Mark H. Hoffman
(not licensed in
Colorado) *
* last verified 9/2008
News update: November 10, 2008 - Hoffman suspended
(based on information reported on this Web site vis-à-vis complainant identified below).
As a condition precedent to readmission, Hoffman
must submit
to both a practice evaluation and mental status evaluation.
As part of the stipulated discipline, Hoffman admitted --as he must-- that he:
- acted outside the scope of a court order directing him to perform custody evaluation functions and provided substandard
psychotherapy
- shared confidential information concerning at least three other clients
- breached professional boundaries while providing substandard psychotherapy by engaging in friendships and activities with
clients that were outside the scope of his court ordered custody evaluator role
- used misleading advertising that involved the use of a protected title by advertising in The Colorado Lawyer as a
"forensic psychologist."
A brief article about this matter was published by The Westword here, entitled "KnowYourCourts
busts a rogue shrink."
On Nov. 23, 2008, The
Gazette ran a front-page Sunday edition story
(published via the Web on 11/24/2008),
entitled, "Psychotherapist
Lied About Qualifications, Board Says."
KnowYourCourts.com is mentioned on the second page.
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This "Announcement" by Mark Hoffman
declares that he is a "State Licensed Educational Psychologist #0166489"
However, as of the date of this writing, Hoffman's name does not appear
among the rolls for either Active, Inactive or Retired for any of the following licensing categories:
The license number provided by Hoffman does not appear to match the
format/convention used by Colorado's Division of
Registrations for most licensing types.
According to this court filing:
CRS
12-43-216 and
12-43-306 both state that an unlicensed
psychotherapist may not in any way refer to himself the words “psychologist”, “psychology”, or
“psychological.” The only exception to this rule, is that he may call himself a “School Psychologist” if he
is actively working under the authority of a school at that time, but certainly, not in private
practice.
Yet, we came across this March, 2008 advertisement in
The Colorado Lawyer, this May, 2008 advertisement in
The Pikes Peak Lawyer, and this August 2008
advertisement in The Nebraska Lawyer, where Hoffman, citing the same "license number" as above, both
advertising himself as a "forensic psychologist."
In one of these ads, he claims 18 years of experience; in the other, 25 years. The ads are only five months apart.
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Publication Notice
The information appearing on this page is published by KnowYourCourts.com in its capacity as a
publisher (not an author) as a matter of public concern --viz. family judges' and the divorce
industry's dismissive/permissive position with respect to the allegations against Dr. Hoffman, the
potential harm caused to children and private parties if such allegations are true and the inefficacy of the
state's regulatory system with respect to such practitioners. Thus, a First Amendment Privilege exists in
part, "because dissemination of information regarding matters of public concern is necessary for the
maintenance of an informed public." Dickerson v. Dittmar, 34 P.3d 995, 1003 (Colo. 2001) (en
banc).
The information posted hereon is not posted for the purposes of embarrassing Dr. Hoffman, causing him
mental anguish or distress or harming any of his economic relationships. It is our position that the
furthering of the public debate on this matter is ill-served by merely posting incredible, unfounded or
conclusory allegations and hoping that our readers will simply take our word.
Finally, we do not consider the revelations contained hereon to be potentially "highly offensive" to Dr.
Hoffman. The term "highly offensive" has been construed to mean that the disclosure would cause emotional
distress or embarrassment to a reasonable person. Ozer v. Borquez, 940 P.2d 371, 378 (Colo., 1997)
(en banc). Hoffman has already made known his controversial views concerning sexuality and
marriage, which have been published by both the mainstream newspapers and by Focus on the Family.
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This
Complaint
filed
with the Board of Psychologists
Examiners alleges, in part:
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I . . .was surprised that when I would talk about the various DSM diagnostic
axes [sic.], about Global Assessment Functioning, or Psychosocial Stressors, Dr. Hoffman did not seem
to know what I was talking about.
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"[Hoffman] would at times show up 30-45 minutes late for appointments, seemed very
distracted, and would contradict in one meeting what I remembered him saying in a previous
meeting. Therefore I purchased a digital voice recorder so that I could establish what was
actually said in our meetings.
