Counselor’s license suspended after charge of second-degree rape

RICHLAND — The credentials of a Grant County agency-affiliated counselor were suspended for allegedly raping a patient while working at a facility in Richland.

Arthur Warren de Victoria, 30, of Mattawa, was charged in Benton County Superior Court in July with one count of second-degree rape, according to a statement of charges released by the Washington Department of Health.

The sexual assault allegedly occurred in July and with a woman who was a patient in the facility where de Victoria worked, according to the DOH statement.

The woman, identified only as Patient A, was “admitted on an involuntary basis to the (facility’s) inpatient psychiatric unit,” the DOH statement said. “Respondent (de Victoria) made statements of a sexual nature to Patient A.” He then allegedly asked her to perform sexual acts with him, and recorded some of those acts, the statement said. De Victoria also allegedly touched the woman in an inappropriate manner.

Citing the allegations as “gross abuse of trust and position of authority,” DOH officials issued an immediate suspension of de Victoria’s credential after an investigation.

“It is made even more egregious when that patient is of a particularly vulnerable population such a psychiatric patient held on an involuntary basis,” the statement said. “Such conduct justifies making a determination of immediate danger and a decision to immediately suspend an agency-affiliated counselor credential to prohibit all practice.”