Sussex therapist who claimed he could heal trauma with sex jailed for 11 years

A therapist who claimed he could heal birth trauma through sexual touching and oral sex has been sentenced to 11 years in prison.Gerald Peck, who has live profiles promoting his work as a bodywork psychotherapist, was convicted of five sexual offences on 2 February, after being charged in October 2024.Handing down the sentence at Lewes cown court on Thursday, Judge Mooney said: “The young woman who came to see you believed you could help her at a particularly difficult time in her life. She had every reason to believe she could trust you.“All the information you provided to her led her to believe you were a qualified bioenergetics practitioner

Life with my autistic sons: ‘How do you explain all the worries, the sleepless nights?’

When James Hunt began posting about his boys online, it was a way to describe the emotions and experiences of their extraordinary lives. In sharing his family’s joy and struggles, he realised they weren’t aloneMy conversation with James Hunt begins the usual way: an exchange of hellos, followed by the most mundane of questions. “How are you?” I ask.Although he responds predictably – “I’m all right … I’m good” – we both know that underneath this answer lurks a whole world of experience, and the plain fact that some people’s everyday lives are lived in extraordinary circumstances.Six months ago, this fortysomething father was leading the kind of life that might have caused plenty of people to break into small emotional pieces

Proposed law change will protect abusive men who push women to suicide, campaigners warn

Men whose abusive behaviour drives women to take their own lives are more likely to get away with their crimes because of proposed law changes, justice campaigners say.Ministers want to make it harder for inquests to pass verdicts of unlawful killing, which have been crucial in getting justice for women who killed themselves after suffering abuse.In October last year, Georgia Barter was found to have been unlawfully killed after suffering a decade of domestic violence and abuse. In 2023, an inquest found that Kellie Sutton, whose death was classed originally as a suicide, was unlawfully killed after suffering domestic abuse.The unlawful killing verdicts followed campaigns by the families of the women

Women receiving worse treatment for back and neck pain – UK study

Women are receiving worse treatment for back and neck pain because their experiences are not factored into “male by default” clinical guidelines in the UK, research has found.The NHS fails to acknowledge sex-specific considerations such as pain being more common among women in its model of care for non-surgical management of chronic neck and back pain, according to research from the University of Lancashire.Lower back pain affects more than 600 million people worldwide, the World Health Organization states. Back pain costs the NHS billions of pounds each year and chronic pain accounts for millions of GP appointments annually, while musculoskeletal disorders remain one of the leading causes of work absence in the UK.A major review of clinical guidance, published in the Physical Therapy Reviews journal, found that by consistently only referring to people, individuals or patients, clinical guidance in the UK ignores the role women’s different skeleton size, hormones, experience of pregnancy or menopause can play in musculoskeletal pain

For many of us, the Covid pandemic still isn’t over | Brief letters

I was surprised to see that your article (The Covid-19 inquiry is sounding a clear warning. If it’s not heeded, yet more lives will be lost, 5 March) speaks of those who suffered during the pandemic in the past tense, and does not mention the hundreds of thousands, like myself, who still suffer from long Covid. It is a devastating condition that is too often forgotten when the pandemic is discussed. Meanwhile, long Covid clinics are underfunded and many have closed. To many, the pandemic must feel like a nightmare that is thankfully in the past

UK companies struggling to hire young people amid cost pressures, MPs told

British companies are struggling to afford to hire young people after a long period of rising costs that have hit profit margins and derailed recruitment plans, business leaders say.Rising labour costs including increases to the minimum wage and employer’s national insurance by the government have put young people at the back of the queue when employers consider recruitment, business lobby groups told MPs.They added that the Employment Rights Act threatened to make the situation worse if it discouraged employers “from taking the risk” of hiring young people with fewer skills, or without a long track record in the workplace.The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) expects the unemployment rate to rise to 5.5% this year and said young people would be “disproportionately affected”