Louisiana banned a Democratic House candidate in next month's special election from performing social work after investigating her years of unlicensed work with sex offenders.
The Louisiana State Board of Social Work Examiners determined in an investigation that Sandra "Candy" Christophe, the only Democrat running in the March 20 special election to fill the vacant House seat in Louisiana's fifth district, "violated her professional and ethical duty" as a social worker, according to a publicly available 2006 court order. The state listed numerous violations by Christophe regarding her work, including failure to receive required training to conduct group therapy sessions for sex offenders.
In the March 6, 2006, order signed and agreed to by Christophe, the state banned her from practicing for a year and fined her $5,000. Christophe was required to receive several hours of additional training before she was eligible to return to social work, and her first 1,000 hours of training after reinstatement had to be supervised.
While Christophe's campaign leans heavily on her background as a social worker in her campaign, she does not discuss the state's ruling that found her unqualified to work with sex offenders. On her campaign website, Christophe continues to tout her experience "as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker."
In 2010, Christophe founded Re-Entry Solutions, a Louisiana group that helps convicted felons and sex offenders find employment. It is unclear whether she performs therapy sessions for the group's clients—a review of Louisiana state documents found that the disciplinary action against her was completed in August 2020, just a month after she declared her candidacy for the seat.
Christophe did not respond to a request for comment about the report against her, or why it took 14 years to complete the disciplinary proceedings against her.
Louisiana's 2006 investigation into Christophe found several violations regarding her work with sex offenders. While guidelines recommend that sex therapists host groups of no more than 12 sex offenders at once, Christophe hosted groups of up to 21 at a time. Christophe additionally was reprimanded for listing herself as on the state registry of sex offenders without completing the required training hours, soliciting clients who were already seeing other therapists, and failing to administer legally required "phallometric" and "polygraf" tests for sex offenders.
In signing onto the board's decision, Christophe certified that she "violated her professional and ethical duty [as] a social worker" and waived any remedies that could stem from the ruling.
Although Christophe was the only Democrat to enter the race before the deadline last month, several Republicans are running to fill the seat, including Julia Letlow, who is running to succeed her late husband, Luke Letlow, who died of COVID-19 just days before his swearing-in last month.
Christophe failed to emerge from the district's primary last year, placing third behind two Republican candidates. The special election will be held on March 20.