It’s one of the most terrifying moments a professional can face: discovering that your name — and your business — have been published online by a government authority, based not on a legal finding or court ruling, but on the opinion of an administrative process carried out behind closed doors.
That’s what happened to me.
The Health and Disability Commissioner (HDC) made the decision to publicly name me, not because I had been convicted of a crime, and not because a court had found me guilty of professional misconduct. I was never charged. I was never given a hearing. I was never given the right to face my accuser in a formal setting. And yet, without trial, without context, without warning — my name and the name of my business were released into the public domain, broadcast by an official government body, as if I were a danger to the very people I had spent over a decade helping.
No verdict.
No court.
No formal finding of misconduct.
Just a report, uploaded online — with my name pinned to it like a digital scarlet letter.
From that moment on, anyone who Googled me — clients, colleagues, family, friends — no longer saw my years of service, care, or professionalism.
They saw a label.
“Unsafe.”
“Untrustworthy.”
“Controversial.”
And that label followed me — through inboxes, consultations, empty bookings, awkward conversations, and malicious reviews — as if it were truth.
But it wasn’t truth.
It wasn’t justice.
It wasn’t even due process.
This wasn’t about protecting the public.
This was punishment without a verdict.
This was an institution reaching far beyond its mandate — deciding, without judicial authority, to destroy what I had built based on a complaint never tested in court.
This wasn’t public interest.
This was institutional overreach.
And I was its casualty.
The Dangerous Double Standard: Criminals Protected, Counsellors Exposed
In New Zealand, it is not uncommon for individuals convicted of serious crimes — including rape, child sexual abuse, and even murder — to receive name suppression from the courts.
Judges will grant name suppression for a variety of reasons:
- To protect the accused’s right to a fair trial
- To prevent harm to victims, witnesses, or the offender’s family
- To minimise reputational damage when a conviction may be appealed
- Or simply because the individual is under the age of 18
And in many cases, even after conviction, a person’s name remains legally suppressed from the media and public record.
I’ve read cases where rapists, murderers, and violent abusers walked away from court with their privacy fully intact — their names protected, their futures still salvageable, their online footprint clean.
But as a counsellor falsely accused, who upheld client confidentiality and was never criminally charged, I was named publicly by the HDC without a single legal safeguard.
- No legal representation
- No trial
- No judge
- No peers consulted
- No suppression considered
- And no opportunity to challenge the release before it happened
My name was published — permanently — as though I had committed an offence. And that one act destroyed trust, relationships, bookings, income, and mental wellbeing.
That is the dangerous double standard we now live with:
- Serious criminals are offered protection
- Ethical professionals are exposed, tried by public opinion, and archived forever
This is not justice.
This is a system that has lost all sense of proportionality, fairness, and accountability.
The HDC’s Naming Power Bypasses Legal Protections — And Leaves Permanent Damage
In a legal system, public exposure follows process.
It’s bound by checks, safeguards, and the principle of fairness.
It’s meant to come only after:
- Charges are formally laid
- Evidence is tested in court
- A defence is heard in full
- Witnesses are examined
- A judge or jury weighs the facts
- And a legal finding is made — beyond reasonable doubt, or on the balance of probabilities
That’s the social contract — the invisible agreement that underpins any civilised system of justice:
You are innocent until proven guilty.
And your name is not dragged through the mud unless it is legally necessary to protect others.
But that contract was completely shattered when I came into contact with the Health and Disability Commissioner.
❌ What the HDC Process Actually Looks Like
The HDC operates under a very different framework:
- It is not judicial.
- It is not peer-reviewed.
- It is not required to apply the standards of natural justice that govern our courts.
Its investigations are:
- Administrative
- Private
- Conducted entirely behind closed doors
- Not subject to evidentiary testing under oath
- And carried out by non-clinicians who are not trained counsellors, yet still pass judgment on our decisions
There is:
- No hearing
- No cross-examination
- No impartial tribunal
- No chance to present a full defence face-to-face
- No opportunity to call witnesses or clarify intent
And yet, despite all that — despite the lack of legal findings or due process — the HDC retains the unilateral power to publish your name and business publicly, permanently, and globally.
