Psychiatrist stripped of Oregon license over patient misconduct sat on AZ’s Sex Offender Management Board

No one involved can explain why former psychiatrist Peter Morey was appointed to the Arizona Sex Offender Management Board last year, 15 years after his Oregon medical license was suspended for inappropriate behavior toward vulnerable patients. 

When it issued an emergency suspension of Morey’s license in 2010, the Oregon Medical Board wrote that Morey’s behavior posed “immediate danger to the public and his patients” after finding that he had improperly prescribed medication and engaged in inappropriate relationships with patients. 

“Licensee would meet with Patient A in this vacant space by his clinic and at his office, where he engaged in inappropriate touching, to include embracing her, kissing her, and stroking her hair while her head was resting in his lap,” the board wrote in a report following its investigation into Morey. “On multiple occasions, Licensee initiated sexualized conversations with Patient A about his own sexual activities and frustrations, as well as Patient A’s sexual relationship with her then-boyfriend.”

Sixteen years later, Morey had moved to Arizona, obtained a law degree and was working as an attorney for the Maricopa County Office of the Legal Advocate, where his title is “Attorney III” and he is paid at least $114,500 a year. At a February meeting of the Sex Offender Management Board’s Adult Guidelines and Standards Subcommittee, Morey explained that he has been providing legal advice to sexually violent predators since 2015.

It’s unclear when or how the Sex Offender Management Board first learned of Morey’s history, but it’s clear that the board doesn’t want to publicly grapple with what it means that one of the people tasked with developing rules to oversee sex offenders had a history of credible allegations of sexual impropriety.

Morey, one of 29 people serving on the Sex Offender Management Board, was dismissed from his appointment in March and quietly replaced. There were no formal announcements of the change. 

He was one of two people that Steve Montenegro, the Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, appointed to the board in 2025, when it was formed. The law governing the board allows the president of the Senate and the speaker to each appoint two representatives. 

Andrew Wilder, a spokesperson for Montenegro, said the speaker was initially unaware of Morey’s history in Oregon. He said that staff for the House GOP majority had checked to see that Morey was an attorney in good standing with the State Bar of Arizona before appointing him. 

Montenegro learned of Morey after he was recommended by the board’s chair, Beth Goulden. 

The board is overseen and operated by the Arizona Department of Public Safety, which refused to comment on this story other than saying that the agency “does not interfere with the statutory authority of other entities to exercise their right to appoint members” of the board and that the law does “not authorize DPS to background check appointees,” DPS spokesman Bart Graves told the Mirror. 

Goulden, the board’s chair, said in an email to the Mirror that she has never spoken to any of Morey’s “victms/accusers.” She said that she referred Morey to Montenegro after he was suggested “by some of his colleagues who worked with him through his position at Maricopa County.” 

But Goulden wouldn’t answer follow-up questions, referring the Mirror to DPS instead, claiming that the board’s bylaws do not permit the chair to “speak to the media on behalf of the Board without the permission of the Board.” The board’s bylaws do not include any provision blocking any of its members from speaking to the press. 

Information about Morey’s past is hardly difficult to find: The third result when searching for “Peter Morey Psychiatrist” on Google returns results about the suspension and the allegations against him. 

When the Sex Offender Management Board met last month, one of Morey’s past patients told board members that she has tried to raise the alarm — and has been met with silence from the board. 

“Peter was supposed to be an expert witness to support me in civil litigation regarding child sexual abuse in my church,” Michelle Stevenson told the board at its June 22 meeting. “I wrote this information to (the Sex Offender Management Board) in time for my letter to be published for the May release of public comments. Unfortunately, somebody decided to not publish that letter, even though I had specified I wanted it public to help others. This is unfortunate. It takes a lot of courage for survivors to speak up. It costs us something.” 

It’s unclear when Maricopa County learned of Morey’s past.

“While Maricopa County doesn’t comment on specific personnel matters, I can confirm he is a fully licensed attorney with the State Bar of Arizona and holds the position of Attorney III in the Office of the Legal Advocate,” a county spokesperson said in a statement to the Mirror. “The County will investigate recent public statements related to this employee.”

Morey did not respond to multiple calls and emails seeking comment. 

“They can look this stuff up” 

In the early 2000s, survivors of sexual abuse in religious organizations began to come forward, telling their stories and seeking justice for the abuse and the cover-ups. 

The most prominent was the Boston Globe’s investigation into the Catholic Church covering up abuse, but others soon followed. 

Among them was the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which in Oregon began seeing lawsuits brought against it for abuse dating back to the 1970s. 

Stevenson said she had also been abused by members of the church when she was a child and was working with an attorney to find a psychiatrist to help her heal her trauma and to act as an expert witness when they found Morey’s Portland office, she told the Mirror. 

Her story is much like that of another woman who would later sue Morey and ultimately settle out of court. Attempts to reach that individual went unreturned. 

Both women sought out Morey as adults for his services to help cope with childhood sexual trauma, and to also see if they could enlist his services in a possible lawsuit against a church that they both said helped cover up that abuse, according to court documents and Stevenson’s testimony before the board.

The lawsuit in Oregon was filed by the woman referred to in the Oregon Medical Board investigation as Patient A. In a deposition filed with the court as part of the lawsuit, she said that, due to the trauma she had experienced throughout her life — which she was seeking Morey’s help to treat — she did not see his actions as odd until she spoke with investigators from the medical board. 

