A Jersey City man claims his Greenwich Village psychologist bedded him in a years-long affair more than 40 years ago — leaving him so damaged he was unable to pursue his dream career.
Damon Delston began treatment with Vivien Wolsk in January 1981, seeking help for severe anxiety after his mother’s cancer diagnosis and the death of several loved ones.
But a few months later, the line between “personal and professional relationship began to blur,” Delston, now 82, said in a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed this week accusing Wolsk of rape.
The pair, who were in their early 40s at the time, had sex “in Wolsk’s bedroom, therapy room/office and waiting room,” he claims, adding the mental health professional “never told [him] that the sexual relations were not part of or related to any treatment of him.”
He contends he was “incapable of giving his informed consent” to the years-long sexual relationship, according to the litigation.
“Instead of treating [him] for the anxieties and traumas from which he suffered, [she] instead used the treatment sessions . . . to cultivate an intimate and sexual relationship . . . in order to meet her needs, manipulating and taking advantage of a vulnerable patient,” he contends in the legal filing.
“What am I to do? I have special problems. I went to a psychotherapist and she goes and falls in love with me,” he wrote in an October 1982 journal entry.
By 1983, Delston asked Wolsk — a married mom — to be his wife; in 1989, he claims he was “a guest for Memorial Day to the country home of Wolsk and her husband, Paul, along with their son,” he said in the legal filing.
The relationship ended in 1990, after the pair attended a lecture by psychiatrist Sylvia Olarte “which discussed the subject of sex between patients and doctors,” and Wolsk began seeing Olarte “for treatment,” he contends.
During the relationship, Delston was attempting to become a psychiatrist in New York.
He “could no longer tell whether [Wolsk] was advising him as a lover or as a professional.” She once handed him a check for $400, and paid for a course he took as he studied for his medical license in New York, Delston said.
He now blames Wolsk for his inability to meet the Empire State’s more stringent requirements, according to the litigation.
He now practices in New Jersey as a licensed psychiatrist.
Delston believes he was “irreversibly damaged” and “forever stunted” after having “never received treatment for his underlying traumas.”
Professional ethics prohibit psychologists from having sex with patients, according to the American Psychological Association.
The law prohibits the state Education Department from commenting on specific cases or confirming or denying if complaints have been filed against a specific individual, a spokesman said.
It’s unclear if Delston filed any complaints against Wolsk with the state.
Delston is seeking unspecified damages.
Wolsk could not be reached.
