CHAPTER 1

A Mother’s Kiss

Gotcha! thought Dawn. Her hypnotherapist had just asked her to undress down to her underwear and lie on a table for a massage. Little did he know she was a journalist posing as a patient. A hypnotherapist who asked his female patients to remove their clothes would make for a great lead story in an exposé of fake therapists.

It all started when I got a phone call from my friend Dave. He was a jovial freelance reporter who specialised in scruple-free journalism, selling mostly to rags likeThe News of the World and theSunday People. It was the late 1970s and treating all kinds of ailments and afflictions by hypnosis was becoming increasingly popular.

“Could you give me a hand in weeding out suspicious-looking hypnotherapists?” he asked me. Anybody could claim to be a hypnotherapist without any training or qualifications—they still can—so there will always be a fair number who are only offering their services in order to take advantage of other’s vulnerability.

Dave figured, since I was a hypnotherapist myself, I’d know not only the right questions a prospective patient would ask but also how to spot a phoney. “If you come across any who sound weird to you, just give me their names, and we’ll take it from there.”

I sat down with a pile of Yellow Pages and spent several days calling hypnotherapists in England and Wales—ignoring those in Scotland or Northern Ireland to limit travel expenses. Most of the people I spoke to were warm and friendly and wouldn’t be drawn in by my excessive curiosity. However, I managed to compile a list of around thirty hypnotherapists I felt might be worth taking a closer look at. Some of them were very weird indeed. At the top of my list was a man who told me that not only did he have “special powers” of hypnosis, but he also had been initiated in oriental techniques of massage for patients who were too tense to be put into a trance. I was not surprised when Dave gave this therapist’s name to a young, attractive freelance reporter who, like himself, didn’t complicate her work with scruples.

Dawn made an appointment, and I gave her a short briefing. I suggested that she appear nervous, which would allow our potential groper to suggest a massage. She was a black belt in Judo, so she didn’t fear for her safety. She also decided to present a genuine health problem that had bothered her for a couple of years—a mysterious back ache, which her doctor thought was linked to her life style of burning the candle at both ends.

When Dawn turned up for her appointment, she was amused to see our man wearing a white coat to make himself look serious and “medical.” After ten minutes, he invited her to remove her clothes and he set about “massaging” her. There was no particul