State licensors, law enforcement and officials tasked with protecting Utah’s children knew for years about accusations made against a Tooele County therapist working with teens at a local residential treatment facility.
But Tooele County prosecutors didn’t file charges, citing insufficient evidence of criminal conduct, after Shawn Talbot’s former Alpine Academy patients came forward. State licensing regulators with the Division of Professional Licensing (DOPL) didn’t restrict him from practicing, saying there was insufficient evidence of misconduct.
And the Division of Child and Family Services, contacted because the allegations involved children, dropped its investigation under temporary pandemic rules that prioritized cases where an accused abuser was in continuing contact with a child.
Five years after an initial police report by the mother of a former Alpine Academy patient, Talbot was arrested in August and charged with two misdemeanor counts of voyeurism after new clients — this time adults — came to Provo police with similar allegations.
Mark Carlson, an attorney representing the former Alpine Academy clients, told The Salt Lake Tribune he believes there was sufficient evidence to support arresting Talbot“ years ago” after the first set of allegations —and that the more recent misconduct alleged in Provo was “all preventable.”
Carlson is representing plaintiffs in two ongoing lawsuits against Talbot and Alpine Academy, he said, to “right this wrong.”
Since Talbot’s arrest, Carlson said his office had been contacted by people with new complaints. Provo police have also fielded calls from seven more of Talbot’s past clients, said agency spokesperson Janna-Lee Holland. Two of those reports have been handed over to prosecutors, who will decide whether to file more charges, she said.
Talbot’s defense attorneys, who represent him in both lawsuits as well as the criminal case, did not respond to The Tribune’s requests for comment about these allegations or the therapeutic value of what Talbot’s clients have described as “trust exercises.”
In filed responses to the lawsuits, Talbot’s attorneys have denied the allegations against Talbot and sought to dismiss the litigation.
Bryson Brown, an attorney representing Alpine Academy, declined to comment, citing the ongoing lawsuits where he noted the allegations are “contested and disputed.”
“We trust the civil justice system to render a fair and appropriate result,” he said. Alpine’s attorneys have also called for the litigation to be dismissed.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Alpine Academy in Tooele County is pictured on Friday, Sept. 5, 2025.
DOPL spokesperson Melanie Hall said that license regulators did what they could when they investigated Talbot years ago.
“DOPL cannot discipline licensees when there is a lack of evidence of unprofessional or unlawful conduct,” she said. “All individuals are afforded due process under the law.”
But Sarah Stroup, a licensed therapist who is on the legislative committee for the Utah Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, said Talbot’s case demonstrates known issues in the systems meant to hold licensees accountable and keep Utahns safe.
She argued these issues stem from a disciplinary process that’s largely shielded from the public, “which either leads to gaps in catching bad actors or perceived gaps,” because regular people often don’t understand how it works — or why criminal cases and disciplinary reviews have different evidentiary standards.
That’s why she and others are working to implement more accountability, such as creating a way for law enforcement to “automatically ping” DOPL if officers begin investigating a person with a professional license.
“Many of our colleagues are aware that there’s this gap,” Stroup said, “and as a profession, we are also asking for more accountability.”
Hall declined to comment on whether a “gap” exists. But she said DOPL has made changes recently — what she described as an “evolution of our previous guidance” — in hopes of building more public trust.
In cases involving sexual abuse and misconduct, for instance, DOPL “has directed its investigators to be aggressive in their pursuit of disciplinary action,” Hall said.
That comes after DOPL previously said its investigators were aware that people with certain license types have a tendency toward specific types of violations, which DOPL takes “into account when investigating complaints,” levying “appropriate disciplinary action when necessary.”
The new “aggressive” guidance went into effect earlier this year.
“We are committed,” she said, “to holding licensees accountable for their actions, especially in cases that take advantage of vulnerable individuals, and sending a clear message that such behaviors will not be tolerated.”
New allegations, ‘similar’ pattern
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The headquarters of the Provo Police Department.
This summer, two women walked into the Provo Police Department and told investigators about their experiences with Talbot at Utah Valley Counseling.
One said Talbot had “used the guise of mental health therapy” multiple times to convince her that taking off her shirt and bra, or pulling up her shirt, was “necessary to show the victim could be ‘vulnerable,’” according to a probable cause statement.
She said Talbot also convinced her to do “handstands in front of him after taking off her bra and untucking her shirt.” The second woman alleged Talbot asked her to bend over in front of him, which exposed her chest and breasts, the probable cause statement stated.
Talbot’s supervisor at the practice told Provo detectives, according to the probable cause statement, that there is “absolutely no therapeutic practice in which it would be appropriate to tell a client to undress.” The statement noted that the supervisor said Talbot was fired from Utah Valley Counseling in late-June.
Talbot himself, in a voluntary statement to DOPL that police referenced in the probable cause statement, agreed that one of his accusers had “tried” the handstand, adding that he “allowed boundaries to be crossed.”
