MISSOULA — Christine White Deeble never expected that casually checking her work email a year and a half ago would change her life. But on Aug. 1, 2023, the Missoula naturopathic doctor read an email from a former patient, Daniel Kovats, sent the previous day, violently threatening her and her clinic. “Due to the abhorrent treatment and assumptions about me, I will be taking the life of every staff member you employee [sic],” the email said. “I have obtained a semi-automatic rifle and I will be ‘patronizing’ your ‘fine’ establishment with bullets, blood and the brain matter of every single person who is there when I come in.” A second email from Kovats, sent several hours later, said he would not carry out the threats, but White Deeble called 911 and the clinic, Natura Health and Wellness, was evacuated. Kovats was arrested that night in Ravalli County. While searching Kovats’ home, police did not find a “semi-automatic rifle” but did seize Kovats’ father’s old hunting rifle, according to court documents. After about eight months in jail awaiting trial on a charge of felony intimidation, Kovats was released on a dozen conditions to live with his brother near Stevensville. Last December, a jury found him guilty, and he is in jail awaiting sentencing. Before the trial, White Deeble worried about Kovats coming back to the clinic, despite his ankle monitor. White Deeble told Montana Free Press the stress and “constant vigilance” had worn on her.“I can’t imagine doing any other work, and I always thought that I would sort of die in the saddle,” she said. “This has absolutely shortened my career, like this is that level of burnout. As much as I don’t want to give him this much power, at some point, something just gets broken. I have worked so much less in the last year than I typically work because there are days I just can’t do it. … It’s better now that he’s been convicted of a felony. It will feel better if we can get him sentenced to be not my problem for three or four years.” Kovats’ sentencing is scheduled for Monday, Jan. 27. While the crime carries a maximum of 10 years in prison, White Deeble believes Kovats is unlikely to get that sentence, in part because he is a first-time offender. She hopes he gets enough time to “truly work a program.” Kovats’ attorney declined to answer questions about the case. White Deeble, along with current and former Natura employees, raised concerns that a light sentence for Kovats won’t provide the necessary consequences. The burden of being protected from a potentially violent offender, she said, shouldn’t fall on the victims alone.“I get that going to prison may have some detrimental effects on his [Kovats’] mental health,” White Deeble said. “It is not my job to figure this out. I might be a naturopathic doctor. I might be all about finding the root cause. I might be all about holistic care and treating the whole person. … In the end, I am the victim, and I cannot overly sympathize with his particular situation because he’s threatened, brutally threatened, 20-plus people. At some point I have to care about something else more. I don’t think prison will fix everything. But man, I want a reprieve.”  “I can’t imagine doing any other work, and I always thought that I would sort of die in the saddle. This has absolutely shortened my career, like this is that level of burnout. As much as I don’t want to give him this much power, at some point, something just gets broken.” Christine White Deeble, naturopathic doctor at Natura Health and Wellness ClinicWhite Deeble was Kovats’ doctor for about 13 years. She said it was “clear he was not a hugely social person” but was typically pleasant. In early 2020, Kovats began romantically pursuing a staff member and didn’t listen when she told him she wasn’t interested, White Deeble said. The clinic administration decided to ban Kovats, but White Deeble told him she would continue to provide him care, just not at the clinic. Kovats sent White Deeble six emails between March 2021 and December 2021, oscillating between criticizing her decision and asking for help, she said. White Deeble said she stopped responding when his emails grew angry but documented them with other clinic management.  In April 2023, White Deeble received an email from Kovats that didn’t directly threaten action but concerned her enough to report it to the Missoula police. “You’ve probably blocked me already so (expletive) you for that,” Kovats wrote. “And (expletive) you for treating me like a sexual predator. I didn’t deserve that. I guess I have to accept that my brother is still a patron of your establishment. Maybe he’ll learn his lesson someday when you mistake his behavior for something it’s not and ruin his life.”After arriving home from vacation, White Deeble checked her work email on Aug. 1, 2023, and saw the two emails Kovats sent on July 31. Besides the threat of coming to the clinic with a semi-automatic rifle, the email continued, “You will pay for your transgression and your sexist, unseeing liberal point of view will no longer matter because you will be just as dead as the rest of your staff. YOU have created this monster and it will only be YOU and YOUR staff who pay the consequences. Put your affairs in order and finish that bucket list because I’m coming for you.”“I’m not going to hurt your staff or you,” Kovats wrote in the second email. “I am very hurt and want closure. I will not carry out the threats.”  White Deeble said she took the threat seriously in part because of the escalation from prior emails.