EUGENE -- The executive assistant to the director of the University of Oregon's Counseling Center disobeyed instructions last December and showed a therapist a confidential email from their boss.

The email's directions horrified both Karen Stokes, the director's assistant, and Jennifer Morlok, the clinician.

Shelly Kerr, the center's director, told Stokes in the Dec. 8, 2014, message to give the university's legal office a client's entire case file -- including notes taken by Morlok during private therapy sessions.

The client was a UO freshman who says she was gang raped multiple times on March 8, 2014, by three members of the men's basketball team.

Normally mental-health professionals go to great lengths, even in the face of court orders, to release as little information about clients as possible. Clinicians want patients to feel safe expressing their most intimate thoughts and feelings during therapy.

But in this case, Morlok said, no one in the counseling center had notified the patient of the UO General Counsel's Office request for the records. Neither had the center obtained the client's consent.

Both those steps, including the client's written permission, were required by campus counseling center policy at the time and by private, off-campus clinics as a general practice. Kerr also departed from normal practice by not notifying the client's therapist of the impending release and discussing it with her.

"Please print everything in this file, including all intake paperwork," Kerr said in the email to Stokes, directing her to do it that same day. The email asked Stokes not to discuss the request with anyone except Kerr and her two assistant directors.

That email and the university's ensuing handling of the mental-health records led to ongoing state regulatory investigations of six UO employees by the Oregon Board of Psychologist Examiners and the Oregon State Bar. Controversy concerning the records has fueled a national debate over privacy at college counseling centers.

Legal experts have warned students that their college therapy records aren't necessarily private under Ferpa, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. One prominent authority has urged students never to seek campus counseling. UO officials say they did nothing wrong.

At the heart of the debate are Morlok and Stokes, whose concern about the propriety of the records release turned them into whistleblowers -- and, they say, pariahs among many of their coworkers.

Morlok, 35 and the mother of two boys, is a UO graduate and case manager and senior staff therapist at the University Counseling & Testing Center.

She specializes in trauma counseling and is bound by professional ethical standards that require her to report incidents in which she believes a patient's confidentiality has been violated. While Morlok will not confirm or deny that she was the student in question's therapist, a lawyer for a university employee has identified her as such in response to the Oregon Bar investigation.

Stokes, 60 with an adult daughter, is a veteran office manager with academic, corporate and industry experience. Unlike Morlok or the psychologists, she was not bound by an organization's conduct code or ethical principles. Still, she felt the request to send the student's records to campus lawyers was inappropriate.

"I didn't think this was right at all," Stokes said. "That night I thought about it even more. I thought, 'I am not going to be a part of this at all.'"

She left the task undone, and was out of the office for the next two days.

Stokes and Morlok knew some but not all of the backstory: Nine months earlier, a student told officers at the Eugene Police Department that she had been raped repeatedly by three Ducks basketball players. Although no charges were filed, the university subsequently kicked out all three athletes.

That summer, four months before Kerr's email,

, a Denver lawyer known nationally for representing victims of sexual assault,

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ent a "litigation hold" letter and then a tort-claim notice to the university on behalf of the accuser. A lawyer hired by the university held mediation sessions in November aimed at avoiding a lawsuit with Clune, but those produced no settlement.

In interviews and responses to investigations by the Oregon State Bar and the Oregon Board of Psychologist Examiners, university administrators and lawyers have given several explanations for the decision to give the student's therapy records to the General Counsel's Office.

University of Oregon spokesman Tobin Klinger said in March that the university was responding to a request from Clune for the therapy records. But Clune and Jennifer Middleton, a Eugene lawyer working with him, already had the records by the time they were given to the campus legal office, Middleton said.

Bradley Tellam, a lawyer representing Samantha Hill, the university attorney who requested the records from Kerr, told the Oregon Bar that UO officials did not need the student's consent to release her records to the lawyer. Tellam wrote that Hill was a "school official" with a legitimate interest in gathering and preserving the records.

As part of the Oregon Bar investigation, Arden Olson, a lawyer for UO interim general counsel Doug Park, wrote that Clune's litigation-hold letter demanded university employees "produce" electronic copies of relevant active files and ensure that all back-up materials were identified and stored in a safe place.

But Middleton said the letter only required custodians to ensure that records were not destroyed or changed. Clune suggested Aug. 6, 2014, that Park send a letter to UO officials saying the university had a legal duty to preserve all evidence. "Some of this information may be in your possession or control," said Clune's suggested wording, "and as a university employee, you have a legal duty to preserve that information."

After Stokes returned from her two days away from work, she asked about the records request. She was told another counseling center employee had printed the file and that it had been hand-delivered to the General Counsel's Office.

Morlok said the person who had done the copying did not leave a note in the file -- a standard step, she and Stokes say, to ensure that everyone involved in a client's care knows who has accessed the person's records.

If Stokes hadn't shown her the email requesting the records, Morlok said, neither she nor the student client would have ever known the file was handed over. The patient was told only after her records had been delivered to university lawyers.

