From the “Go Big, Or Go Home” files: Andrew Phillips allegedly had sex with a 17-year-old patient who had been placed in his custody by the state.Time was, becoming a state sanctioned counseling professional was easy. To obtain a “registered counselor” credential from the state Department of Health, all you needed to do was was submit a $40 application fee to the state Department of Health and attend a four-hour seminar on AIDS awareness. But then state lawmakers woke up to the reality that many of the state’s estimated 18,000 registered counselors were ill-equipped for the job. So, in 2008 they passed legislation that toughened up state regulations for becoming a counseling practitioner and imposed a July 2010 sunset on the registered counselor program.Andrew Phillips may be a shining example of why that was a good idea. The state Department of Health (DOH) has temporarily suspended his credentials pending an investigation into accusations that he had sex with a 17-year-old client. According to DOH documents, Phillips received the credential in April 2008, a month after Governor Christine Gregoire signed the reform legislation into law. Sometime afterward Phillips began seeing clients at the Community Counseling Institute of Tacoma, where he began treating the woman referred to in DOH documents as “Client A.”From July 24 to August 12 of 2009, Phillips and Client A met for drug and alcohol dependency counseling sessions. Whether Phillips befriended Client A’s family before or during this period, Sherry Hill, spokesperson for the state Department of Social and Health Services Children’s Administration could not immediately say. But her guardians thought highly enough of Phillips that, after a judge ordered Client A removed from their home, they approved her moving in with him and his wife via the state law that allows abused or neglected children to be placed with friends of the family rather than put into foster care. Client A moved into Phillips’ home in October 2009. What followed was a month of illicit sexual contact between the teenager and the 46-year-old Phillips, say DOH charging papers.Hill says that it’s against Children’s Administration policy to place clients with the person they are receiving counseling from. But with the the sessions between Phillips and Client A officially ended, Client A’s case manager signed off on putting her into Phillips’ care.Both the Children’s Administration and the DOH say they conducted background checks on Phillips’ criminal record. Neither found anything that would preclude Phillips from taking custody of a minor or counseling people for drug dependency, say their respective spokespersons. But it only takes a cursory search of state court document database to turn up what might be a red flag. In 2004, Phillips’ former wife petitioned Pierce County Superior Court for an order of protection against him, alleging that he threatened her with bodily harm during a cocaine binge. In his own declaration to the court, Phillips admitted that on the night of the incident, he’d fallen into a “cocaine induced paranoia.” Court documents show that he later entered a drug treatment program. Sherry Hill could not say immediately whether the Children’s Administration was at the time aware of Phillips’ past history with substance abuse, just that the petition would not have shown up in a background check as it isn’t tied to a criminal conviction. Of course, having personal experience with substance abuse doesn’t preclude someone from being a good drug counselor. But in light of Phillips’ alleged ethical lapses, it seems like something that should have been taken into consideration when the state was deciding where to place an already vulnerable minor.