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Carol Marks
Ethics
I was licensed as a marriage and family therapist in 1974 and have always practiced in Santa Clara County. I joined and became a very active member of the nine-county regional chapter, which predated our current Santa Clara Valley Chapter. In 1981, I was honored to be elected to the state board of directors, where I spent four exciting and fulfilling years in office.

While on the state board, I was membership chair for one year and then the chairperson of the state conference for the following three consecutive years. While the structure of the state board is vastly different today, I was able, at that time, to remain in a job that I dearly loved.

I have worked diligently to keep current with emerging therapies, emerging trends, and, even, discarded theories. For the past twenty years, I have focused a part of my practice on working with people who have been falsely accused of child and/or sexual abuse.

I began this work in 1985, because of a client who was falsely accused of molesting his young daughter (in the context of a highly conflicted divorce-custody battle). I soon learned that false allegations could and did arise in divorce cases, preschools, and many other milieus. I consulted with local and national experts, read the emerging literature, attended numerous conferences, worked with the media, educated attorneys, and testified as an expert witness when appropriate. This work has been both challenging and extremely gratifying.

I agreed to be on the current board, because I was not interacting enough with my colleagues and was looking for a renewed involvement with the profession. I am most pleased to be the ethics director, because in the particular specialty that I have, I know how critical it is to be ethical in our practice, know the standards that we are expected to meet, and be careful to do no harm. I have chosen to stay on the Board as Ethics Chair because I have enjoyed working in this capacity so much.