From the International Healing Foundation (Richard Cohen) website, we learn that a Liberty University student will soon begin an internship “under the direct supervision of Richard Cohen.” He is to start on-site and telephone counseling on January 12, 2010. The site encourages readers to make an appointment now to start their nine weeks of “expert coaching [which] leads you to your personal healing plan.”

Christopher [Doyle] came out of homosexuality, married his beautiful wife in 2006, and together they have a one-year old son. He knows firsthand what it’s like to experience conflicts over one’s SSA and the journey to wholeness and healing. Presently, he is completing his master’s degree in counseling from Liberty University.

There are no details on whether Doyle’s “journey to wholeness” was associated with Cohen or IHF. Doyle’s story stands out in that he claims the catalyst for his homosexual attractions was a period of early sexual experience with a girl four years his senior.

When he was 9, his 13 year-old female cousin came to live with the family and introduced this young, impressionable boy to sexual relations. This sexual abuse went on for the greater part of one year, until she moved away. Starving for affection during this time, Christopher began to act out sexually.

But what really stirred our interest was that Doyle is earning his master’s degree at Liberty University and performing his official internship in that program with Cohen — under his direct supervision. Cohen is unlicensed and was permanently expelled in 2002 from his professional organization, the American Counseling Association (ACA), after being found in violation of six sections of their ethics code. One need only do a brief web search to find any number of well written articles on the truly bizarre, wholly unprofessional practices of the man.

And yet, we have this intern, Doyle, apparently approved to do this master’s internship with Cohen. To get at the facts, we looked to the faculty list of Liberty University’s Center for Counseling and Family Studies. The Executive Director is listed as Dr. Tim Clinton. We emailed him to ask if Cohen’s IHF was an approved internship site for Liberty students. We have not heard back from him.

A quick search for details on Clinton leads to his own website which in turn shows us that he is also associated with the American Association of Christian Counselors. In fact, he is the president of the AACC. The AACC attempts to be the Christian alternative to the ACA. It is a private, for-profit company and Clinton runs it (and appears to have done so from it’s inception). It seems almost impossible that he would not know of Cohen’s reputation.

Cohen has not been siting idle the past couple of years. He may have been down after what seemed an endless series of very strange public displays of his nonsense, but he is not out. He managed to get Exodus to make nice with him. He got a book published by a respected Christian publisher (to the dismay of many) and he is adding to his flock of “certified as a sexual reorientation coaches” (CSRC) — a term made up to describe those who are “trained” by Cohen.

Now it appears he has managed to get himself approved to train interns from a major university, a move presumably approved by the president of a major Christian counseling group.

Update 10/28/2009: Dr. Clinton responded to our query a couple of days later after conducting an investigation into the matter — details in a separate post.

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