I don't want to give too many personal details, but a basic summary of the setup:
- Location is a country in western Europe
- Therapy group is a part of the outpatient clinic attached to a psychiatric hospital. Most patients have been inpatient and are dealing with severe issues
- No diagnoses or patient behavior are screened out as far as I can tell, other than that I think the clinic doesn't treat active addiction. They allow people with severe and untreated personality disorders, including ASPD and NPD
- No suitability screening or individual meeting with the therapist is done before the group, patients are just informed about the existence of the group from their psychiatrist and given the option to show up
- Group members are allowed and encouraged to form friendships and support each other outside of group. There are no boundaries on this or discussion of safety and what to do if another member has a crisis
- This outside contact is not discussed within the group
I was targeted by a member with diagnosed ASPD who, immediately after I shared about my trauma history in the group, engaged in grooming and isolating tactics and grey-area SA (there was no force used but not enthusiastic consent, I felt scared and froze and couldn't say no), and I reported this to the therapist. I was told that unless he admitted to doing so, it was my word against his, so they couldn't remove him from the group. This member also participates in the group in a very shallow way and never shares anything personal or vulnerable, and has stated repeatedly that he only comes to the group to get coffee with the other members afterwards.
There's also been some other incidents too that I don't think are appropriate for group therapy, like one member having a suicidal crisis and calling another member, who then drove her to the ER. I feel like wasn't fair to put this on us as patients and not tell us "you should not manage this situation, here is who to call instead"?
Am I crazy for thinking this setup is absolutely nuts and was obviously a disaster waiting to happen? Or is this within normal guidelines for group therapy, and I just got unlucky or it's my fault for being bad at setting boundaries and easily manipulated? Is it something any sort of board would do anything about if I reported it? I get that they can't remove him just based on my word, but I feel like there should have been some sort of guardrails around who is allowed in the group or how outside contact is addressed to prevent this from happening in the first place?