CHARLESTON, W.Va.– The Disability Rights of West Virginia released a notice Monday of their intent to sue the state’s Department of Health Facilities on their neglect to protect patient’s rights at two different mental health facilities in West Virginia.

The suit is in relation to the abuse and neglect they have discovered at William R. Sharpe, Jr. Hospital in Weston, WV and the Mildred Mitchel-Bateman Hospital in Huntington WV. The suit aims to seek an injunction enjoining future threats of discriminatory, retaliatory, and retributive actions against any staff member who files or seeks to file a required complaint for actual or suspected abuse or neglect involving a patient.

Legal director of Disability Rights of West Virginia Michael Folio said on ‘”Talkline” with Hoppy Kercheval that the abuse that they discovered at these two hospitals has been a continuous problem.

Michael Folio, legal director for Disability Rights of WV, Photo West Virginia Watch website

“What we have here, state healthcare facilities, continue to have a stark history of patient abuse, failure to report the abuse and some instances failure to correct the abuse,” Folio said.

The main issue is that the staff are not reporting the abuse when it happens, even after a statement was issued about staff at Sharpe hospital not reporting the abuse because they were told not to.

“But even back in November, almost eleven months ago, Secretary Caruso issued a public statement about how safeguarding patients’ safety is a top priority, ” Folio said. “And we are, seeing again and again, instances where Sharpe leadership is instructing individuals who are mandatory reporters not to report abuse and neglect.”

Folio even said that they have emails, that were sent between individuals and leadership of Sharpe hospital, where the leadership was telling them not too report. Folio read an email an individual sent to leadership of Sharpe hospital saying they didn’t want the hospital to be viewed negatively if they didn’t report the abuse to Adult Protective Services. These emails will be used in the lawsuit along with other pieces of evidence they found from various sources.

“We receive information from various individuals, including workers, clients but more importantly because were the protection advocacy system for the state of West Virginia, we have federal authority to obtain this information,” Folio said.

Their intent to sue comes from the documentation that the Disability Rights of West Virginia has on various instances of abuse and neglect at the hospitals, with most of them being from Sharpe hospital.

“We can document a nurse grabbing a patient by the throat, we can document an instance of a nurse throwing a patient, we can document instances of staffers using curse words towards patients,” Folio said.

They even have documentation of patients being prohibited to be in their rooms and not being allowed into the bathrooms due to doors being locked.

Along with the abuse, they can also say that there has been insufficient staff at the hospital which Folio believes has contributed to the big problem they are facing.

“We can document there’s insufficient staff, which is largely, I believe, responsible for some of the failure to report, because what happens is when there is an occurrence, that person is immediately suspended pending investigation,” Folio said.

The purpose of this suit is to restore the proper care for the patients so they can get the help that they need and get released from the hospital.

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