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PROVO — A Provo clinical mental health counselor who claimed to help counsel gay men is now facing formal criminal charges after he was arrested following a standoff with police.
Scott Dale Owen, 64, of Spanish Fork, was charged Monday in 4th District Court with four counts of forcible sodomy and six counts of object rape, first-degree felonies.
Owen used to practice at the Canyon Counseling Center in Provo. Police say detectives have interviewed at least a dozen former clients from the past decade who claim they went to Owen seeking "treatment revolving around same-sex attraction" and were sexually abused by him.
Charging documents filed Monday are for alleged crimes committed in 2010 and 2017 against two men.
One man who says he went to Owen for treatment starting in 2016 told investigators that Owen "determined one of the things he needed to work on was intimacy and explained he would benefit from 'person-centered' therapy. During their weekly sessions, (Owen) would become increasingly physical with the (victim)," according to charging documents. Owen would assure to the man that "he was making progress and that others may not understand the treatment, but if (he) would give his full trust to (Owen) he would be cured."
Owen was also the man's ecclesiastical leader during that time and he allegedly told his victim "that what they were doing was consistent with their religious standards and would also result in a closer relationship with God," the charges allege.
The man eventually left Owen to see a different therapist. When he told the new therapist about Owen's treatment, he was informed "that the practices used by (Owen) were not legitimate therapeutic treatment methods," according to the charges.
A second man told investigators that when he sought treatment from Owen in 2010, Owen allegedly told him "they were going to focus on developing an intimate and spiritual relationship. (Owen) told (the man) that he was unique and that (Owen) had been spiritually prompted to work with (him)."
Owen later also became the man's ecclesiastical leader and told him "that God gives to certain people special permission to do things that are normally wrong. (The victim) took this to mean that (Owen) had religious authority to be sexually intimate with him," according to the charging documents.
Owen was first licensed as a mental health counselor in 1999. In 2016, he was reprimanded by the state for touching a client inappropriately, according to disciplinary records of the Utah Division of Professional Licensing.
"Between 2013 and 2018, (Owen) again inappropriately touched a number of other clients whom (he) was treating," the records state.
In 2018, Owen surrendered his license, but he allegedly continued to have an active role with Canyon Counseling.
Provo police began actively investigating Owen in August. On Wednesday, they arranged to have him surrender at the Spanish Fork Police Department. But when he failed to show up, police launched a search effort for him. He was located in a car with a gun on U.S. 89 near Thistle. Owen was taken into custody without incident following a four-hour standoff.