Among other things, the lawsuit alleged, Morey offered her a job while she was a client; called her “family;” rubbed her back and told her to not tell other physicians about it; and gave her medications without a prescription. 

When Stevenson discovered that Morey was on the Arizona Sex Offender Management Board, she said she became worried about what that could mean for victims in the state who may speak to the board. 

“They can look this stuff up, it’s public record in Oregon,” Stevenson said of Morey’s publicly available and accessible case with the Oregon Medical Board. 

Stevenson brought the Oregon case to the board’s attention in May and was told her written comment would be included in a packet of written comments that are provided to board members each time before they meet. That written comment wasn’t made public in May and that frustrated Stevenson. 

“I have a hard time coming forward,” she said through tears. “I’m just trying to make sure people are safe. I’m trying to make sure other people aren’t hurt.”

Who’s watching? 

The board is a new creation and it was spurred largely through advocacy from Goulden, who spent more than two decades working in Adult Probation specializing in the supervision of sex offenders. She pushed for the creation of the board as a way to make legislative recommendations on sex offenders and their victims. Goulden has featured the legislation creating the board as a key part of her campaign this year for Gilbert Town Council.

The board operates as part of DPS, and the majority of its appointees are chosen by the statewide police agency. Its members are meant to serve two-, three- and four-year terms. 

Several months ago, the House of Representatives learned of the allegations that had been leveled against Morey in Oregon and withdrew his appointment to the board. 

“The House first learned of the allegations involving Dr. Morey at the end of March. Upon receiving that information, we immediately began the process of replacing him and acted promptly to make a new appointment to the board,” Wilder, the House spokesman, told the Mirror. “The House was not aware of the allegations or the Oregon disciplinary history described in your inquiry prior to the appointment, and nothing identified during the appointment process revealed this information.”

On April 16, Montenegro appointed Dr. Rene Rivera of PCS Forensics to the board. 

Morey is an attorney in good standing with the Arizona State Bar and was admitted to practice law in 2015, after earning a juris doctorate from Arizona Summit Law School, a defunct school that shut down after years of controversy. 

The for-profit law school was based in Phoenix from 2005 to 2018, when it lost its accreditation from the American Bar Association. In 2015, two years after Morey graduated, the dean of the school reportedly paid students who were underprepared to not take the bar exam. The following year, a high percentage of the school’s students failed the test.

The Arizona Supreme Court is responsible for “Character and Fitness Assessments” of prospective attorneys, including a background investigation prior to issuing a license. One of the points in the “checklist” for an application expressly mentions licensing history of all kinds. Applicants are required to detail the outcomes of any discipline action or licenses they previously held.

Under Arizona court rules, applications for bar licensure are considered confidential, so it is not clear whether Morey disclosed his history in Oregon to Arizona Bar officials.

Hierarchical misconduct 

In Stevenson’s testimony before the committee and in a conversation with the Mirror, she emphasized her frustration that systems she felt that should’ve held Morey to account have not. 

It is something that advocates for victims of abuse by institutions like the Catholic Church and others are well aware of. 

“Too often, the hierarchical structures support the perpetrator and keep this abuse in the shadows,” Angela Walker, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. “Oftentimes, we found priests were moved from place to place. Survivors may be attacked by the institution but sometimes they’re ostracized by their faith community and this needs to stop.”

While much attention has been paid to sexual abuse in religious organizations, survivors and advocates say the problem extends far beyond houses of worship and into other institutions.

“There are cases where there are professors raping the trainees for decades without getting caught,” neuroscientist Hermina Nedelescu, who has been advocating for laws to combat clergy sex abuse in California, said. “I think society is just now reckoning with sexual violence and sex offenders.”

And others are taking note of how institutions are dealing, or rather not dealing, with these issues within their own professions. 

“In therapy, you are at your most vulnerable, so it really is a dangerous place,” said Amy Nordhues, who wrote about her experience being abused by her therapist and now is trying to bring attention to the issue. “So, when there is childhood sexual abuse, that is probably like a green light to (predators), because those people’s boundaries were violated at a very young age.”

While Nordues was able to file a complaint against the therapist in her case and the doctor ended up permanently surrendering his medical license to the state’s medical board — something the board noted had only been done five times in 20 years — she said her case is an outlier.

The unfortunate reality for most people who face abuse from a therapist, she said, is that the system is often predisposed to give therapists leniency.

“It just seems like there is so much staked against the victim,” Nordues said, adding that few cases are heard and the pressure put on victims can cause severe psychological trauma. “Your chances are already hard and then they just pay a fine or have to take a sexual abuse class.”

It also doesn’t always stop a perpetrator from obtaining a license for a different profession or even the same profession in a different state with more relaxed rules, Nordues said. 

“A therapist that singles you out and makes you feel more special than any of the other clients is one of the biggest red flags,” Nordues said. “Even though in our adult minds we might kind of feel that is not right, the younger parts of us say ‘this is amazing this is what I always wanted.’” 

That behavior is similar to what Morey’s Patient A described in her lawsuit. He offered her free sessions, called her his “Girl Friday” and called her “family,” she claimed in the lawsuit.

For Stevenson, what has transpired is indicative of the experience of many survivors, one she said to the committee and the Mirror she wants to see stopped.

“This is what happens when survivors are silenced and crimes are covered up,” Stevenson told the board. “The abuse continues and more innocents are horribly hurt.”