Morlok said that therapists and other counseling center mental-health practitioners are bound to always represent the best interests of their clients.

"Here's how picky we are: If my client wants part of their record, like their treatment plan, I'm going to have them sign a release of information to themselves," she said. "You're protecting your liability. Because if they left it at the library, we have proof that we handed it to them."

Morlok said the counseling center's confidentiality policy in effect at the time of the records release "really emphasized having a signed release, and not releasing things without a client's permission."

"Imagine this situation off-campus," Morlok said. "There's no way somebody can call up and say, 'Hey, send me these records, thank you,' and we just send the whole file over.

In late January, Morlok went to state regulators at the Oregon Bar and the Psychologist Board. She had, she said, no other choice: Oregon law requires her to report a situation in which she believes that another licensed practitioner did something unethical or illegal.

The Bar is investigating complaints against Park and Hill, the interim general counsel and associate general counsel. The Psychologist Board is investigating complaints against four psychologists: Kerr, her two assistant directors, Brooks Morse and Joseph DeWitz, and Robin Holmes, the university's vice president for student life.

Meanwhile, the university hired Eugene attorney Amanda Walkup to conduct an independent investigation. The university denied a public-records request by The Oregonian/Oregonlive for Walkup's report, citing attorney-client privilege. Morlok said Walkup met with counseling center employees April 22 and told them that the investigation found no wrongdoing.

UO Interim President Scott Coltrane's administration has lined up solidly behind the psychologists and lawyers being investigated. Klinger, the school spokesman, has called Morlok's allegations that the records were mishandled "false."

"The university remains confident that ultimately the Oregon State Bar and Oregon Board of Psychological Examiners will conclude what we know to be true: That those named in the filings did nothing improper and that they demonstrate their dedication to the confidentiality of student records every day, and uphold the highest ethical practices," Klinger said in an email last week.

On Jan. 8, the student who says she was raped filed a federal lawsuit against the University of Oregon and basketball coach Dana Altman. The handling of her therapy records is part of the suit.

The student's case is scheduled for trial next year. The clinic has given a student's confidential therapy records to lawyers working for the university more than once, according to Middleton, the Eugene attorney. (See companion story).

Morlok said that she has experienced ostracism and retribution ever since Feb. 8, when she and Stokes circulated an email telling colleagues and administrators that Morlok had felt compelled to file the complaints.

For example, Morlok said Walkup questioned her and Stokes for more than three hours during the university's investigation. Walkup challenged the two women's own records-disclosure practices as potentially unethical or illegal, Morlok said.

Morlok said that in staff meetings, Kerr has repeatedly shamed her, saying that her allegations are false. Kerr's lawyer, Bob Steringer, had no comment when asked for his client's version of the staff meeting interactions. In an email, Steringer said Kerr's request to have the records copied did not direct Stokes to "deviate from standard Counseling Center procedures."

Morlok still has her job. Stokes' position is less clear.

She took two weeks off on bereavement leave after her father died Feb. 17. When she returned, most of her duties had been reassigned to other counseling center employees.

When Stokes asked Kerr about the changes, the director told her they would be returned to the "executive assistant position" once Walkup's investigation was finished. "She told me I couldn't be trusted," Stokes said.

On March 20, Stokes was told that March 27 would be her last day working at the counseling center. She's still getting paid by the university -- her contract extends through June 30, 2016 -- and campus officials have told her she can apply for other university jobs. For now, she's at home, not working. Students protested her dismissal.

Also on March 20, acting provost Frances Bronet sent a campus-wide memo saying that the alleged rape victim's records had been returned to the counseling center. Bronet urged students to use campus counseling and mental-health services "without fear that their counseling records will be disclosed to other parties or UO departments."

Bronet promised that students visiting the center would have the same level of strong confidentiality that they would have in private, off-campus therapy. She wrote that in the future, no records would be accessed by anyone not involved in a student's care -- except in certain situations, such as when a student gave written permission or a court ordered a release.

But Bronet's promises on behalf of the university exceeded the counseling center's own privacy policy, which Kerr, Hill and DeWitz rewrote after the December 2014 records transfer. The new policy eliminates the requirement for written permission and says records can be released upon receipt of subpoenas, which are far easier for lawyers to obtain than court orders. University officials say the revised policy did not make any substantive changes and was meant to reflect actual clinic practices.

Bronet since formed a 10-member committee to revise and clarify campus-wide confidentiality policies, including those governing the counseling center. Two of the members are Holmes and Morse, who are among those being investigated by the Psychologist Board.

On Thursday, the UO Board of Trustees is expected to vote on proposed changes to the Student Conduct Code that would strengthen penalties for sexual misconduct.

This spring, campus colleagues honored Morlok and Stokes jointly with "Outstanding Officer of Administration Recognition Awards." At an April 14 ceremony the duo received plaques from Coltrane, the interim president whose administration has dismissed Morlok's charges as false.

Afterward, Stokes made a brief speech.

"Some people have called us heroes," she said, "but all I know is that we saw something wrong and spoke out."

-- Richard Read

503-294-5135; @ReadOregonian