I’ve posted on the the dangerous and foul conditions at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex previously. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a solid newspaper, has a two-part series describing what mental patients — often involuntarily committed to that facility — have endured while there. See, Out of Chaos, a Baby is Born (part one of the series) and Lack of Accountability Continues, Despite Deaths, Threats to Funding (part two of the series).
Consider this, merely the very beginning of the series —
This is the baby no one wants to talk about:
He was born at Froedtert Hospital on the morning of Thursday, April 29, weighing 6 pounds, 4 ounces. His color was poor, his pulse weak, his breathing labored. Nurses huddled around him, fussing with monitors, cheering for him to rally. His 23-year-old mother paid no attention to the commotion.
Diagnosed as moderately mentally retarded and dangerously mentally ill, she had been sedated by doctors who feared she might hurt them and the baby as her hallucinations flared.
The woman became pregnant in July 2009 while a patient at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex, where she was supposed to be on birth control injections, a Journal Sentinel investigation has found.
The complex is home to some of the most vulnerable people in the county, those found to be dangerous to themselves or others and who are kept behind locked doors under the care of taxpayer-financed doctors and nurses.
Instead of keeping her safe, hospital administrators put the woman in the same unit as Omowale Atkins, a patient with a history of violence and sexual assault who once punched a nurse so hard he shattered the man’s eye socket.
Atkins had sex with the woman on the day she arrived and at least several times after that for the next three weeks, records from a federal inspection of the hospital show. Her guardian was never told about the sex, a violation of hospital policy.
When the medical staff discovered months later that she was pregnant, they further ignored hospital policy by waiting weeks before informing her guardian.
By the time her guardian was told of the pregnancy, the woman was believed to be in her second trimester, and it was too late to spare the fetus from the most dangerous effects of three psychiatric medications she had been taking.
Knowledge of the pregnancy became public in March, after the Journal Sentinel obtained a copy of inspection reports under state and federal open records laws.
Since then the newspaper’s investigation has determined that county health workers – from nursing assistants to administrators – mismanaged the case from the beginning, ignored medical orders and falsified documents to hide their mistakes.
The second part of the series, Lack of Accountability Continues, Despite Deaths, Threats to Funding shows how little has changed, how the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division’s leader, John Chianelli, remains a disgrace to his profession, the people of his county, and to our entire state.
(By the way, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel notes,
[u]nder state law, patients committed involuntarily to a mental institution are considered legally incompetent and therefore unable to consent to sex. As a result, sex with mentally ill patients who have been committed is considered sexual assault.
That’s not how sex between patients is always handled at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex, however.
For years, the hospital’s policy stated patient sex was merely “considered inappropriate and therapeutically contraindicated during hospitalization.”
The policy has been [more recently] revised to prohibit patient sex.
See, Patient sex is prohibited.
Those doctors in Milwaukee County who issued and defended the past policy should have been sacked long ago. Those politicians who have shielded them from accountability should resign or be voted from office.
When I’m asked why someone in a small town writes about the dangerous and immoral policies of the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division, here’s my answer: because these tragedies show that John Chianelli remains a disgrace to his profession, the people of his county, and to our entire state. Those who have allowed him to remain in office are a disgrace to their offices, the people of Milwaukee County, and to our entire state
Here one sees from so-called public servants lies, excuses, stonewalling, and attempts at distraction, in the place of honesty, accountability, urgency, and clarity. The Milwaukee County executive who now runs for governor has failed to do the right thing, persisting instead in the hope that all this will go away. That he might well become our next governor should concern everyone in Wisconsin.
This issue will only go away when those responsible have been disciplined or removed, and those who come after assure more humane treatment.
Not a moment sooner.
I’ve posted about Chianelli’s policy, and the tragedy that is conduct at the MHC, before. See, A Milwaukee County Bureaucrat’s Immoral Utilitarianism, Update: A Milwaukee County Bureaucrat’s Immoral Utilitarianism, Update 2, Update 3, Update 4, Update 5, Update 6, Update 7, Update 8, Update 9, Update 10, Update 11, Update 12, Update 13, and Update 14.