A graduate student at a prestigious Catholic university in California is blowing the whistle on the Jesuit school’s counseling program, in which students are required to view sadomasochistic films and submit a “comprehensive sexual autobiography” as a compulsory assignment.
Naomi Epps Best, a newly married, 26-year-old mother of one enrolled in Santa Clara University’s counseling program, said she and some Muslim students asked to be exempted from the requirements based on religious, ethical, and trauma-informed grounds, and submit alternative assignments instead. The university granted the Muslim women exemptions, but denied Best.
In a shocking expose for The Wall Street Journal published on June 6, Best slammed the Jesuit university’s Counseling Psychology Department for capitulating to radical gender ideology and critical theory, requiring her to begin mock therapy sessions by “naming my whiteness.”
She complained to university authorities that she was forced to walk out of a class after Prof. Chongzheng Wei “played a video of a female ‘influencer’ engaging in sexual bondage activity.” The influencer was “shown gagged, flogged, and wrapped in plastic,” she added.
“When the lights came up, the professor smiled and asked if we wanted to try it ourselves. Maybe it was a crass joke to break the tension, but I didn’t want to find out if a live demonstration was next.”
Sexual Fetishes at Catholic University
Elaborating on her experiences in a series of Substack essays, Best noted that in her program, “practices like BDSM, kink, polyamory, and swinging were presented as inherently valid and equally healthy to monogamous marriages with the aim of successful child rearing.
“Any discussion of potential links to trauma, shame, or dissociation was framed as regressive,” she lamented. “The guiding principle was clear: if a sexual practice is consensual, it must not be pathologized.”
Best also reported that the school was violating the American Psychological Association’s ethics codes by demanding the “compulsory submission” of an 8-to 10-page “comprehensive sexual autobiography” from each student taking a Human Sexuality class as a graduation requirement.
“This assignment asked us to disclose early sexual memories, masturbation, key moments in our sexual history, current sexual practices, and future sexual goals,” Best wrote. Students had to upload the paper to an insecure learning management system. A disclaimer said they could omit material causing “extreme discomfort,” but warned that the assignment might make them “very uncomfortable.”
Another exercise included anonymously writing down something students disliked about their genitals. The essay would then be read aloud in class by another student.
“Asking students if they’d like to participate in a sexual fetish is unprofessional and pedagogically inexcusable,” Best wrote. “These are not isolated incidents. They reflect a deeper pattern of boundary violations, coercive pedagogy, and ideological homogeneity.”
The Stream has omitted any gratuitous graphic references to sexual perversions that students are required to engage with in their coursework, as detailed by Best in her Substack articles.
Jesuit School Surrenders to Critical Race Theory
Best also wrote that the Jesuit school’s counseling program was being governed not by “science but by critical theory, a worldview that filters human experience through left-wing assumptions about power, oppression and identity, particularly regarding race, ‘gender’ and sexuality.”
Therapists are no longer trained to be neutral; they’re trained to be agents of political change. Concepts like modesty and marital privacy aren’t merely treated as optional or even dismissed. They’re seen as oppressive norms to be actively combated.
Best revealed that students in the Multicultural Counseling course were told that “objective, rational, linear thinking,” “delayed gratification,” and making a “plan for the future” are traits of “white culture,” while the Human Sexuality course taught that “children with six months of ‘gender distress’ should be ‘affirmed’ in their belief that they are of the opposite sex.”
University Trumpets Commitment to Jesuit Values
Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Santa Clara University trumpets its commitment to the Catholic Church and the values of the Society of Jesus, a religious order founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1534. About half of its undergraduates are Catholic, and two dozen Jesuit brothers and priests are on staff.
According to the school’s website,
Nearly every program on campus incorporates some aspect of Jesuit values. And while of course it’s not mandatory, many students, staff, and faculty — including non-Catholics — attend weekly Mass as a way to reconnect, re-energize, and remind each other that we, as a community, are stronger together.
A Jesuit education is a complete education. It’s easy to talk about working to make the world a better place — but the Jesuits have been doing that work, every day, for almost 500 years.
The school also prides itself on “inclusive excellence,” including hosting the Rainbow Resource Center as a part of the Office for Multicultural Learning. “We advocate for those who self-identify within the wide spectrum of sexual orientations and gender identities/expressions and educate the whole person within the context of Jesuit values,” it asserts.
Santa Clara offers one of the most radically elastic definitions of transgenderism:
We use trans* to include but not limit it to: androgynes, bayot, sadhin, transgender, hijra, mahu, gender variant, baki, travesti, trans-masculine, kathoey, bi-genders, two-spirit, genderqueer, stud, trans-feminine, no-genders…those who see gender as having more than two possibilities, and those who live between or beyond existing options.
Santa Clara Hit by Wave of Scandals
The university has been rocked by a series of scandals in recent years.
In 2021, Fr. Kevin O’Brien, the university president who preached at Joe Biden’s inaugural Mass, was forced to resign after an investigation revealed that he had “engaged in behaviors, consisting primarily of conversations, during a series of informal dinners with Jesuit graduate students that were inconsistent with established Jesuit protocols and boundaries.”
An academic article published in 2022 warned about a surge in sexual assaults on campus, raising “the question of why and how the sexual culture on campus allows these traumatic situations to occur and prompts the consideration of how best to support the survivor and uphold justice.”
In 2024, the Equal Protection Project sued the school’s Black Corporate Board Readiness Program Project for violating federal law by only accepting black applicants.
Best said she had raised her concerns through internal channels with her professor, chair, dean, and even the provost and president of the university. She also filed a complaint with the Ombudsman and spoke to Campus Ministry — which claims to be “a primary source of pastoral care” embracing “Catholic and Ignatian traditions.”
“The University’s own Counseling and Psychological Services office staff psychologist plainly stated that this program is a ‘disaster’ due to its ethical violations and that many students seek psychological care because of it,” she wrote. “He stated that every clinician in the office is aware of it.
“I have received bureaucratic indifference at best and quiet retaliation at worst. I may be the first to speak publicly. I hope I will not be the last.”
When The Stream reached out to Wei for comment, he said only: “I have cc’d Lisa Robinson in our media office, which is our protocol, and she can learn more about your inquiry.”
Dr. Jules Gomes (BA, BD, MTh, PhD) has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.
The post Catholic University Parades Sexual Perversions in Counselor Training Program appeared first on The Stream.
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