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Hoffman told my father and me that he needed a seven thousand dollar retainer, and that if we
refused to come up with that amount the payment would be ordered by the Court anyway. (I proceeded
to mortgage my home to raise the necessary retainer)
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[Hoffman] also said that he had a great deal of experience in retrieving abducted children and
that he could find [my ex-wife] in California and see that my son was returned to Colorado. On October 28, 2004
. . . Dr. Hoffman . . . was getting ready to travel to California . . . and we talked over strategies
for retrieving [my son] before [my ex wife] would be able to flee. At this time
--including the $609.73
in travel expenses that Dr. Hoffmann asked for-- I had paid him a total of $8,954 . . . On the evening of
November 8, Dr. Hoffman called me from California and told me that he had located [my ex wife and son] . . .
On the morning of November 9, I received messages
. . . that . . . he was going to have to work in the evenings, and if I
wanted him to continue with his investigation I would have to deposit $1000.00 in cash in his personal
bank account. I called Dr. Hoffman back and asked him if a check would be ok, and he stated that it must
be in cash. He gave me the name of his bank and his account number and told me to have the bank call him
to confirm that the cash was deposited.
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[Hoffman] also told me (to my amazement) of his . . . struggles with pornography, drugs and alcohol,
and promiscuity. He told me about his family problems, that he had no retirement savings (And wanted to
know how much equity I had in my house), that he had abused his wife for 20 years, how he has done things
that should have put him in jail for 20 years, and how his sexual sins were the most deeply embedded and
most hidden things in his life. He insisted that I must have the same kinds of problems, and that through
a religious doctrine called “The sins of the fathers,” he was afraid that I would pass such things on
to my son. Dr. Hoffman expressed strong displeasure that I would not confess to the sin of lust, and that
I would not renounce and repent of my [alleged] sin of masturbation.
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He tried persistently to persuade me to complete my divorce as quickly as possible, to drop my
custody petition and even emphasized that it was God’s will, and he [Dr. Hoffman] could guarantee that if
I did these things, the results would be favorable to me. (He also stated that he would help me negotiate
the divorce with my estranged wife.) At one point he . . . stated: “And if you just settle with [your
ex-wife], I won’t have to write a report.”
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If you are now or ever have been a patient of Hoffman, perhaps you
ought to wonder whether he's talking about your case right now to another patient?
Click here and here to hear
more about, "I have more Christian men come in here --and some of them have been pastors--
. . ."
These .wav audio files are between 1 and 3MB each.
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Click here to listen (.wav file) to this excerpt of a session between Hoffman and a
father:
Hoffman: have you ever been to up . .
. um . . . a strip joint?
Father: Uh, yes I have
Hoffman: Where was it?
Father: Uh, it was TNT's and it's
probably been --not . . .I haven't been to a
strip joint during in time I've been married
to [redacted]-- but that was, so it's been
ten years, anyway. And, I do believe I was
in a period of time when I was becoming a
lot more sensitive to the idea of objectifying women
and I just . . . I went there and I'd go
"What if . . . what if her father were
here?" And I just . .. I just couldn't . . .
I just felt very wrong about it
Hoffman: Did you masturbate there or.
. .
Father: Oh no
Hoffman: . . . or later or any place
other than the . . .
Father: No. Masturbate at a
strip-joint ?!?!
Hoffman: Happens all the time.
Father: Well, I . . . I must . . . I
must be naive, because I never heard of such
a thing
Hoffman: [laughter]
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Click here to listen (.wav file) to this excerpt of a session between Hoffman and a
father:
Hoffman: Do you remember the story of Pandora's Box?
Father: Yes, I am aware of that.
Hoffman: Yeah . . . That was --when I was a kid, Kris-- that was the scariest story I ever
read. Because, I have the same curiosity. It's what got me terribly hooked on sexual addiction.
It's what got me terribly hooked on pornography.
