Katie McManus calls out a therapist who used sexual assault as a hook to get referrals on LinkedIn. She explains why it's triggering for survivors and unethical, then reports the clinician to the Utah Board of Social Workers.
Chapters
It is never okay to use the topic of GRAPE to drum up business. And I can't believe I have to say that. So Yesterday someone on LinkedIn shared a whole post about this awful telegram group chat with all the men, sharing all their tips and tricks to do just atrocious things to the women in their lives. And the post was fine. It was, it was advocating for women's rights, it was advocating against violence against women. All good things. And I commented on it, I mentioned that I think probably personally that the men who stay silent, the men who create the system that allows for the perpetrators of this kind of stuff to get away with it scot free, are actually the most dangerous. And that's a conversation for another day. We can have that at some point. And I got a few DMS from people who are, you know, talking with me in the comments that were very supportive, very kind, who just wanted to reach out and like support the fact that I was getting in on this conversation. But then I get this doozy and then I get this cold DM from someone who just connected with me. I don't know them. She starts off saying that she appreciates my comment on Tovalee's post about the groups of up to 70,000 men openly discussing how to grape and assault women and exchanging tips. And she explains how she wanted to reach out because she wants to add like minded professionals to her network. All fine. It becomes problematic at the end where she leverages the whole topic of GRAPE into By the way, do you have anyone in your life who lives in Utah who could be my client here? I'll give you an unobstructed view so you can pause and read the whole thing for yourself. And I honestly can't believe that I have to come online and explain that this is not okay. But there are multiple problems with this kind of messaging. For one, it is tone deaf as f. There's nothing okay about this. Like, if you're telling me you're a therapist and you can't read the room and think that this might be wrong, maybe you shouldn't be a therapist. The second problem that I think of is that there are a lot of people who have experienced GRAPE or essay in their life and they don't necessarily broadcast it. And so here we have a therapist who's just DMing people willy nilly saying, hey, here's this topic that might be very triggering for you. Let me just throw it into your awareness field when you're not asking for it. That is also not okay. Another problem with this is that I actually don't think this is ethical. I actually reached out to the board of social workers in Utah this morning after I got this message and made them aware. I provided the person's name and their license number and screenshots and just made them aware. And hopefully, if this is a violation of ethics, they will see some, some consequences. And some people have asked, like, well, what if this is an AI? What if, like, she has a bot set up? I don't care. I do not care. The fact that she has a bot set up that doesn't have any ability to filter for topics like this. Absolutely not. Okay. Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. What do you think about this whole strategy and people using this kind of topic to try to drum up referral clients? Tell me in the comments.
