Mother to sue psych hospital over sexual assault: “They failed to protect my daughter.”

A teenage girl interned in a psychiatric ward was sexually abused by an 11-year-old patient and kept in the same unit with him for weeks after the attack, authorities said.

Patricia Watson, the 15-year-old girl’s mother, told how her daughter had been placed in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Hospital’s child psychiatric ward in February.

Then on a visit to the hospital on March 9, Mrs Watson was told by her daughter how she had been attacked by the boy, who sat on her as she slept, before pulling her pants and underwear down and sodomising her.

Speaking to the New York Daily News, Mrs Watson said: ‘When my daughter told me what happened, I felt like a knife had pierced me in my heart.

‘The hospital failed to protect her. They failed to protect my daughter.’

When Mrs Watson approached authorities,she was told  they were aware of the attack, but it took another two weeks before the boy was removed from the ward.

Mrs Watson added: ‘She has panic attacks when she’s in her room, when she’s in the shower.

‘I feel heartbroken my daughter is still there. She should have been moved within hours.’

Mrs Watson now plans to sue the city for $20 million.

Speaking to the paper, Mrs Watson described how she coaxed the story of the attack out of her daughter.

After she noticed her daughters ‘vacant’ stare she asked: ‘Baby, what’s wrong.’

The girl then described the attack, telling her mother the boy crept into her room the night before while she was sleeping.

He straddled her back, holding her down, while he started to feel her breasts.

As he began to pull down her trousers and underwear she struggled to throw him off, but couldn’t.

She said: ‘I tried to push him off, but I couldn’t.

‘I told him to stop a lot of times, but he didn’t. He told me to shut up,’ she told prosecutors.’

Tragedy: The boy was kept on the same ward as his victim for two weeks, reports said.

Mrs Watson says her daughter is still reeling from the affects of the attack.

She said: ‘Her smile used to brighten up a room.

‘Now, I have to ask her to smile for me, and when she smiles, I can still see the pain, the hurt, the anger, the sadness.’

Mrs Watson said she did not remove her daughter from the facility because it would delay her placement in a state hospital for long term treatment.

The boy pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct on March 29 and is awaiting sentencing.

A Metropolitan Hospital spokesman said: ‘We take all such allegations seriously and the matter is under police investigation.

Source: “Girl, 15, sodomised by 11-year-old boy in psychiatric hospital and kept in same ward as attacker for TWO weeks,” Daily Mail (UK), April 25, 2011.

Two NY psychiatrists named in whistleblower cop’s $50 million involuntary commitment lawsuit

Most of the news you will read about the lawsuit filed by New York police officer Adrian Schoolcraft is about how his superiors in Brooklyn’s 81st Precinct had him involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility because he was going to blow the whistle on them for unlawful ticket quotas and manipulated crime statistics.

What is not so much publicized is that the defendants in his $50 million lawsuit include Jamaica Hospital Medical Center and two of its psychiatrists: Dr. Isak Isakov and Dr. Lilian Aldana-Bernier.

Among the allegations against Isakov and Aldana-Bernier in Schoolcraft’s civil suit:

• They failed to perform the proper and necessary tests to determine that plaintiff was either a “substantial risk of physical harm to himself…or to others….”

(In New York, as in most states, the criteria for being involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility is that one must be shown to be a danger to himself or others by having made suicidal or homicidal threats or attempts or displayed such behavior.)

• They unlawfully detained and involuntarily confined Schoolcraft to Jamaica Hospital for treatment without any justification, in violation of his constitutional rights.

• They deprived Schoolcraft of his liberty, denied him his fundamental constitutional rights, publicly embarrassed and humiliated him and caused him to suffer severe emotional distress.

A psychiatrist can’t simply lock someone up in a psych ward just because another person—even an officer of the law—claims they’re “agitated” or “emotionally disturbed.”

Schoolcraft has since been vindicated in his whistleblower allegations:  The 81st Precinct came under investigation and its top commanders have all been given departmental charges and/or been transferred.

Which makes it look all the worse for psychiatrists Isakov and Aldana-Bernier.

Source: “Cop who made tapes accuses NYPD of false arrest,” Associated Press, October 9, 2010; Coleen Long, Tom Hays, “‘What is this, Russia?” Cop claims NYPD had him committed for being a whistleblower,” MSNBC.com, October 10, 2010; Len Levitt, “Adrian Schoolcraft: Now it’s getting serious,” Huffington Post, January 31, 2011 and Rocco Parascandola, “Brooklyn’s 81st Precinct probed by NYPD for fudging stats; felonies allegedly marked as misdemeanors,” New York Daily News, February 2, 2010.