This isn’t accountability. This is unchecked power.
And it is staggering in its reach and recklessness.
🧍♂️ What It Looked Like for Me
I was never asked to appear in person.
I was never given a clear explanation of the steps ahead.
I was never interviewed formally.
I was never provided with procedural support.
I was never advised that public naming was even a possibility when instructed they would proceed without any further information from me.
One day I woke up, and my name — along with my clinic’s — was live on the HDC website, and picked up by the media, framed as a danger to the public.
But I had never been found guilty.
I had never had a chance to defend myself properly.
I had simply been processed — then published.
This was not public safety.
This was public condemnation without a courtroom.
This is the brutal irony:
Criminals in New Zealand — including rapists, child abusers, and violent offenders — are often granted name suppression to protect their privacy and legal rights.
But ethical mental health professionals, who are accused but not convicted, can be named and shamed indefinitely, without the same protections.
The message is clear:
If you work in mental health, your name can be destroyed before the facts are ever examined via proper legal process.
And once it’s out there — you don’t get to take it back.This is a staggering level of unchecked power.
🧠 The Digital Consequences Are Lifelong
When your name is released by the HDC, it doesn’t just appear on their site.
- It gets crawled by search engines.
- It’s picked up by media outlets, who often don’t seek comment or context.
- It becomes screenshot-able, shareable, and reposted on social media.
- It appears beside your professional name on Google, sometimes above your actual website.
- It becomes part of your digital identity, forever indexed and searchable.
This isn’t a slap on the wrist. This is a permanent scarlet letter in a world where Google is the new CV. Where clients search online before booking. Where assumptions stick faster than facts.
The HDC claims its actions are in the name of public safety.
That may sound noble in theory — but in practice, when they act without legal due process, without judicial oversight, and without evidence tested in a fair hearing, what they’re really doing is something far more dangerous:
They are destroying lives.
They are destroying livelihoods — by damaging the very reputation a professional needs to survive. Clients cancel. New bookings dry up. Partnerships fall apart. Entire practices collapse under the weight of a single online headline.
They are destroying mental health — not just reputationally, but personally. The kind of public shaming that comes with being named, without defence or context, leads to crippling anxiety, isolation, insomnia, depression, and in many cases, suicidal ideation. It did for me.
They are destroying families — because the ripple effects don’t stop at the professional. They touch marriages, friendships, extended relatives. I had to watch people I love suffer in silence while I was vilified in public.
They are destroying hope — because once your name is out there, you are no longer a person to many people — you are a headline. A cautionary tale. A whisper. A rumour.
And the worst part?
There is no way back.
No retraction.
No rehabilitation process.
No public platform to respond.
No undoing the damage.
This isn’t regulation.
It’s retribution.
And it’s happening under the banner of public safety — a banner that has become a shield for institutional harm.
I know this isn’t just theoretical.
I know because I lived it.
And I am still living with the consequences.
No Warning, No Consent, No Safeguard: Just Exposure
One of the most damaging aspects of being named publicly by the HDC is not just that it happens — but how it happens.
From the outside, it may appear to be part of a formal process.
A step. A protocol. A matter of record.
But from the inside, when it’s happening to you, it feels nothing short of institutional betrayal.
It doesn’t begin with care.
It doesn’t begin with fairness.
And it certainly doesn’t begin with support.
In my case, the Director of Proceedings did inform me of the HDC’s intention to name me publicly. I was told that they were considering releasing both my personal name and business name into the public domain. On paper, that may look like procedural transparency. But the emotional reality was very different.
At the time, I was already in an incredibly vulnerable state. I had been mentally and emotionally destabilised by the drawn-out investigation, the absence of fairness, and the fear of being professionally destroyed.
I was struggling to cope. My trust in the process had eroded completely. I had no guidance, no psychological support, and no clarity about what was coming next.
I didn’t respond with more evidence — not because I didn’t have any, but because I was psychologically overwhelmed and traumatised by the system that claimed to be acting in the public interest.
The process didn’t feel like an invitation to participate in fairness.
It felt like a trap.
There was no support offered to me, no advocate assigned, no guidance to help me understand my rights, my options, or the risks ahead.
