Welcome to another blog edition of "Idiots in Politics" - this one is about a Tennessee anti-LGBTQ lawmaker’s torrid affair with his cousin!
In a Divorce Trial, Serious Allegations About Sen. Joey Hensley
Hohenwald Republican is alleged to have had an affair with his nurse and prescribed her opioids
Mar 8, 2017 2 PM
The details sound straight out of a soap opera.
A
doctor and his younger nurse fall in love. They continue their torrid
affair even after his ex-wife tips off the nurse’s husband, a local
politician, to the salacious goings-on. As the divorce moves forward,
discovery turns up that the nurse is not just the doctor’s employee and
his lover, but his patient, with a predilection for pain pills. And, oh,
she’s his second cousin, too.
But this is not General Hospital, not Grey’s Anatomy.
This is the town of Hohenwald (pop. 3,703) in Lewis County, where
bitter divorce proceedings have brought to light possibly unethical
behavior by Dr. Joey Hensley, a Republican state senator who also
happens to be a family physician — and one who has run for office since
2002 on a platform of conservative Christian values.
Hensley,
61, was subpoenaed to appear last week in Williamson County Circuit
Court to testify in the divorce proceedings of Hohenwald Vice Mayor Don
Barber and his wife Lori. He refused to show up, citing legislative and
medical privilege.
“I didn’t have time to do it,”
Hensley said when contacted on Friday afternoon. “I had nothing to do
with the court case, and any testimony I would have given wouldn’t have
made any difference.”
But according to the sworn
testimony of both Barbers, Hensley has been having an affair with Lori
since 2014. Lori, 48, is a part-time nurse in Hensley’s medical practice
in Lewis County; she is also his second cousin.
Hensley
gained national notoriety in 2012 as a sponsor of the “Don’t Say Gay”
bill, which would have banned public school teachers from even
mentioning that homosexuality exists. During one hearing that year, Hensley commented, “I don’t think Modern Family
is appropriate for children to watch” — because it features a married
gay couple raising children. This session, Hensley is sponsoring a bill
from the Tennessee Family Action Council that would make children created using donor sperm illegitimate — an attempt to make it harder for gay and lesbian parents to establish paternity. He is also a sponsor of the so-called “Milo Bill,” aimed at liberal practices on college campuses.
The
subpoena ordered Hensley to bring evidence of any gifts or monies spent
by him on Lori Barber or by her on him. Hensley declined to testify
under a statute of Tennessee law that exempts “a member of the general
assembly while in session” and also “a practicing physician” from
subpoena to trial. But he will still be deposed about the affair, and
that deposition will then be entered into the court record. The
deposition has not been scheduled but is expected to occur in the next
week or two.
According to testimony during the trial,
Lori Barber started working for Hensley in 2013 part time as a licensed
practical nurse in his practice, at a salary of $15 an hour. She still
makes that same salary and currently works one day a week in his office.
She had previously worked for Hensley from 1987 to 1988, prior to both
her marriage and the completion of her nursing degree.
Barber
testified she and Hensley began confiding in each other about problems
in their marriages shortly after she took the job, but she said the
relationship did not become sexual until December 2014, after the
divorce became final between Hensley and his fourth wife, Gina, who is
also a nurse. Their first sexual encounter was at Hensley’s practice,
and soon, Barber said, the pair were discussing marriage.
This
timeline is disputed by Don Barber. He found out about the affair in
the spring of 2015, when Gina Hensley gave him a flash drive with
evidence of her ex-husband’s affair, including recordings of phone calls
and screenshots of sexually explicit text messages between Gina and
Lori discussing Hensley’s sexual proclivities and detailing instances
when he and Lori had sex. Court documents claim the files show that the
affair began much earlier in 2014; proof of this was not shown in open
court.
Around the same time that spring, Gina Hensley took out an order of protection from the senator, alleging he hit her with his car, twice. He denied it, and she eventually withdrew the claim. Sen. Hensley told Columbia’s Daily Herald at the time that Gina left him for another man, and he had “tried with all my heart to keep our family together.” He told the Scene something similar this week, saying, “I was devastated by my divorce.”
Lori
Barber moved out in August 2015 and filed for divorce later that fall.
She testified that she ended her affair with Hensley in April 2016, but
that things started up again in June. She said the couple continue to
discuss marriage as a future possibility. (It is legal in Tennessee for
second cousins of any age to marry.)
