A Twin Cities psychiatrist has been sentenced to a 7½-year term for repeatedly sexually assaulting a patient in trauma therapy.
Gavin P. Meany, 39, was sentenced Wednesday in Dakota County District Court after pleading guilty in January to four counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct.
Upon sentencing by Judge Jerome Abrams, Meany was taken into custody and will serve the first five years of his term in prison and then under court supervision for life.
Dakota County prosecutors had sought a term of 15 years for Meany.
A woman told Burnsville police in 2019 that she had been abused over the previous five years by Meany while receiving psychiatric treatment from him for an eating disorder and past sexual trauma. The sexual contact first occurred in Meany's office in St. Louis Park and later in his Burnsville office and at his Apple Valley home.
The St. Louis Park allegations have led to separate charges in Hennepin County. Meany has a Sept. 23 court date in that case.
At sentencing, the woman read a victim impact statement and revealed that "I feel like I lost myself. ... My worth, my dignity, lost, gone. I don't get that back. A judge's sentence doesn't get that back, not for me, not ever."
She said that Meany would adjust her medication anytime she felt depressed in order to "make me feel happy again. … Now I see I really was an over-medicated sexual puppet for his needs, brought in for weekly appointments to satisfy him, to be raped, over and over. That's all that I was worth."
