Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [36]
Administrators at Kaiser insisted Susan leave the facility after only one week of treatment; they didn’t want to be liable for a minor. Yet, instead of having the young woman transferred to an age-appropriate facility, Felix Polk took responsibility for her care and allowed Susan to return home to live with her mother in the house she had recently purchased in Orinda.
There was one stipulation—she had to continue to see him for therapy.
In a letter to Alameda County youth officials in 1973, Polk described Susan as a “severely disturbed girl with strong depressive features,” but he failed to mention that his therapy was doing little to help her mental state. Susan was now sixteen. She still refused to go to class, making it clear she had no intention of attending continuation school with a bunch of “uneducated” and “unsophisticated” teens. She was unwilling to be among people of “marginal” intelligence. Remarkably, her probation officer allowed her to remain at home—as long as she continued her therapy with Dr. Polk. The officer had observed a marked improvement in Susan since she started with Felix and believed that the lost teen might actually find her way.
Meanwhile, Helen thought that her daughter was thriving under Dr. Polk’s care.
In reality, Susan was deeply troubled and would later report that her therapy was adding to her anxiety. She later claimed that the sessions included hypnosis—and sex with her therapist while she was in a trance.
For her, the choice was clear: either she would surrender to Dr. Polk or risk being locked up in a mental institution. Whether Polk actually threatened the teen will never be known; however, Susan claimed that if she didn’t comply with his wishes, he would have committed her to U. C. Medical Center. She said that, at times, he would employ the plural “we” when speaking of decisions about her future. Susan was afraid to inquire about the “other” authorities who were also deciding her fate, choosing instead to go along with whatever Felix proposed.
While other teens her age were preparing for graduation and the prom, Susan claimed to be romantically involved with her forty-two-year-old married therapist. She alleged that her twice-weekly sessions consisted of “sex on the floor” of Dr. Polk’s Berkeley office.
Over time, though, the sex became consensual. Susan had grown comfortable with Felix who, despite his protectiveness, seemed to know how to make problems in her life go away. He had rescued her from school, even helping her to enroll in a course at Diablo Valley College in spite of the fact that she never completed more than the eighth grade.
Finally, someone in her life had taken charge, given her direction, and was really listening to her. Felix was the caring father—and mother—she never had. Even better, he wanted her. She loved that she seemed to be the most important person in his life.
But Susan Bolling was not well, and Felix Polk couldn’t see it.
Susan waited all day to tell her mother her secret. It was late 1974. She was seventeen now, and it was time to let Helen know that she was a woman. She had rehearsed the conversation in her mind countless times, how she would tell her mother that she was having an affair with Dr. Polk. She even tried to anticipate her mother’s reaction to the news that she was sleeping with a much older, married man.
What Susan failed to anticipate was her mother’s anger. Helen threatened to have Felix’s license revoked. Though she had never tried to intervene before, Helen Bolling would later say that she had always suspected that something was going on between the psychologist and her daughter—ever since Susan told her about sitting on Felix’s lap during some of their sessions.
Ultimately, Helen opted not to alert the authorities,