Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > New Info

SLS in Brewster, NY?

<< < (8/15) > >>

Anonymous:
State could take months to rule on abuse charges against Putnam mental health facility
Terence Corcoran The Journal News
October 14, 2007 12:05 PM

SOUTHEAST - It could be months before the state rules on allegations that a private mental health facility in Southeast violated its patients' rights and broke the law.

SLS Residential Inc., which treats troubled teens and young adults from Putnam, Westchester and Rockland counties and beyond at two treatment facilities in Southeast, was fined $80,000 last year by the state Office of Mental Health for violations of the state's Mental Hygiene Law. At the time, the state ordered SLS to stop admitting patients, although it later rescinded that order.

The state alleged that SLS, which runs its residential program at two large houses on North Brewster Road and off Putnam Avenue near Route 6, routinely restrained patients and prevented them from making phone calls. It also claimed that staff would search patients, their rooms and packages sent to them.


SLS decided to contest the fine, which it has not paid yet, and the charges in a hearing before the state Office of Mental Health.

OMH spokeswoman Jill Daniels said those hearings routinely take four to five business days to complete. But the SLS hearing was held over two weeks in July and continued several more days in September.

"The hearing process is still continuing," Daniels said last week. "The testimony part was completed at the end of September. The next part of the process involves written submissions back and forth between (SLS and OMH) before a decision is made. It may not be decided until sometime next year."

Joseph Santoro, co-chairman of SLS, did not return calls seeking comment on the hearing and the charges. In the past, however, the company has said the negative report it received from the state was unlike any it had been given in its 20-year history and chalked it up to record keeping and a difference of opinions between SLS and state mental health evaluators.


The OMH report, issued last November, found that SLS employees hired since 2005 were not fingerprinted and could have criminal backgrounds, and that SLS patients who misbehaved were forced to wear a jumpsuit that would require everyone in the facility to ostracize them.

The allegations by the state mirror those of two New Jersey residents and former SLS patients in a $225 million federal class action lawsuit filed earlier this year against various companies affiliated with SLS, alleging they were physically and emotionally abused while patients there.

Goshen attorney Michael Sussman filed the suit in federal court in White Plains for Nicholas J. Romano and Deborah A. Morgan, both in their early 20s, and on behalf of many unnamed patients. The suit seeks millions in compensatory and punitive damages. It claims that SLS violated the rights of patients under the Americans With Disabilities Act and that money was the reason that patients were not allowed to make or receive phone calls because if patients complained to their families and were removed, SLS would lose revenue. Romano was at SLS in 2004 and 2005, while Morgan was there in 2005 and 2006.


Sussman said the lawsuit is pending in White Plains federal court and was not surprised to learn that SLS continues to fight the state charges.

"The charges the state filed go to the heart of their operation and, obviously, to concede to those charges would not only open SLS up to a significant state penalty, it would also have a major implication on the federal litigation," Sussman said. "I'm not at all surprised that they're fighting it."

SLS made news last year when it took a Pleasantville lawyer to court to keep him from protesting outside its facilities. Attorney Glen Feinberg, whose son was a patient at SLS in 2001 and 2002, felt that his son was traumatized by the treatment and wanted to picket SLS facilities to warn others. Feinberg, who was supported by the New York Civil Liberties Union, eventually won that right.

Ursus:
Link for the above article, in case anyone else is following this:

State could take months to rule on abuse charges against Putnam mental health facility
By TERENCE CORCORAN
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: October 14, 2007)
http://lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? ... 027/NEWS11

Anonymous:
It appears to me that no one at Fornits cares about this.  I guess it does not matter since children are not being abused?  What about adults?  They can be abused too?  And this is no different then the WASSP situation.

Break it down:

Parents of the mentally ill are manipulated into paying large sums of money for treatment of their loved ones.

These loved ones are abused, violated and broken.


Should they not get as much attention as everyone else in this forum?  Does this really sound any different then what most of us have already experienced?

Shame on everyone.

Ursus:
Naw, I hear ya.  But its a similar situation to that of Benchmark, which also deals with that borderline population, namely one that deals with both teens and young adults.  It doesn't get all that much traffic either.  But it is still important.  I find it noteworthy that HEAL has both these facilities grouped together on the same page.  I suggested over in Web Forum Hosting that perhaps these two facilities could be grouped together somehow, for the benefit of both.  That balloon hasn't taken off yet.  A good fornits poster to ask/touch base with re. that possibility would be psy, who attended Benchmark.