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Click here to listen (.wav file) to this excerpt of a session between Hoffman and a
father:
Father: And how does this affect my
being able to be a father to [the child]?
Hoffman: Um . . .What it does --all
of this put together-- Um . . . It's an area
that I need more information about, more
knowledge about. When was the last time you
masturbated?
Father: Um. Couple days ago
Hoffman: Okay. What'd you think
about?
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Click here to listen (.wav file) to this excerpt of a session between Hoffman and a
father:
Hoffman: Um . . . I think in my own
life, I can say this: sexual sin has always been the most deeply
embedded, and also the most deeply hidden.
Father: Are you sure you're not projecting a little?
Hoffman: On you?
Father: yeah
Hoffman: No . . . no
—I . . . I don't know. . . [truncated]
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Click here to listen (.wav file) to this excerpt of a session between Hoffman and a
father:
Hoffman: We all have thoughts of murder. We all have thoughts of rape. We all have thoughts of
child molestations. . . [interrupted]
Father: I don't have any . . . [truncated]
Hoffman: . . . I'm sorry . . .
Father: I don't have any thoughts of child molestation . . .
Hoffman: Sooner or later, everybody does have
. . . has those thoughts, it seems
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Click here to listen (.wav file) to this excerpt of a session between Hoffman and a
father:
Hoffman: If I wanted to intimidate a
woman, I wouldn't take a baseball bat and go
shake it in her face. I would say --on the
phone-- I've got a baseball bat that you are
not going to be able to take from me. Whoa
--that's intimidation.
Father: Um Hmm
Hoffman: The first one I can get
arrested for [unintelligible] a baseball
bat. The second one is very hard to get
arrested.
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Click here to listen (.wav file) to this excerpt of a session between Hoffman and a
father:
Hoffman: Um . . . where I think that
things are so rotten in your life that
alcohol was there for you. It was a friend.
It was . . . it didn't-let-you-down kinda
thing. And . . . and, I've been there. I've
done that stuff. I didn't want do anything
except stay drunk, high and in bed with
somebody.
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Click here to listen (.wav file) to this excerpt of a session between Hoffman and a
father:
Hoffman: Um . . . Magistrate Erler and I and . . . all talked
[ex parte] about the concept of
psychological parenting, and . . . I can tell you this much: . . . um . . . I'm not going to tell
you who said this; I'm just going to tell you: the person who had the highest authority amongst the
three of us . . .
Father: Okay . . . who shall remain nameless,
okay?
Hoffman: Who shall remain nameless . . . said that, . . .
if she had a good attorney, he could probably prove that
. . .that [you] are not a psychological
parent
Father: Uh huh.
Hoffman: and, in that case, everything folds.
Father: Everything's gone. Yeah; that's it
Hoffman: There's no . . . there's no custody; there's
just nothing there. I mean, there's nothing.
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This
memorandum by 4th Judicial District magistrate Robert Erler
defends Mark Hoffman against the conduct alleged hereinabove --not on the merits, but rather on the basis
of quasi-judicial immunity:
Every time a psychologist makes custody recommendations, one party or the other will always
disagree with the recommendations and occasionally both parties will. The Court would not
be able to appoint psychologists to do our fact-finding jobs for us to do
custody evaluations if they knew they were accountable subject to grievance
procedures by a screwed, prejudiced an unhappy client.
This Court values the education and experience that psychologists have that makes them
uniquely qualified to project their personal religious views or psycho-sexual
fetishes into custody evaluations do custody/parenting time evaluations. Allowing
dissatisfied parents to have access to a remedy, when they've been injured by a
rogue psychologist to file grievances against psychologists would "chill" their
ability to be effective with the Court and reduce their objectivity.
Note that Erler is the same magistrate who Dale Kim
Thorup alleged conspired ex parte with local attorney Hal Lohse to incarcerate Thorup,
thereby providing an advantage to Thorup's ex-wife, whom Lohse allegedly was having an affair
with (and whom Lohse later married). See generally
here and
here
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In this article,
Judge refuses to reduce child abuser's sentence,
appearing in The Colorado Spring Gazette
March 14, 2008, Hoffman is cited by a judge for
an "odd, yet impassioned plea for mercy."
