Former psychiatrist Paul Fox has pleaded guilty to the sexual assault of a patient. The story behind his case is something else. Authorities said they learned about what he did while they were looking into the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Fox, 66, is scheduled to be sentenced July 10 for one count of second-degree sexual assault, according to The Connecticut Post. He broke a law prohibiting psychotherapists from having sexual relations with patients. The plea agreement calls for a seven-year suspended sentence in which the defendant would spend 18 months behind bars, and 10 years on probation.
The patient was described as a student with Western Connecticut State University. She said she was “drugged up and out of my mind” on drugs that Fox prescribed. The relations happened at his office, and a sailboat, authorities said. She had begun seeing the defendant as a patient in 2011, when she was 18, for depression and an eating disorder.
Fox, incidentally, was a doctor for 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who police say murdered 20 children, six adult staff members and his mother on Dec. 14, 2012. The shooter committed suicide.
State police detectives looked into him after the fact, and dug up allegations against Fox during interviews of the psychiatrists former patients. The now-disgraced doctor reportedly told investigators that he had destroyed records about Lanza, but remembered him. Lanza, then 15, had “aggression problems,” and resisted “engagement.” The Office of the Child Advocate, a state agency, determined that the shooter’s anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder didn’t cause the shooting.
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