Counselor arrested for sexual assault of teenage patient

January 18, 2012

A Frisco (Texas) child therapist has been arrested for sexually assaulting a patient.

Ronald Joseph Hodgkiss, 46, worked at the Frisco Adolescent Counseling and Therapy Center (FACT) and has been charged with one count of sexual assault of a child, a second degree felony.

Hodgkiss was arrested without incident at his Frisco home on Friday. His biography on the FACT website said he has lived in Frisco for more than 15 years and is active in his local church and with the Boy Scouts of America. It said he previously worked at the Collin County Children's Advocacy Center, and at the Collin Intervention to Youth (CITY) House Family Center, both in Plano.

In a release by The Collin County Children's Advocacy Center issued Tuesday, it said Hodgkiss was "never an employee of the Center, but was a student intern from June 2006 to early 2007. As a student intern Hodgkiss was supervised closely and there were no issues concerning his performance and interaction with the children."

According to the police affidavit, the victim's mother contacted police in September and said she suspected her daughter, a client of Hodgkiss' since November 2010, was having an inappropriate relationship with him.

The victim's mother said that she found Hodgkiss in her home with her daughter in September 2011. She did not "see them doing anything inappropriate," police documents said, however, later that day she found emails between the victim and Hodgkiss that "contained overtly sexual language."

Documents said in addition to the emails, the victim's mother also found text messages between her daughter and Hodgkiss which concerned her. When the mother attempted to take the cell phone, the daughter texted Hodgkiss and told him not to text her that day. The daughter then deleted all of her text messages.

Detectives set up interviews with the victim at the Children's Advocacy Center of Collin County, where she began counseling sessions with a therapist to discuss her relationship with Hodgkiss. Police said the victim "was protective of Hodgkiss in the beginning," but then began to reveal more about her relationship with Hodgkiss. During one interview with a counselor at the Advocacy Center, the victim recalled that Hodgkiss "kissed her and in the following sessions, he lifted up her shirt and unbuttoned her pants and their sessions became 'nothing but sexual,'" the affidavit said.

On Jan. 12, the victim told her therapist that Hodgkiss invited her to his home in early September, where he allegedly performed sexual acts on her. She said this was the last time that she saw Hodgkiss. After the admission, police obtained a warrant for Hodgkiss' arrest.

Hodgkiss was released on a $100,000 bond on January 14.

Source: Elizabeth Knighten, "Frisco therapist arrested for child sexual assault," Star Local News, January 17, 2012.