From the docket here: ORDER: Granting Defendant’s Unopposed Motion for Extension of Time to Answer 6 . Answer is due by 5/18/2017. Ordered by Judge Michael J. McShane. (cp) (Entered: 04/17/2017) Attorney Shayda Le of Portland’s Barran Liebman law firm is the same lawyer our administration hired, along with partner Edwin Harden, to defend…
Posts tagged as “Shelly Kerr”
The Final Order in regard to the Oregon Board of Psychologist Examiners investigation of Counseling Center Director Shelly Kerr’s decision to comply with UO Deputy General Counsel Doug Park’s request for alleged basketball gang-rape survivor Jane Doe’s confidential counseling records was made today. You can download the thorough report from Oregon Administrative…
2/17/2016 update: From the Lund Report, here:
Partisan animosity broke down in Salem on Presidents’ Day, as Republicans frustrated by the Democratic agenda turned to D.C.-style delaying tactics, forcing House and Senate clerks to read, verbatim, dozens of pages of legalese in each bill before it could come to a vote.
But the Senate still managed to unanimously pass a bipartisan bill that closes a critical gap in medical privacy — forcing university-based health providers to abide by the same confidentiality rules as off-campus providers.
… The demand for the bill was spurred by a notorious case involving the University of Oregon and a student who alleged she’d been raped by members of the basketball team. The woman sued the school, and the university ordered the school’s counseling center to turn over her therapy records to try to disprove her case of emotional distress.
I should note that UO lawyers Doug Park and Sam Hill dispute the claim that UO planned to use Jane Doe’s therapy records to try and disprove her case. They say that they were securing them on request of Jane Doe’s lawyers. However they have never explained why they scanned them into the GC’s computer system, or what procedures they had in place to monitor who then accessed them, or why Counseling Center Director Shelly Kerr would tell Karen Stokes not to stamp the file and keep the GC’s request a secret:
2/4/2016 update: Oregon legislature considers bill making it illegal for university lawyers to do what Park and Hill did
Legislation and testimony etc. here:
This isn’t a hard one:
Meanwhile, UO’s lawyers are getting nasty in their attacks on Stokes and Morlok, the UO Counseling Center employees who blew the whistle and brought the whole matter to state and national attention, and who have alleged that UO responded by retaliating against them:
1/26/2016: UO lawyers use Stokes and Morlok’s OA award against them. Updated below
Actually, after 6 months or so, the Bar’s General Counsel Helen Hierschbiel has decided they aren’t even willing to conduct an investigation. Too bad. Who knows, that might have helped clear Park and Hill’s names:
12/18/2015 update:
The DOJ will bill the OBPE ~$500 for having to write this order. All because their Director, Charles J. Hill, spent weeks ignoring a public records request for the rules that he claims allow him to keep the public out of the hearing about the $5K fine that the OBPE recommended for UO Counseling Director Shelly Kerr. Then Hill tried to use a petty $2.75 fee to delay release for two more weeks. Ridiculous.
The documents he’s been trying to hide are the OBPE“Notice of Rights and Procedures” and documents showing this was adopted according to state law. Call me slow, but I’m starting to wonder if it was.
We’ll find out, Hill’s got a week to provide the documents at no charge, and I’ll post them when he does. Meanwhile the Oregon Office of Administrative Hearings is telling me that no hearing on the Kerr fine has yet been scheduled.
The DOJ’s full Public Records Order is here:
12/16/2015: Oregon Board of Psychologist Examiners uses fees and delays to hide public records
Here’s an email exchange with Charles Hill, the Director of the OBPE, in chronological order. Mr. Hill is trying to argue that he can close the upcoming OBPE hearing in front of an Administrative Law Judge about UO’s appeal of the OBPE’s $5,000 fine against Shelly Kerr, who gave the Jane Doe Counseling Records to UO’s lawyers Doug Park and Sam Hill.
I ask Hill for a copy of the rules that allow the hearing to be closed. He waits for 3 weeks to respond, then tries to use a $2.75 charge to further delay release of the records.
I’ve filed a petition with Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum over his office’s use of fees and delays to frustrate the intent of the Oregon Public Records law, saying:
Dear Mr. Hill –
I’m ccing AAG Michael Kron, the head of the DOJ’s Task Force on public records reform, because your use of delays and fees to frustrate the release of public records is so classic that it might serve as a useful example of how state agencies are manipulating current law.
The emails below show a simple request for your board’s “Notice of Rights and Procedures” and documents showing this was adopted according to state law.
You managed to avoid even responding for 21 days, until I filed a petition with AG Rosenblum. Your response proposes an additional delay of 2 weeks, plus the time needed to send you a check for $2.75.