Hoffman, the convict's "psychologist," had
dropped to his knees before the judge and cried,
"I implore you to be merciful."
Moreover, although the judge observed that the
injuries to the child were "grave, irreversible,
and have left an innocent child in a permanently
vegetative state," Hoffman urged the court to
release the convict early, reasoning:
I don't
minimize the injuries to
[the child], but in a way
she has freedom. She has a spiritual freedom
we don't understand.
Comments by readers to the
article included the following:
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“
I have no idea of how he has a license, or whether he is even operating on one at this
time, he should not be. I probably shouldn't say this, but he once told me -- not in
confidence, either -- that he had been diagnosed with a particular mental health condition
that I would consider to be serious, and if most of you knew what it is, you'd probably
agree with me on that. I don't want to say anything further out of privacy for him,
although it's hard to keep something like that private when he's publicly acting the way
he is. At any rate, I am not so sure that people who have mental health conditions such
as the nature of his should be rendering psychological counseling, unless their condition
is really so under control that they have no symptoms. That's pretty rare.
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“
Hoffman is a kook and I don't know how updated his credentials
are but I know about him. He is the one that needs a shrink, a true and lisenced
[sic.] one. He fights
for this young man and he treated a wonderful and giving 90 year old man, that he moved in with
(no place to go), pathetically. I can not go further.
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“
I know Mark Hoffman, and, for the record, you're more right
about his needing his license revoked than you'll ever know. I'm not saying this to be mean
spirited or anything, but he has some mental health issues of his own that need to be addressed,
he's in no position to be counseling others.
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This
pamphlet, authored by attorney Amy
Desai, prepared for and marketed by Focus on the Family, is based in part on an
interview with Hoffman. During this interview, Hoffman said, among other things:
Ninety-eight percent of the people headed toward divorce have no idea that
you don’t have to file for divorce. If there is domestic violence,
psychological problems, depression, infidelity or
adultery, if anything like that happens, they [still] don’t have to go immediately [and] get a
divorce.
Although these views seem to fit nicely into Focus-on-the-Family's spiritual mission objectives, is it
appropriate for judges ("the state") to knowingly employ the services of custody evaluators apparently
guided by such theological (rather than scientific (i.e., Daubert)1) principles?
Moreover, it's not actually clear that these are
truly his views, as this
audio sequence reveals:
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Hoffman: I would just get the divorce
done and over with. You know what?
Divorce means nothing.
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_______________________
1 The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals,
209 U.S. 579 (1993)
suggests four questions that judges should consider in determining whether an area or field of science is
reliable enough to be used in the courtroom:
- Is the evidence based on a testable theory or technique?
- Has the theory or technique been peer reviewed?
- Does the technique have a known error rate and standards controlling its operation?
- Is the underlying science generally accepted?
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Partial
list of documents from
Marriage of Griffin, No. 98DR504 (District Court, El Paso County),
most concerning Mark H. Hoffman |
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According to
this court
filing from Stewart v. Hoffman:
“
Dr. Hoffman told me things like “Everyone thinks about molesting children.”
When I insisted that I have never had any such thoughts, he insisted that
everyone does. He also told me that he has a picture in his desk of a naked
woman that was drawn by a seven year-old girl that “has all the anatomy
there, including clit and pubic hair.” He went on and on about
prostitutes, “strip joints,” breast milk, exhibitionism, masturbation,
voyeurism, etc.
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Click here view one or more of the
grievances filed against Hoffman with the State Board of Psychologists
Examiners |
Lawsuits against Mark Hoffman
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Stewart v. Hoffman (No. 07C00009,
County Court, El Paso County, Colorado) |
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Cooper v Hoffman, et al. (No. 97-cv-01393,
U.S. Court, District of Colorado) |
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King v. Hoffman, et al (No. 99-cv-00181, U.S.
