Former stripper takes stand in trial
Says past was issue during grad school
Twenty-five years ago in Boston's Combat Zone, she was known as Princess Cheyenne, a curvaceous, brainy woman who was considered the thinking man's stripper and enjoyed brief notoriety for her engagement to pop singer Cat Stevens.
Yesterday, Louise Wightman was a middle-age woman fighting to stay out of prison as she sought to persuade a jury that she should not be convicted of fraudulently practicing as a licensed psychologist from 1998 to 2005 on the South Shore.
On the last day of testimony in her trial in Suffolk Superior Court, the 47-year-old Hull woman took the witness stand in her defense and testified that she never said she was a licensed psychologist while treating hundreds of patients, many of them adolescents with eating disorders and other serious problems, at a practice called South Shore Psychology Associates.
But she did tell clients that she was a psychologist with a bona fide doctorate and had business cards that said the same thing, she testified. Wightman, who has a master's degree in counseling psychology from Lesley University, said she had completed five years of course work at the accredited Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, plus internships, but withdrew in July 2001 before receiving a doctoral degree.
Wightman said she had started a private practice and dropped out of school after a dean whom she did not identify confronted her about her career as a stripper in the 1970s and 1980s. Determined to obtain her doctorate, she said, she turned to the Internet and paid about $1,300 for a degree from Dominica-based Concordia College & University.
"I thought it was real because online degree programs were something that were becoming more accepted and OK and because I did all the work that was required," she said under questioning by defense lawyer Katie Cook Rayburn. She added, "I always told people I was not licensed."
Under cross-examination by Assistant Attorney General David Andrews, Wightman acknowledged that the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology began proceedings in March 2001 to kick her out for operating what a school official described in a letter as an "independent private practice" without a license.
She also conceded that she applied to the state for a license as a mental health counselor in August 2005, six months after a local television program, "Fox 25 Undercover," aired a report about her past as Princess Cheyenne and her educational background.
Wightman said she realized the doctorate was bogus in 2005, after the Fox news report, when she replaced a lost copy of the degree and was charged $1,300 again, the full amount.
Wightman faces 14 counts of felony larceny, five counts of filing false healthcare claims, five counts of insurance fraud, and one count of practicing psychology without a license. Each offense carries a maximum of a five-year prison sentence, except for the last charge, which carries a maximum of three months. Several criminal lawyers said Wightman would probably face a maximum of five years if convicted of several felonies.
Wightman's testimony marked the first mention to the jury of her past as Princess Cheyenne.
When she said a dean had "found out that I used to be a stripper," her lawyer asked Wightman where she had worked.
"In Boston," Wightman replied without elaborating.
Three women on the jury smiled and looked at other jurors.
The jury is expected to get the case today. 