My request asked for a fee-waiver on the basis of public interest. Given that the UO counseling records incident that led to the hearing at question have been the subject of many news stories in the local, state, and national press, and to proposed and adopted changes in state and federal law, I don’t think there’s much to argue there – the interest certainly exceeds the cost of the $2.75 fee you propose. In any case, if you disagree and do not want to waive the fee, the public records law requires that you explain why you think it is not in the public interest to waive the fee. Your letter doesn’t even try.
Given Mr. Hill’s obstinance, I’m also beginning to wonder if the OPBE (sic) actually has the authority to close these hearings.
The AG’s opinion on his $2.75 fee is due Friday.
On Nov 17, 2015, at 10:18 PM
To be broadcast this Thursday, 10:30AM West Coast time on ESPN’s Outside The Lines. The full broadcast apparently includes an interview with UO counselor Jennifer Morlok, who blew the whistle after UO lawyers Doug Park and Sam Hill got the records of her confidential counseling sessions with Jane Doe, the survivor…
Update: The Chronicle’s report is here: … In a written statement to The Chronicle, Oregon’s vice president for student life, Robin Holmes, said that the university “was committed to providing Ms. Morlok with a supportive work environment,” but that she had chosen not to accept offers of “alternative workplace scenarios.”…
I’m no law professor, but this policy seems to put to rest worries that UO will ever again access confidential student counseling records for questionable purposes. It’s also notable in that the Oregon Bar ethics complaint against UO Interim General Counsel Doug Park and Associate General Counsel Sam Hill for obtaining the records, and…
That’s the report from a normally well informed source. (Now confirmed, see below for the report). Today the Oregon Board of Psychologist Examiners imposed a $5,000 fine on Dr. Shelly Kerr, Director of the University of Oregon Counseling and Testing Center, for actions relating to the transfer of counseling records to…
[See below for email update] Morlok and Stokes deserve enormous respect for telling the truth about the UO General Counsel’s efforts to seize Jane Doe’s confidential counseling records. That revelation let to changes in Oregon law and may lead to changes in federal law as well. And now it seems that…
Article by Pulitzer Prize-winning Oregonian journalist Rich Read, here. The State Legislature is doing its best to clean up the mess created by the UO General Counsel’s office and Counseling Center Director Shelly Kerr when she gave Jane Doe’s counseling reports to the GC: A lawmaker who led the Oregon Senate to…
4/4/2015 update: Shelly Kerr is the UO Counseling Center Director who handed over Jane Doe’s counseling records, at the request of Interim UO GC Doug Park. New legislation would make that illegal. Oregon AG Ellen Rosenblum on the RG Op-Ed page:
We like to think of college as a wonderful time of growth and learning. The reality in Oregon, however, is that college can be a very dangerous period for too many young women.
Recent events have given our students a good reason to worry that when they have been sexually assaulted and want to have the benefit of victims’ support and counseling services, they cannot trust their college to protect their privacy. That is because Oregon is one of only 10 states without confidentiality protections for victims seeking services from domestic violence or sexual assault advocates.
It is time for Oregon to step forward and ensure the privacy of victims’ communications and records. We know that many students who have been sexually assaulted are choosing not to seek critically needed help. Studies indicate that the primary reason victims of sexual assault do not come forward is that they fear disclosure of extremely private and potentially embarrassing information — without their consent. All too often, this fear is justified. …
4/3/2015 update: Students rally in support of Karen Stokes and transparency
Ally Brayton has the story in the Emerald here, and Diane Dietz has more in the RG here:
Dozens of University of Oregon students rallied at noon Friday in support of a counseling center employee who says she was fired because she was a whistleblower.
Karen Stokes, who was executive assistant to the director of the counseling center, announced she had been terminated in a March 26 e-mail sent to counseling center staff.
The reason, she said in the e-mail, was her public criticism of the university’s “unethical” collection of a student’s therapy records in preparation for litigation.
A UO spokesman said a week ago that Stokes wasn’t fired but merely “transitioning.”
On Friday, spokeswoman Julie Brown said Stokes is still in the university’s employ, but Brown couldn’t say in what position or capacity or whether her job was permanent or temporary. …
3/26/2015 update: It’s looking more and more like the story goes like this: UCTC Director Shelly Kerr told Karen Stokes she was fired. Stokes wrote the email in the RG story and sent it to the UCTC staff and the RG. Klinger was out of the loop, perhaps because he just was, perhaps because the admins don’t trust his judgement after his disastrous press release on the archivists. Someone in JH read the post on my blog or the RG website. They quickly told Kerr to back off, told Stokes they’d find her a job somewhere else at UO if she’d stop talking to reporters, and told Klinger to feed this to the press, pronto.
Update: The RG story has now been updated with a challenge from Duck Advocate and Presidential Spokesperson Tobin Klinger of Ms Stokes’s description of events. Purely coincidental, Klinger seems to think. Of course Klinger also thought UO wasn’t filing a counterclaim against the survivor of the alleged basketball gang rape – or at least that’s what he told reporters.