Utah hypnotherapist, already charged with abusing patients, linked to another victim

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• William Del Draney, 77, faces a new charge of object rape.
• Victims claim Draney exploited their vulnerability during hypnotherapy sessions since 2007.
• Previously charged with forcible sodomy and sex abuse, his next court date is Oct. 16.

SALT LAKE CITY — A 77-year-old West Jordan man already accused of sexually abusing patients during hypnotherapy sessions has now been linked to another victim.

William Del Draney was charged Thursday in 3rd District Court on Friday with object rape, a first-degree felony.

In June, he was charged with nine counts of forcible sodomy, a first-degree felony, and 11 counts of forcible sex abuse, a second-degree felony. The next court date scheduled for that case is Oct. 16.

According to his new charges, Draney abused a client in 2010 during a hypnotherapy session at his residence.

"Draney told him that he had a 'hydroseal hernia' and he could see 'encapsulated HIV on his aura, but it had not reached its final form,'" the charges state. "(The victim) said that during the session, Draney worked to gain his trust and at one point had him in his underwear. (The victim) said that Draney made it 'sound clinical and not sexual.'"

Draney then inappropriately touched the man under the guise of telling him the procedure "was a medical thing," according to the charges.

"(Draney) has used his position of trust as a hypnotherapist to prey upon men over the span of nearly two decades, under the guise that he was 'treating' them," prosecutors state in their charges. "Victims, dating back to at least 2007, reported separately that they responded to the defendant's residence, where he advertised hypnotherapy sessions, and during the sessions, the victims reported that (Draney) would force them to engage in sexual acts with him."

Each victim also told investigators that they were in a vulnerable place in their life at the time they saw Draney — "seeking an alternative method of healing, but instead the defendant exploited the victim's vulnerable state and abused him."

The Sugar House Hypnotherapy LLC website states Draney is a board-certified master clinical hypnotherapist and trainer who helps people "tune up and enhance every area of your life through hypnosis and life coaching to create balance and a passion for living."

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Pat Reavy

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Pat Reavy interned with KSL in 1989 and has been a full-time journalist for either KSL or Deseret News since 1991. For the past 25 years, he has worked primarily the cops-and-courts beat.