’s well-being, according to the lawsuit; it quotes an email Huntington sent to Tara Newmyer on March 4, 2010, discussing questions posed by his ex-wife: “Do you really want that Jack? When there are so many women out there, safer women, that might not cost your reputation and job to have a relationship with? Is sex with her … really worth that much risk you are taking? I said yes.”
The American Psychological Association’s ethics code forbids psychologists from engaging in “sexual intimacies with individuals they know to be close relatives, guardians, or significant others of current clients/patients.”
The D.C. Municipal Regulations for Psychology’s code of professional conduct requires licensees to adhere to the APA’s ethics code.
The Maryland code also states that a licensed psychologist may not have sexual relations with family members or other people close to their clients for at least two years after treatment ends.
In court documents, family friends of the Newmyers describe a child who changed dramatically over the course of the 2009-2010 school year. One wrote that the girl seemed “deprived of her childhood,” while another remarked that she “would not look into my eyes at all, and seemed sad.”
Ellis Turner, the associate head of schools at Sidwell, said Terry Newmyer’s claim is “without merit” and that Sidwell will contest it. He could not confirm the lawsuit’s claim that Huntington was fired in February, calling it a classified personnel matter.
Turner did confirm that as a middle school counselor, Huntington would not normally counsel younger children like the Newmyers’ daughter.
Huntington and Tara Newmyer “met as parents” whose daughters were in the same prekindergarten class at Sidwell, said Kristin Henrikson, an attorney for Tara Newmyer.
“He did not professionally treat her daughter in any way,” said Henrikson, adding that the Newmyers have been legally separated since 2009. Terry Newmyer lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., while Tara Newmyer moved to Chevy Chase to enroll their children in Sidwell against her husband’s wishes.
In his lawsuit, Terry Newmyer, a Sidwell alumnus who sent two children from his first marriage to Sidwell, says that the couple still “lived and slept together as man and wife” in both locations.
He says Huntington professionally evaluated his daughter in January 2010 after Tara Newmyer contacted him, concerned that the child was having problems at school. In emails to Terry Newmyer and her sister, she said Huntington asked her “a zillion shrink questions” about the child and explained that “[J]ack, you know the school shrink, has volunteered to talk to the resource counselor … he thinks [she] needs to be pulled out for more stimulating work because she’s too far ahead of the other kids.”