“It raises the degree of alarm and concern,” she said, “which is why, when it totally tipped over that edge in July, I was like, what choice do I have but to take this completely seriously?” In the 15 months between Kovats’ arrest and the trial, White Deeble closely followed court hearings and worked with the prosecutor on Kovats’ conditions of release and a potential plea bargain that never came to fruition. Throughout court proceedings, Kovats’ mental health, alcohol and substance use were raised as factors in his behavior. Kovats received a mental health evaluation, was found fit to stand trial and was ordered to attend therapy when released in April, according to court documents. The instructions provided to the jury at Kovats’ trial stated an intoxicated person is still criminally responsible for their conduct. Since Kovats stipulated that he wrote the email and sent it to White Deeble, the jury only had to determine whether his actions rose to the level of felony intimidation, according to court documents. The trial was held on Dec. 3 and the jury issued a guilty verdict on Dec. 4.  In the months before the trial when Kovats was released to live with his brother in Ravalli County, White Deeble was on edge. “From the end of April until Dec. 4 when he was found guilty, he never broke those conditions of release, but it meant that I, as the primary victim, was basically on call 24/7, 365,” she told MTFP. “But we understand in this clinic, as a doctor, what it means to be on call. You rotate so every four or five weeks you’re stuck with this thing. But because I’m the primary person they call, I am now once again forced to monitor my phone at all times because it’s the only way, that’s the way they’re going to notify me if he decides to come to Missoula.” Natura added security measures, including locks on the doors, and staff runs emergency drills, White Deeble said. It’s unclear whether Kovats knows White Deeble’s home address, but she took extra safety measures there, too. White Deeble got a permanent order of protection banning all contact and requiring Kovats to be at least 1,500 feet away from her and Natura. “Maybe he’ll do nothing,” White Deeble said. “But if we do nothing and he does something? You can’t not react to this. … I just want us to have some reprieve. But we’ve been doing contingency planning for a year and a half now.” Altogether, the security measures, lost revenue and other related expenses cost White Deeble and the clinic more than $25,000, she said. Other Natura providers and staff members were shaken by the incident, said Rosemary Lynch, a registered nurse at the clinic. Lynch said she was on vacation when the threat happened, but the clinic hasn’t been the same since. “This is such a caring place and this has just colored it, darkened our fine establishment here,” she said. “Our ears are always open. … We do our emergency drills and everybody participates in that, so we’ve all got that heightened sense of what’s going on and what to do. We practice that, so unfortunately it stays real.” Unlike a hospital or large health care organization, Natura does not have the budget or HR department to help handle the situation, White Deeble said. While staff dealt with other upset patients and visitors during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the email threat was different, she said. “That level of hassle was so much easier, for example, for staff to tolerate and to take than what happens when someone threatens to blow your brains out because of where you work,” White Deeble said. “It gets to that workplace safety. … People have a right to feel safe. And I feel like we have done everything we possibly can. And I don’t expect [Kovats] to get 10 years in prison. But we have to truly hold people accountable for this sort of hate speech stuff that has become so prevalent.” Medical organizations locally and nationwide have reported an increase in threats and aggression against workers since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. Health care and social service workers experience the highest rate of nonfatal workplace violence, a rate that’s increased from 2011 to 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nancy Dunne Byington, a retired naturopathic doctor who previously worked at Natura, said health care workers are always at risk, and “we must not ignore the zeitgeist.” “I want this man to get a maximum sentence because I believe in prevention,” she said. “And I do believe that the consequences of his action are a message to the community of people locally who think that threatening violence is a legitimate way to interact. … And therefore, if he has minimal consequences, this is the same as telling the staff and the physicians at Natura that you don’t matter, that this man has a right to threaten you and you don’t have a right to be protected.” Both Dunne Byington and White Deeble acknowledged the lack of mental health care resources statewide and the inadequacy of the prison system but said that’s not a reason that Kovats should go free. “If he is in a circumstance that in which it is difficult for him to learn and grow and heal, well, I just don’t think that that is a reason why all of the employees and all of the patients and all of the practitioners at that clinic have to live with the possibility that he will get pissed off again and blame them for his unhappiness,” Dunne Byington said. Natura, which opened in 2019, is the “culmination of a decades-long dream,” White Deeble said. “We’ve created this really cool thing and somebody comes along with a death threat and kind of wrecks it,” she said. “And then we still sit around wondering, are we still going to be the ones who have to be hypervigilant over this human? For these reasons, we will never unlearn the safety drills and all the stuff that we have done. But is it us who has to continue to bear the greatest burden for public safety?” In-depth, independent reporting on the stories impacting your community from reporters who know your town.The post Missoula doctor raises concerns about sentencing of former patient who threatened her and her clinic appeared first on Montana Free Press.