Vancouver, British Columbia -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/22/2010 -- Aubrey Levin, a forensic psychiatrist who is facing 21 counts of sexual assault, will have his preliminary hearing in June 2011 to determine if there is sufficient evidence to go to trial.

According to media sources 20 additional complainants have contacted police in the time since Levin’s initial arrest in March 2010. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has also been contacted by some of these victims alleging they too were sexually assaulted by Levin. CCHR is a psychiatric watchdog group committed to investigating and exposing psychiatric violations of human rights.

CCHR has asked the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons to explain how Dr. Aubrey Levin, who emigrated to Canada in the mid 90s, was allowed to become a Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry (Forensic Division) at the University of Calgary’s Medical School, in light of the fact that in 1997 South Africa’s “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” named him for possible “gross human rights abuses” during Apartheid rule. The college has refused to respond to this vital question.

The forensic psychiatrist, who fled to Canada after the end of Apartheid rule, was originally arrested by police in Alberta on March 24 2010. He was charged with sexual assault after a 36-year-old former patient alleged he was sexually abused while being treated by the doctor.

It has been reported that in the 1980s and 1990s Levin, then a colonel, was the chief psychiatrist at 1 Military Hospital's infamous Ward 22, where homosexual conscripts and soldiers were "treated" with aversion therapy. There have also been reports that involuntary sex changes, sometimes deliberately botched, were imposed on gays and lesbians. The process included chemical castration and electric shocks.

According to South African media sources, Levin's 'treatment' of homosexuals, both male and female, comprised attaching electrodes to the arms of his subjects. These were connected to a machine operated by a dial calibrated from 1 to 10. In the case of suspected gay men, the subjects were shown black and white pictures of naked men and encouraged by Levin to fantasize about the pictures. They were then given increasingly painful shocks. This process was followed by showing the 'patients' Playboy centerfolds, which would be described in glowing terms by the psychiatrist, with no shocks administered. The same process, using pictures of women, counter posed with naked men, was employed with those women deemed to have lesbian tendencies.

Levin denied that he had taken part in any gender reassignment surgery — the surgical alteration of the genders of individuals. But he had never been accused of this. He was not a surgeon. The only allegation had been that he had referred military conscripts whom he could not ‘cure’ of homosexuality to the surgeons and their knives. That several of these difficult and dangerous operations were botched and others were left uncompleted was not a responsibility laid directly at the door of Levin. Possible knowledge of these ghastly practices most certainly is.

Brian Beaumont, spokesperson for the British Columbia chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, said “Psychiatric sexual assault is a very common occurrence over the world, but all too often the perpetrator is only slapped on the wrist by being given a fine or suspension from practice for these criminal activities”. “There has been ample evidence that women are at very great risk of being sexually assaulted while in a psychiatrist's office”. “Now even men are at risk”, he concluded.

If you know anyone, including a child, who has been abused or harmed by a psychiatrist call The Citizens Commission on Human Rights at 1-800-670-2247. Complete confidentiality assured.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was established by the Church of Scientology to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights.