New complaint alleges Ohio psychologist had role in Guantanamo detainee abuse

Ohio psychologist faces Guantanamo abuse claim

COLUMBUS, Ohio — An Ohio psychologist now working as a college dean helped perpetrate abuse of detainees during his time at Guantanamo Bay, according to a complaint filed Wednesday with the state psychology board.

The complaint by a Toledo psychologist and others alleges that retired Army Col. Larry James observed abusive interrogations and didn’t do anything to stop them.

The complaint says James, dean of professional psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, oversaw abuse at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in 2003 and in 2007 and 2008 when he served with the U.S. naval base’s Behavioral Science Consultation Team.

“Detainees were systematically abused while Dr. James served on and allegedly led the Guantanamo BSCT,” Wednesday’s complaint said. “James participated in, ordered, supervised, ratified, facilitated, acquiesced in, and/or failed to prevent, stop, report, and punish that abuse.”

In one instance, the complaint said, James watched without intervening while an interrogator and three guards subjected a near-naked man to sexual humiliation by forcing him to wear women’s underwear.

The complaint, researched by Harvard’s International Human Rights Clinic, seeks to have James stripped of his license to practice psychology in Ohio.

James declined to comment through a university spokesman.

State boards in Louisiana and Ohio, where a similar complaint was previously filed in 2008, have declined to investigate the allegations.

James said in his 2008 book, “Fixing Hell,” that the Army sent him to clean up abuses in Guantanamo and later in the Abu Ghraib detention center in Iraq.

He told the Dayton Daily News last fall that he doesn’t understand why the allegations continue to come up.

“No matter what third party, objective review board or person, they’ve all come to the same conclusion — there’s no probable cause,” James said in September. “There’s no detainee, there’s no guard, there’s no psychologist who’s come forward and said, ‘With my own eyes, I’ve seen Dr. James do X, Y or Z.’”

Complaints to state medical boards are shielded by Ohio’s public records law unless the board takes disciplinary action. Ronald Ross, executive director of the Ohio state psychology board, declined to comment.

The Ohio board in 2008 “determined that no foundation exists to support the initiation of formal proceedings serving to deny Dr. James admission to the Board’s licensure examination,” according to a copy of the board’s response provided by the Harvard clinic.

In June 2007, 350 members of the American Psychological Association signed an open letter to its then-President Sharon Brehm requesting an investigation of James and other members of the association who served at Guantanamo Bay.

The association didn’t investigate, but in 2008 it voted to ban its members from taking part in interrogations at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and other military detention sites where it believes international law is being violated.