When Talbot later agreed to speak to detectives, he didn’t deny the allegations but said the “actions took place in a therapeutic practice and was meant to empower them,” the statement said. He said he didn’t have any “sexual motive,” and realized “what he did was not right and said he recognized the harm that he caused,” it said.
Yet, as detectives kept digging, they found this wasn’t the first time Talbot had been accused of misconduct.
“[T]hey became aware of a previous case, in which [Talbot] was alleged to have done very similar things to minor females at a residential treatment facility,” according to the probable cause statement.
Past complaints
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Alpine Academy in Tooele County is pictured on Friday, Sept. 5, 2025.
The first time the Tooele County Sheriff’s Office created a report on Talbot was in August 2020, after the mother of a former Alpine Academy patient called about him. Talbot had been fired from the academy five months earlier, according to a report and other documents The Tribune obtained from the sheriff’s office through an open records request.
The mother told the sheriff’s office, according to that report, that starting in 2018, Talbot saw her daughter two to three times a week for therapy while she was at Alpine Academy and would have her participate in “trust” exercises that “involved removing articles of clothing” until she “was eventually nude.”
Talbot told her daughter, according to the report, that “these exercises were meant to build trust by putting her in a position of vulnerability.”
The report notes that Alpine Academy officials later became “concerned” with Talbot’s behavior when he began pulling the girl out of class or holding sessions with her later at night.
The girl graduated from Alpine Academy in June 2019. But, the sheriff’s office report states, she kept seeing Talbot, who “insisted on seeing her after regular therapy hours.”
Some of these sessions continued past 11 p.m., and the girl’s parents “started to become concerned,” the report states.
A sheriff’s office investigator assigned to the case contacted the Division of Professional Licensing about Talbot later that August and learned that “some months ago” a DOPL investigator had interviewed three girls about their experiences with Talbot, according to the sheriff’s office report.
One told DOPL of a “trust” exercise where Talbot asked her to raise her shirt in front of him, the report states, and all reported Talbot “would talk to them about their sexual experiences, which they did not feel comfortable doing.”
Months later, in February 2021, DOPL cited Talbot $500. The discipline didn’t stem from the Alpine Academy allegations, but instead the accusation that Talbot continued seeing the girl who graduated when he was not properly licensed to be treating patients independently.
At the time, he was licensed as an associate mental health counselor, not a full-fledged mental health counselor.
The teen patient’s report that Talbot had asked her to lift her shirt; the statement by her and two additional girls that he had asked them about their sexual experiences; and the mother’s report that her daughter said Talbot had asked her to take off clothing did not amount to a finding of professional misconduct, according to DOPL.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Valley Counseling, 4626 N. 300 West, in Provo, where therapist Shawn Talbot was working when he was accused of voyeurism this year by adult clients.
In April 2021, the sheriff’s office received another call from a different former patient’s mother. She reported that her daughter saw Talbot for therapy at Alpine Academy between January and April 2020. During those sessions, the mother reported, Talbot would tell her daughter things like “You are hot” or “I want to have sex with you” and would touch her thigh.
The sheriff’s office received another follow-up report about Talbot in 2024, this time from the former patient herself.
At first, she said, she thought Talbot was “friendly and charming,” but after a while he started asking her about her sexual history. If she didn’t answer, Talbot would tell her “she did not trust him,” according to the sheriff’s office report.
He also began requesting that she wear low cut shirts and “talk about her private areas,” the report states. “If she did it, it meant she trusted him,” the sheriff’s office investigator wrote.
The woman also alleged that Talbot asked her, as part of treatment for her diagnosed eating disorder, to lift up her shirt as a “trust exercise.” She said he never touched her and would claim his eyes were closed when she did it, “but she doesn’t know” if he actually shut his eyes.
She added that Talbot was in charge of approving her home visits while she was at the academy, “so she would often answer his questions and comply with his requests.”
“Due to her statements being the same as previously investigated, this case will be closed,” the investigator wrote. It was never forwarded to the Tooele County Attorney’s Office for potential prosecution, according to Tooele County Attorney Scott Broadhead.
Broadhead said his prosecutors did receive the mother’s earlier report but opted not to file charges, because the “conduct described does not meet the elements of a crime.”
Charging someone with forcible sexual abuse — the offense that Tooele County Sheriff’s Office investigators recommended — requires someone to have touched another’s genitals, breasts or buttocks, which Broadhead said none of the victims alleged. He added that under the child abuse statute, charges can be filed if prosecutors can prove “serious emotional harm to the child.”
“There are no facts in the reports or accompanying documents that indicate that any of the alleged victims suffered ‘serious emotional harm,” Broadhead said in a statement. “Without the ability to prove ‘serious emotional harm,’ I cannot prove the elements of Child Abuse beyond a reasonable doubt.”