I was left alone, in the middle of a mental health crisis, while my professional future was quietly being decided behind closed doors.
And then it happened.
They published my name.
They published my business.
The media picked it up.
The public made up their mind.
To them, it may have looked like accountability.
But to me — a counsellor with no criminal charges, no hearing, and no opportunity to defend myself in court — it felt like execution by process.
This isn’t how justice should work.
This isn’t how human beings should be treated.
This is a system that pretends to protect, while it quietly destroys.
I found out that I’d been named publicly after it had already been done by my GP.
And the impact was immediate and catastrophic.
Within days:
- I lost multiple clients.
- My phone stopped ringing.
- I received judgmental messages from people.
- My Google profile began to attract malicious, fake reviews.
- My mental health collapsed.
- I became deeply suicidal, questioning whether I had any way back — not just professionally, but emotionally.
- And I had no idea how to defend myself, because no one had told me this was even a possibility.
This is not just careless.
It’s cruel.
It’s institutional negligence disguised as accountability.
To publish someone’s name without a legal basis, without procedural fairness, without peer review — and while the practitioner is too mentally unwell and unsupported to participate meaningfully in their own defence, due to the HDC’s own negligence, bullying, and emotionally damaging conduct throughout the investigation — is not regulation.
It is reputational execution disguised as process, and it is fundamentally unjust.
And it must stop.
What Needs to Change: A Fairer, Safer, More Ethical Path Forward
Public accountability matters.
Transparency matters.
Client safety matters.
But none of those values are served by an administrative complaints system that functions without the standards of a courtroom — a process that can publicly shame and professionally destroy someone without legal findings, without sworn evidence, and without the fundamental right to be heard in a fair and impartial setting.
The HDC’s power to publicly name practitioners must be legally restrained, ethically guided, and procedurally transparent.
Here’s what that reform should include:
🔹 1. Public Naming Must Only Follow a Legal or Tribunal Process
A professional’s name should never be released unless:
- There is a legal finding of wrongdoing
- Or a professional conduct tribunal, with proper procedural safeguards, has ruled on the matter
- And the practitioner has had full access to legal representation and a chance to present their case
No one should be publicly named based on untested allegations, internal assessments, or administrative summaries. That’s not justice — it’s career-ending conjecture.
🔹 2. Practitioners Must Be Warned and Allowed to Respond
Before any public naming occurs, the practitioner must be:
- Notified in writing
- Given an opportunity to respond formally
- Allowed to seek legal advice or request suppression
- Provided a reasonable time window to prepare for the potential fallout
Anything less is ambush regulation — and that has no place in a civil society.
🔹 3. An Independent Review Panel Must Approve Every Naming Decision
A multidisciplinary panel — including clinical peers, legal experts, and independent observers — should be required to approve any decision to publish a practitioner’s name.
This would introduce:
- Checks and balances
- Clinical contextual understanding
- And a buffer against rushed or biased outcomes
🔹 4. A Formal Appeals Process Must Exist
If a practitioner believes they have been named unfairly, they must have a path to challenge that outcome — one that leads to:
- Immediate review
- Potential withdrawal of the publication
- Suppression of search engine visibility until review is complete
Currently, no such process exists within the HDC. That’s indefensible.
✅ Final Words – For the Sake of the Profession, and the Public
I am not against accountability. I never have been.
But I am deeply opposed to systems that destroy lives without due process.
To every policymaker reading this: you must act. The HDC’s public naming power, in its current form, is a dangerous tool that can ruin reputations, careers, incomes, families, and mental health — all without the protections afforded in a courtroom.
To professionals: we need to speak up. Because if this can happen to me, it can happen to you.
To the public: hold space for the possibility that what you read isn’t always the full story. That sometimes, good professionals are punished not for doing harm — but for refusing to betray their ethics.
And to the system: evolve.
Because if you don’t, we’ll keep losing the very people who entered this field to help others — and who are now being left defenceless when they need help the most.
For those unfamiliar with the background of my situation, I’ve shared the full story in this detailed statement:
👉 Neil Oliver Counsellor – The Truth Behind the HDC Complaint