Barber also
testified that she spent the nights of Feb. 8 and and Feb. 14 this year
with Hensley at a hotel in downtown Nashville while he was in town for
legislative duties. Although those nights were presumably paid with a
legislative per diem — i.e., state dollars — Legislative Administration
director Connie Ridley said whether or not someone else stays with a
legislator if he or she is in town on legitimate business “is not
pertinent to the payment,” per state law.
Hensley denied that he is still romantically involved with Barber.
“No,
I’m divorced, I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Hensley said when
asked if they were still discussing marriage. He also denied that
Barber had spent either night in February in his hotel room. When asked
if this is what he would testify to under oath during his deposition,
Hensley said he had no further comment.
In a second conversation three days later, Hensley said the affair lasted only “a few months.”
“It’s
not still ongoing,” Hensley said Monday night. “That was several months
ago, years ago. I didn’t break any laws. I’m not married, I’m divorced.
… And nothing happened while I was married. … She didn’t leave because
of me, it wasn’t because of me. We’ve been friends for 30 years or more.
She’s related to me, but she’s been a friend too.”
But
Lori Barber is not just a friend or a cousin or a lover — she is also
Hensley’s patient. Barber testified in court that Hensley is her only
doctor other than a cardiologist, and that she relies on him for
recurrent Botox injections. She also said he has regularly prescribed
her the hydrocodone-acetaminophen pill Lortab — a Schedule II controlled
substance — for “chronic back pain,” which she said Hensley first
diagnosed after she hurt her neck.
Court testimony and
documents filed imply that Barber has possibly abused both alcohol and
opioids; she testified that she has no problem with either and any
uptick in consumption was due to the stress of the divorce. But in her
deposition, Barber was asked by her husband’s lawyer, Rose Palermo, “And
didn’t your parents come to you and say that this situation with the
Lortab had to be reined in, because you were taking too many Lortabs?”
Barber replied, “I was taking too many according to them, but I was
taking exactly what I was prescribed.” Palermo followed up, “By Dr.
Hensley?” Barber answered, “Yes.”
When asked last week
if he often provides his nurses with opioid prescriptions, Hensley said
he treats all his patients “the same” and declined further comment. On
Monday, when asked if it concerned him that a nurse in his employ had
been somewhat frequently taking hydrocodone, Hensley replied, “She’s a
patient of mine, and anything I treat a patient with is [protected by]
HIPAA.” She’s a patient, but she’s also an employee, the Scene said. “Well, it’s a small town. People don’t have an option for some things,” Hensley said.
It is a clear violation of the American Medical Association’s code of ethics
— to which the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners subscribes — for a
doctor to become romantically involved with a patient. It is also in
violation of the state board’s guidelines to regularly treat immediate
family members or prescribe them drugs. The policy states,
in part, “Treatment of immediate family members should be reserved only
for minor illnesses or emergency situations. … No schedule II, III or
IV controlled substances should be dispensed or prescribed except in
emergency situations.” But there are no AMA or state guidelines that
specifically prohibit doctors from treating employees.
Yet
an examination of recent disciplinary actions by the Board of Medical
Examiners suggests Hensley’s actions with Barber could certainly border
on the unethical. In the past year, from January 2016 to January 2017
(the latest month for which data was available), the board has taken
action against at least 13 doctors for, in part, prescribing controlled
substances to an employee, a family member or a patient with whom the
doctor was in a romantic relationship. The actions ranged from a
reprimand to license revocation or forced retirement, with an additional
wide range of fines.
It’s important to note that no
action was taken solely based on one instance of prescribing drugs to a
family member or employee alone — all of the instances above include
multiple and varied violations of state rules and regulations. And
Hensley said his treatment of Barber is in no way a violation of the
code of ethics, because he regularly treats a lot of family members.
“I’ve
been practicing 30 years,” says Hensley. “I have thousands of patients.
It’s a small town, and I have a lot of family. A lot of family.
Cousins, uncles, aunts. … And I don’t treat anyone any different.”
Lt.
Gov. Randy McNally says it is unlikely the state Senate will address
the situation unless the Board of Medical Examiners does go forward with
an investigation.
“If it were a
violation of the Board of Medical Examiners’ ethics, and certainly if it
rose to the level of anything more serious, then I think the Senate
Ethics Committee could look at it,” McNally says. “But if it’s just a
simple disciplinary-type issue that is not serious, then I don’t think
the Ethics Committee … they probably wouldn’t take it up.”