I hear rumors that fornits may be moving to a SMF format, so decisions like that might be put off.  But there has to be more stink than one bear can produce, if you catch my drift.  SLS folk need to ingrain themselves more here, so that the fornits community will recognize the need.  I think sayitaintsojoe does such a fine job of keeping y'all up to speed on the blog; I'm not sure SLS folk feel the need to post here, but they should, if they want more press time here.  I try to do what I can, I haven't forgotten, but sometimes life happens and gets in the way of doing everything the way you would want to.

Along those same lines, I think more treatment of topics in the TTI forum would get more folks' attention.  The New Info forum here doesn't get quite the same attention as the TTI does.  That said, it can also get pretty raunchy there, enough to offend just about everybody at some time or another.  'Tis the nature of the beast...

Feel free to PM me.  I was over on the blog a few days ago, haven't had a chance to check back yet, but I will...

Keep the faith! ::peace::  It isn't always easy or perfect, but we just gotta keep chippin' away at it...

Anonymous:
SLS Residential, LLC, a private mental health facility located in Putnam County, NY, has been sanctioned for threatening former patients who are potential plaintiffs in a class actions lawsuit.  SLS runs two residential treatment centers in the town of Southeast, NY  for adolescents and young adults.  In addition to a class action lawsuit, SLS is facing revocation of its state operating licenses for the two facilities.

The class action lawsuit, filed by two former SLS Residential patients, alleges that they were subjected to physical and mental abuse.  The complaint, which was filed on behalf of all SLS patients, seeks  $75 million in compensatory damages, $150 million in punitive damages and an injunction that would bar SLS from further violating patients’ rights.

The SLS class action lawsuit  alleges that staff illegally employed manual restraints and put patients in isolation rooms where they were physically and emotionally abused, subjected patients to nightly searches of their bodies and rooms, and denied patients the right to refuse treatment, leave the facility or phone family members.  The complaint also charges SLS with discrimination under the Americans With Disabilities Act, and claims patients were targeted for mistreatment because they were mentally disabled.

Southern District Judge Stephen Robinson assessed SLS $35,000 in sanctions after he determined that 80 former patients  had been told by SLS therapists that their private medical records would be made public if they became plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit. In some cases, the therapists falsely told their former patients that the judge had actually ordered the publication of medical records.

At a hearing held by Judge Robinson on July 8, a therapist who had worked at SLS for two years testified that its Chief Clinical Officer, Dr. Shawn Prichard, had called a meeting to discuss contacting the potential class action lawsuit plaintiffs and their families, and distributed a list of their names and phone numbers.

In addition to using threats to coerce  former patients into opting out of the class action lawsuit,  the callers contacted other institutions where some former SLS patients were being treated and tried to convince personnel at institutions to sign opt outs on their patients’ behalf.

In levying sanctions against SLS, Judge Robinson called the defendant’s conduct “egregious”.   “Under the guise of caring for their former patients, the defendants sought to capitalize on the potential plaintiffs’ vulnerability and discourage them from participating in the lawsuit.” Judge Robinson said. “This conduct is astounding to the court.”

In his decision, the judge held SLS management responsible for the conduct of the therapists.  “These calls were not the result of inadvertence, misplaced good intentions, or even the product of rogue employees who took it upon themselves to manipulate class members,” Judge Robinson said. “Rather, it was a scheme designed and implemented by the very highest managers at SLS who are, not incidentally, named defendants in this lawsuit.”

In addition to the $35,000 Judge Robinson voided all of the opt-outs signed by potential plaintiffs, and ordered corrective notices to be mailed. He also ordered all the defendants to cease contact with the potential plaintiffs.

The class action lawsuit is not the only legal battle that SLS Residential is facing right now.  Last week, SLS filed a lawsuit in the New York state Supreme Court seeking to reverse the revocation of its operating license by the state Office of Mental Health (OMH).  In 2006, OMH fined SLS Residential $110,000 for violations of the state Mental Hygiene Law and ordered that it stop admitting patients - and stop violating the rights of the patients it was treating.  The OMH said SLS Residential routinely restrained clients and kept them from making phone calls. It also found that staff would search patients, their rooms and packages sent to them.

In seeking to revoke its licenses, OMH alleged that SLS used illegal restraints on patients long after being told not to, that it administered sedatives to patients when they refused to take their medications and that it failed to report troubling incidents to the state, including patients behaving suicidally and complaining of abuse by staff.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page