State Chronicled Academy Issues
ADAM EMERSON
December 20, 2008
Sharon Meyer wants to know what happened to her daughter.
The teenager was supposed to get better during her year at Tampa Bay Academy's mental health center. Instead, a child who was disruptive grew more violent and repeatedly escaped from what was supposed to be constant supervision.
"She's 10 times worse than when she went in," said Meyer, who says she complained repeatedly about her daughter's treatment there without an adequate response from the academy.
Now, her daughter is among dozens whom state officials are moving to other treatment centers after unearthing "gross mismanagement" and "substandard conditions" at the 20-year-old academy in Riverview.
And many of Meyer's complaints are borne out in state inspection reports. Over the past year, regulators repeatedly found evidence that academy workers improperly restrained children and isolated them in rooms that sometimes lacked mattresses.
They also found an inadequate and poorly trained staff, which last week led Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration to suspend the license of the children's mental health center and shut it down.
Also, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office opened a criminal investigation at the academy, where inspectors found evidence that some residents sexually preyed on workers and that the academy failed to protect the rest of the residents.
Tampa Bay Academy officials are trying to hold off the suspension when it takes effect Jan. 9 by appealing to the Second District Court of Appeal. Before then, the state is trying to find another center for Meyer's daughter. Her mother says she has little faith in her options.
"How do you know anymore," Meyer said.
Escaped Repeatedly
Meyer's daughter entered the academy in December 2007, and her mother said she has spiraled downward ever since.
Scars appeared on her arm. She grew more violent and disruptive. She was able to escape as many as 10 times, but Meyer said she didn't hear of each escape right away.
"How can someone in a locked-down facility repeatedly escape?" she asked.
In August, Meyer wrote to academy administrators to complain that a staff member choked her daughter. She also complained that she didn't sign off on medication administered to her child, and that her daughter was placed in seclusion for too long and had her personal items taken away.
"Our attempts at asking questions, getting our daughter emergency medical help and requesting records has been met with an attitude of resistance," Meyer wrote in a June letter to the academy.
In an interview with the Tribune on Friday, Tampa Bay Academy chief executive Rich Warden said that because of patient privacy, he couldn't talk about Meyer's complaints.
Inspection records kept by the Health Care Administration show that investigators were aware of some of the problems Meyer complained about.
In August 2007, investigators counted several deficiencies at the academy. Among them: Staff members took some of the troubled children and teenagers to a secluded room for a "timeout," often for days. The patients should have been secluded only for "emergency safety situations," inspectors said.
About a year later, inspectors found evidence that staff members restrained youngsters and injected them with Thorazine without indicating whether the patients' behavior required the use of sedatives.
Inspections also note that patients - some of whom suffered from severe mental disorders and required constant attention - successfully escaped. They also found records showing that staff members failed to receive enough training in administering treatment plans, restraints or CPR.
Residents also lacked access to a telephone, a restriction that Meyer complained about in her letters.
For each inspection, academy officials promised to correct any deficiencies.
This week, state regulators said they have given the academy the chance to boost and properly train its staff, and that it has failed.
The academy's "deficient conditions and practices ... have existed in the recent past, exist presently and are very likely to continue to exist if the agency does not act promptly," regulators wrote last week in a Leon County court filing.
As of Friday afternoon, the state found other treatment centers for 37 of the 54 youngsters enrolled at the academy's mental health center.
In its order to shut down the mental health center, the Health Care Administration said that one staff member was sexually assaulted on two occasions and that another was subjected to "sexually inappropriate and assaultive behavior." None of the incidents was reported to regulators or law enforcement.
No 'Serious' Danger
Attorneys for the academy, a for-profit company, dispute the allegations.
The "assault" involved a 10-year-old boy who poked at a female staff member's breasts and buttocks, attorneys wrote in their appeal. The woman chose not to press charges.
In another claim, regulators wrote that one resident admitted in late November to being infected with gonorrhea and HIV, but had sex repeatedly with another resident.
Attorneys for the academy said that the staff had been unable to confirm that the girl engaged in sex, but said that tests for gonorrhea and HIV turned up negative.
The academy also rejected the claim that it put its staff and residents in "immediate" and "serious" danger." The agency's findings, attorneys say, don't warrant the closure of the mental health center and the removal of its children.
But at least three lawsuits filed in Hillsborough County Circuit Court allege that negligence goes much deeper than regulators have found.
In one, filed in 2006, an adoptive mother says her teenage son was raped and beaten by other residents. His mother had to stop working and care for the boy, who is deaf and mentally impaired.
In another, filed this year, a family alleges the academy allowed their son to go home knowing he suffered "from mental health conditions which rendered him an ongoing threat to the safety and well-being of those in his presence."
In December 2007, the academy sent him home, the lawsuit states. Two days later, he sexually assaulted his grandmother.
Tampa Bay Academy officials deny any negligence in the cases, which are still pending.
A lawyer who works for Florida's Children First, a child advocacy organization, says problems at Tampa Bay Academy have existed for years. They've come to light only after investigators found evidence of assaults on workers.
"All they've been doing is warehousing these children," said Brian Cabrey, vice president of Florida's Children First.
Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at (813) 259-8285.