Aylene Lazar should not be practicing therapy for anyone

After years of suppressing sexual abuse that I have experienced, this #SpeakOut movement is a pleasure to see. I am sharing my story, not for validation but because I want to make sure that their are not any other victims at the hands of the person that I did it to me. While this happened in 2004, the fact that this person still practices bewilders me. I have learned from it. I am almost double my age from when the events took place. I am not proclaiming that I am clean in this but as you will see in the grand scheme of things, I am not the person at fault. A therapist should never have a sexual relationship with anyone. Consider that Aylene was married and seeing my family for therapy, her conduct was reprehensible.
Before going into this, I want to say that I am blessed. I have an amazing family who is close in spite of Aylene’s actions. My mother adopted many children and they enriched my childhood and are still enriching me. Currently I am interim president of a church. I work with a LGBT support group and have been recognized by my local mayor for my work. I have numerous other accomplishments and my next goal is to become a youth pastor. I do all of this in spite of Aylene.

I entered therapy around November of 2003, when I am freshly 18. Come 2004, Aylene Lazar has integrated herself in my family. My foster siblings are in therapy. My older sister is in therapy with her husband. My family has therapy sessions. Aylene was not family but she probably felt like it. Somewhere along the line, I developed a messaging relationship with her. We would chat at night on AOL instant messenger. Over time this became a daily thing, well nightly. I will never forget the event that prompted us to explore more in our relationship. It was the Super Bowl where the Carolina Panthers played the New England Patriots. Janet Jackson had a nipple slip during the halftime show and that prompted Aylene to encourage me to chat with her in a sexual nature. I did not make the first move as even at 18, I respected that she was married. I never made the first move even in intimacy with her. The events in question lasted only 3 or 4 months. They have stuck with me for longer than that.
I was 18 with a major case of transference. Transference is when you fall in love with someone like a teacher, pastor, or a therapist. What separates Aylene from others is that she acted on it despite being my therapist, and being married.
After the Super Bowl things become crazy with Aylene. We would talk nightly for hours. The messages were very explicit. This translated into our weekly therapy being explicit as well. Aylene’s heart was messing with her head as there were days when she would say that we were in a relationship and days when she would deny everything. Some weeks would be calm, others would be full of sexual activity. She was very careful not to have vaginal intercourse. We did everything else.
She was my first love and my first sexual experience. As an 18 year old, it was a great learning experience. To learn from a 39 year old made me feel like a kid in a candy store. I cannot discount myself as I was a horny 18 year old who was enthusiastic to have someone give him sexual attention. Unfortunately just because I learned a lot, does not mean that it was right.
The only way for it to end was poorly. Aylene finally came to her senses and was trying to end it. With how ingrained she was in my family and my mental health, the world was destined to come crashing.
I was unable to see that I was in a toxic relationship and that we would both be better without it. I saw her for one final time in a therapy session around May. She tried to tell me that everything that happened was my imagination. It was not and investigators said they believe me.  In her way of convincing me that it my imagination, she threatened to sue me for slander. I left out more scandalous details. She did numerous unethical things. She breached doctor patient confidentially of more than my family. What she did to my gay adopted brother violated numerous doctor-patient laws.
I turned her in a year later and the investigators believed me. This was in an effort to get her to stop seeing one of my other adopted brothers who was about to enter his teenage years. It was painful to have to go in graphic detail with them. Unfortunately because I was so in love with her, I deleted the logs of everything. I did not turn her in out of revenge but because I was disappointed that my siblings were still seeing her.

So let’s recap: Aylene while married and my 39 year old therapist had a sexual relationship with me when I was 18 years old. When she ended it, she threatened to sue me. She violated numerous doctor/patient laws with her actions. Her ethics were incomprehensible. Her actions gave me PTSD and I am still recovering from the trauma that she inflicted.

Aylene is a smart person and she probably learned. However she displayed ethics that are clearly not viable in a therapist. All I want from this is for her not to practice in any form. What she did to me was very dangerous. I can only hope that no one else was hurt by her.

Aylene will sometimes use her married name and go by Aylene McMahon.