Boise psychiatrist dies before child sex-abuse trial
- Dignity 4Patients
- Jan 30
- 9 min read
By Alex Brizee- 30/01/2026- Idaho Statesman- [Boise, USA]- [Richard Pines]
When Tom Croft was a kid, his foster parents sent him to spend the night at a cabin in Garden Valley, where his doctor lived part of the time. Other foster children had been there before, he told the Idaho Statesman, and it seemed safe.
It was his doctor, after all.
Dr. Richard Pines, whose nearly 30-year medical career spanned across the state, was well-known in the community. He worked as a psychiatrist and medical director at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise; had a contract to work with the Boise School District; and consulted for both the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare and the Northwest Children’s Home in Lewiston.
Pines also was a foster parent himself — meaning he was someone people relied on to provide a safe place for children. But that wasn’t the case, Croft said. Instead of providing a haven for a kid who had already dealt with abuse and neglect, Pines took advantage of him, according to Croft.
Under the guise of treating his insomnia, Pines gave him medication, lay down next to him and groped him as the drugs kicked in, Croft told the Idaho Statesman. He doesn’t remember what happened next, but when he woke up, he was in pain, Croft said. He said he had trouble walking and couldn’t sit down at his elementary school for weeks.
Croft said that at such a young age, he didn’t fully recognize what happened, but knew something wasn’t right. He said he tried to ask for help, but his teachers and foster parents brushed him off as a troubled child.
Boise resident Tom Croft, said the death of Dr. Richard Pines robbed him of closure that could have come with a trial.
Croft said Pines sexually abused him as a child.
Croft’s accusations against Pines were not an isolated situation. For years, the doctor groomed and abused young boys who were either his patients or foster children he’d been given temporary guardianship of through the state, according to court records and medical complaints obtained by the Statesman.
Those who say they are survivors of Pines’ sexual abuse also say there could be dozens of others who were victimized. Despite complaints against Pines dating to the early 2010s — and his medical license being temporarily revoked — the doctor was not charged with a crime for a decade. And he was allowed to practice medicine again during that time.
In 2023, Pines was charged with three counts of lewd conduct with a minor, and later charged with two additional counts, for a total of five felonies.
He was supposed to face a jury trial this month, but the charges were dropped and the trial canceled after the 66-year-old died from natural causes last year.
Croft said that at the very least, Pines should have spent the rest of his life in prison. Instead, the doctor spent a total of one day in the Boise County Jail before he made bail, according to court records. He was never convicted of any crimes — something that has left Croft, now 30, even angrier than he used to be.
“My closure was something that would be absolute,” he said. “I get to be a part of it, but Mother Nature cheated me out of what I really wanted — probably for good reason.”
Pines’ conduct was ‘corrupt and degenerate,’ Idaho Board of Medicine says Allegations against Pines publicly surfaced more than a decade ago, after the Boise Police Department and Idaho Health and Welfare informed the state’s Board of Medicine that Pines admitted to engaging in sexual activity with several young men, according to an order written by the medical board.
The Board of Medicine filed a complaint against him in 2012, triggering an investigation that led to his medical license being revoked the next year. Three of four men who said they were Pines’ victims — each of whom had just turned 18 when the abuse occurred — knew the doctor through the foster care system.
The other young man was a close friend of Pines’ adopted son. In a position of power, Pines groomed his victims during their childhoods by providing them with gifts and outings, and he gave them naked massages, according to the order, written by Dr. Barry Bennett, a medical board chairman at the time.
Pines lied to the young men — who knew that he was an osteopathic physician and that he specialized in child and adolescent psychiatry — for the “sole purpose of engaging in inappropriate and unethical sexual activity with them,” he wrote.
“Dr. Pines sexual(ly) exploited these boys,” Bennett wrote.
Richard Pines, a former Boise psychiatrist, eventually was charged in 2023 over allegations that he sexually abused several young boys in the 2000s. He died before his case went to trial.
Idaho Statesman Shawn, now 33, said he was a victim. The Statesman doesn’t identify survivors or accusers in sexual assault cases without their permission, and he asked to be identified by only his first name.
Shawn told the Statesman that between the ages of 9 and 14, he was placed with Pines around seven times when his foster parents had to go out of town. It’s called respite care, a situation in which a state-approved foster parent takes care of a child on a short-term basis.
During those visits, Shawn said, he’d either be at Pines’ Boise home or his cabin near Garden Valley, where Pines would ask to massage him and then would inappropriately touch him.
Because Pines was a doctor, Shawn said, he didn’t realize for a while that he was being sexually abused. “I was trained to believe it, that it was OK for that to be done. So there was no point in telling anybody, because there’s nothing to tell. What’s to tell?” he said.
“He was an adult. He was a doctor. He was just like a stand-up guy in the community.”
That sentiment was echoed by all of the young men who testified before the state’s medical board in 2012. The “only reason” they agreed to the massages was because they trusted Pines as a physician and believed his “repeated lies” that he needed a practice patient for an upcoming medical license test, according to the board’s order.
Because they were participating in the massages as “practice patients,” the medical board determined that Pines had violated its regulations, which prohibits any sexual contact with a patient, the order said. Pines’ “egregious conduct” was “so corrupt and degenerate” that rehabilitation wasn’t a viable option, the medical board concluded in 2013, finding that he committed four counts of professional misconduct.