He said prosecutors contemplated other potentially applicable charges, as he said they always do, but ultimately “rightfully determined that there was not a prosecutable offense that meets prosecution standards.”
Gaps in the system?
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Valley Counseling, 4626 N. 300 West, in Provo.
Years before Talbot worked at Alpine Academy, one of the facility’s former residential supervisors was convicted in 2009 of five second-degree felony counts of forcible sexual abuse for his conduct with a 17-year-old client there, according to charging documents.
The girl’s parents reported Jonathan Carver, then 30, to authorities after she got home and kept in contact with Carver, The Tribune reported at the time.
Attorneys for former Alpine clients wrote in a document requesting more information from the academy that they know of “at least one other employee who had engaged in sexual misconduct with children at Alpine while Talbot was also employed by Alpine.”
The attorneys made the inquiry as part of the ongoing lawsuit and argued in September that Alpine’s attorneys should be sanctioned for “completely ignor[ing] this Court’s clear and unambiguous order” and “failing to provide any supplement responses or documents.”
Alpine’s attorney disagreed, arguing in a filing that the court order to share information with plaintiff’s attorneys was “unenforceably vague, indefinite, and overbroad,” and that they didn’t violate the order by not providing information because the order did not set a reply deadline.
They also wrote Alpine “intends to provide materials” in response to discovery requests, but that the process is “time-consuming,” since it involves information concerning allegations of employee misconduct since 2018.
A DOPL incident report about Talbot’s colleague was opened on Aug. 15, 2019, the attorneys wrote in court papers. The employee’s name is redacted, but the filing, included as an exhibit in the case, indicates the allegations stem from a clinical session that caused a client “distress due to missing him and knowing that his ‘affection went too far sometimes.’” The therapist allegedly put his hand on her lower back and thighs, kissed her head and neck and held her for “too long” during hugs.
That employee resigned from Alpine about a month before that case was opened.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys contend that Carver, Talbot and this unnamed employee are part of “long and troubling history” at Alpine that underscores its “pervasive negligence in its hiring and supervision practices.”
Like DOPL, both Broadhead and a spokesperson for the Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) declined to comment on whether an alleged “gap” existed between Utah’s regulatory and legal systems.
DCFS said it closed its investigation into Talbot because Talbot was no longer working at Alpine Academy. The Tooele County Sheriff’s Office report states DCFS did not take action because Talbot was considered a “non active perpetrator.”
Josh Loftin, a DCFS spokesperson, told The Tribune that report was likely referring to a “non-access” or “no-access” perpetrator.
Between June 28, 2020, and May 5, 2021, lawmakers changed state code, making it so that DCFS staff didn’t have to conduct investigations into people accused of abusing children who were not a child’s caretaker — so long as the alleged perpetrator no longer had access to the child.
The division’s policy at the time was to send rejected referrals for “non-access perpetrators” to law enforcement and request the division receive their final investigatory report.
That part of the law, implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has since been removed, Loftin said.
But even if this short-lived provision had not stopped DCFS from investigating, he said the division is not responsible for criminal or professional conduct investigations.
DCFS investigators look into a report of child abuse and enter findings into a database searchable by those other entities. They also “assess the parent or legal guardian’s ability to protect the child from further abuse by the therapist,” he said.
“Supported allegations of abuse or neglect may disqualify individuals from certain licenses or jobs,” Loftin said, “but the authority to revoke a license or prohibit professionals from working with children or adults rests with DOPL.”
The Utah Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and other mental health professional organizations, wrote in a recent letter to members that they want more transparency in the disciplinary process, specifically in how matters are represented on DOPL’s website.
The current website allows the public to search someone’s licensing status (essentially whether it’s active or not). You can also see any current discipline and some past discipline.
The association has advocated for clearer explanation of disciplinary timelines, more information on how complaints are handled and who exactly receives and processes information at every stage of the process.
The letter, which was shared with The Tribune, said that DOPL had “already agreed that this is a need” and is planning to update its website.
The group has also been working with DOPL to increase “consistency” in disciplinary actions through instating “clear guidelines and consequences.”
“The goal is to ensure that ‘bad actors’ are held accountable quickly, effectively, and consistently,” the letter read, “preventing them from causing further harm and protecting the public.”
Stroup said so far in 2025, DOPL records show about 1% of people with mental health licenses were facing disciplinary action. Of that 1%, half were reported for “something sexual in nature.”
Those cases represent a small number of mental health professionals, she said, but can result in high-profile cases that erode trust.
“We’ve had some pretty egregious bad actors,” Stroup said, “and the public is becoming more aware.”
More transparency and consistency around provider discipline, she said, could go a long way in regaining public trust — in clinicians but also “DOPL and the state.”
“We just want everyone to be safe, everyone to have access to mental health care,” she said.
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