Court, District of Colorado) |
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King v. Hoffman, et al. (No. 99-cv-02256,
U.S. Court, District of Colorado) |
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date: Sep. 29, 2008
from: [redacted]
subject: Please welcome Mark H. Hoffman to CFI Hall of Shame
message text: I video taped a presentation by Mark Hoffman in Colorado
Springs several years ago. He had been working with DHS and the courts and
described how he would brainwash children who had been accused of sex offenses. In
the Juv. Sex Offender programs, passing a polygraph admitting what you did to your
victim is part of the process. If you are innocent, you can't pass the polygraph.
Hoffman would help the kids pass the polygraph by making them believe they had
committed the offense.
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date: Nov. 5, 2008
from: Julie Hatton
message text: I interviewed Mark Hoffman PhD, who told me he would
recommended full custody to the highest paying parent, and offered that he had just
been paid $50k by a Father to recommend full custody.
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date: Nov.
24, 2008
from: lexii
Anonymous comment posted to 11/24/2008
Gazette article: I know Mark Hoffman, and I think he belongs in jail. I also think it's time to
change whatever laws are in place that say a court doesn't have to use a licensed psychologist for
psychologist work.
I also question the Gazette about their write up because something isn't
making a lot of sense here. If he's not licensed, then what was it that the Board suspended?
Also, I'm very surprised that the Board is just now addressing him, I filed several grievances with
the Board against him in about 2000 or 2001 for the very same things that the Gazette wrote about in
this article.
Usually Hoffman takes the men's side in things, so I'm also surprised to learn
that he didn't in this case.
Hoffman once told me that he is schizophrenic and that he had
spent months in a psychiatric care facility (Pueblo?) for it. I won't say much more than that, but
his behavior was atrocious, I and someone I know observed him breaking confidences with other people,
he's told me about some of his patients giving names, case histories and everything. That's part of
what my grievance to the Board was about. Plus he double charged people and charged for services that
he wasn't giving.
I don't care if he says he's retired, he needs to be sued and he needs to
be investigated for fraud. I think he belongs in jail or the nut house, whichever is best for the
common good of society.
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date: Nov.
25, 2008
from: Em Hardy, Ph.D.
message text: Having read the article on-line in
The Gazette, and reaching your web site, has
stirred up long-standing anger and frustration, and also allowed some measure of
relief. About 10 years ago, my family was victimized by Mark Hoffman. At that
time, my son's biological father was demanding that we have a custody evaluation
done by Hoffman, presumably because of his ties to Focus on the Family. The judge
appointed Hoffman despite my attorney's objections. As a licensed psychologist
myself, I knew that Hoffman was in violation of Licensure Board regulations by
calling himself a "licensed psychologist," or even "psychologist." I also knew he
was not qualified by education or training to be doing custody evaluations. I
reported these facts to the Colorado State Grievance Board (Licensure Board.) As I
remember it, my concerns were dealt with by the board in a condescending and
dismissive manner. Hoffman himself told me he had been contacted by the board, and
he'd told them his listing in the yellow pages as a "Licensed Psychologist" was a
mistake made by a secretary and he'd told the board he was getting it removed. My
guess at that time, and now, is that the board paid little attention to a licensed
psychologist reporting infractions by a "psychologist" she and her family were
court-ordered to see.
I was appalled by the techniques used by, and comments made by Hoffman during his
bizarre, year-long evaluation. My son, and my entire family, were irreparably
damaged by his incompetence and arrogance, as well as the other professionals and
court system which colluded with him. It should never be assumed that he acted
alone; he was encouraged, promoted, and protected by the system.
One aspect keeps coming up for me. Hoffman insisted on a "family dinner" with us.
He later insisted on putting my sons to bed and tucking them in. My sons have
always talked about how creepy that was. I always knew it was with good reason; now
I am even more distressed by the fact that I was so overpowered by doing what the
courts demanded that I let it happen. However, had I not, the good judge and all
his minions could have found reason for me to lose my son.
Hoffman is out; however, the system is still in, I'd guess.
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