The case revealed that many people knew about allegations against the doctor, Bennett wrote, and chose to do nothing about it — allowing him to “continue his destructive behavior with impunity.”
“The Board concluded Dr. Pines must not be allowed to continue his exploitation of the trust, knowledge, emotions or influence derived from his profession as a licensed psychiatrist and relationship with his patients with impunity,” Bennett wrote.
Despite it being illegal for a medical provider to engage in sexual conduct with a patient, Pines wasn’t charged criminally at the time. And in Croft’s mind, that allowed Pines to walk away thinking that he had “the OK to keep doing the things he did,” Croft told the Statesman.
Pines’ medical license reinstated after four years, records show.
The allegations brought to light in 2012-13 and decisions from the medical board did not end Pines’ career. After his medical license was revoked, Pines appealed the board’s decision to Idaho’s 4th Judicial District, which agreed that he committed four counts of professional misconduct.
Then he appealed it again to the Idaho Supreme Court. In a 2015 opinion, the state’s highest court disagreed that all four of the victims were Pines’ patients, ruling that two of them were not.
Because of the justices’ decision, which was unanimous, the disciplinary order revoking Pines’ medical license was rescinded, and the case was sent back to the medical board for reconsideration based on the two counts of professional misconduct that were upheld.
The Idaho Supreme Court agreed that Pines conducted himself in a “reprehensible manner” by taking advantage of young men with troubled pasts, but it cautioned the Idaho medical board for its “heated rhetoric and denunciations” in its initial order revoking Pines’ medical license, according to the 2015 opinion.
Three months later, in September 2015, the medical board issued a final order, which was starkly different from its original decision. Instead of permanently revoking Pines’ license, the board agreed to consider issuing him a restricted license after he attended an inpatient evaluation at a facility approved by the board.
If it did reinstate his license, the medical board said Pines would be banned permanently from treating patients younger than 18. And just because Pines completed inpatient treatment in “no way” guaranteed his license would be reinstated, Dr. Robert Ward, a chairman for the medical board, wrote at the time.
But Pines did get his license back.
By March 2017, after completing six weeks of inpatient treatment, the medical board granted him a restricted license prohibiting him from treating anyone underage.
However, after five years, Pines was allowed to petition the medical board for the permission to treat minors, as long as another person was present when that treatment took place.
Exactly five years later, Pines was granted the right to treat children again, with supervision.
The criminal justice system caught up with Pines eventually. In 2023, one year after he’d been allowed to start treating children again, the Boise Police Department announced his arrest.
More men, including Croft, had come forward.
Pines was charged with three counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor, which are felonies, over allegations that he sexually assaulted three men when they were children in the 2000s, according to court records.
Then more men, such as Shawn, were identified as possible victims, and Pines was charged with three more felony counts, one of which was later dropped.
Shawn was incarcerated at the North Idaho Correctional Institution in Cottonwood when he got a request to meet with a detective over video, he told the Statesman.
As soon as he was asked whether he knew Pines, Shawn said, he knew what the call was about, and he told the detective, “that mother------ molested me.”
The case doesn’t end with just the men who came forward, Shawn said. When he was moved to a prison in the Boise area to testify against Pines in front of the grand jury, he said, he met someone else who was incarcerated and said he was sexually abused by the doctor.
“A lot of people are messed up from this,” Shawn said.
Boise County Prosecuting Attorney Alex Sosa said in a statement that although Pines still held the “presumption of innocence,” a lengthy investigation produced evidence that he “had a significant and uncalculable impact on these victims’ lives.”
Shawn was released from prison in 2024 and said he’s doing better now that he’s home with his wife and kids, but he still has a problem with authority and trusting people. He said that as a child he was constantly breaking the rules and got addicted to methamphetamine at a young age — and he said Pines was partially to blame.
Now, Shawn said he is trying to move on with his life, though he wished someone could be held accountable for what Pines did. “I had to do it. I served my time. We’ve all served our time. Why didn’t he have to?” Shawn said. “He should’ve been in prison. He should’ve been sent to prison a long time ago.”
Boise resident Tom Croft, pictured, said he was looking forward to seeing Dr. Richard Pines go to trial and face consequences, and hoped Pines would spend the rest of his life in prison.
The doctor died last year while awaiting trial on felony counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor.
The impact on Croft’s life has been constant, he said. He won’t go to the doctor and doesn’t easily trust people, he said, and he can be closed off. He said he also deals with mental health issues, such as dissociative identity disorder.
Croft said he might not ever have the closure he needs, but for others, coming forward might help them have peace.
“For all the other people who have gone through similar situations — or has also gone through this with Richard Pines and haven’t come forward — I would urge (you) to do so,” Croft said. “It may not be comfortable, it may not be … the right time, but it’s something that will sooner or later eat up at your lives.”
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article and were abused in state run medical and health facilities, you can contact Dignity4Patients, whose helpline is open Monday to Thursday, 10am to 4pm.
Dignity4Patients Commentary: There are many alarming aspects to this case, highlighting systemic failures which allowed a campaign of assaults to continue. Raising troubling questions regarding oversight and accountability. Safeguarding and regulatory systems are meant to protect the public. The lasting impact of sexual abuse does not end when the headlines fade and the criminal case closes. Real accountability means not only addressing the wrongdoing of the accused but examining the systemic failures which allowed it to happen and preventing it from recurring again.
