The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a paper willing to support watchdog journalism, has an editorial, entitled, Safety Must Come First: Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker and administrators at the county’s Mental Health Complex need to act now to correct problems there.
Here’s the Journal Sentinel‘s view:
The steps that are being taken to correct problems at Milwaukee County’s Mental Health Complex need to show quick results. They need to be able to demonstrate to state and county officials and to advocacy groups that patients are safe from sexual predators. If they don’t show those results, County Executive Scott Walker needs to take responsibility and make administrative and policy changes, starting at the top.
According to an early report put together by the watchdog group Disability Rights Wisconsin, patients at the complex are not safe and administrators and staff show a shocking indifference to the problems. Both the lack of safety and the attitude are the responsibility of John Chianelli, the county’s top mental health administrator.
It’s up to Chianelli – and ultimately to Walker – to set the right tone.
Chianelli told reporters that a safe hospital is his highest priority and cited measures taken recently to correct problems. Walker said he would work with the watchdog group to create a community oversight council for the complex. Those are good steps, but they need to show results. Patients and their families need to know they will be safe at the complex.
One should note that this is not my view: I think Chianelli should be fired if he won’t resign. Every day he spends in office is an affront to patients’ rights and proper treatment. I consider the JS editorial generous and charitable to Chianelli.
This has become a national story – there’s no hoping by bureaucrats and their defenders that it will simply go away. In the Washington Post‘s online Slate, Torie Bosch considers Milwaukee’s situation in a story entitled, Sexual Assault in the Psychiatric Ward. She writes:
Recently, an administrator at a Wisconsin mental health facility that has been under investigation for on-site sexual assault defended co-ed housing by saying that the presence of women calms male patients. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, John Chianelli, administrator of the county’s Behavioral Health Division said, “It’s a trade-off.” Putting 24 aggressive male patients into a male-only unit would increase the level of violence in the unit.”
A “trade-off” is a remarkably blase way to frame what has gone on at Milwaukee County’s Mental Health Complex: According to reports, a 22-year-old male patient, whom one medical supervisor called “a very devious sexual predator,” assaulted several women; allegedly, he impregnated one and then raped her when she was six weeks pregnant. But there’s little research to support Chianelli’s claim, beyond a 1996 German study, which noted that staff members of a ward that went from mixed-sex to single-sex observed “a significant increase in annoyance and aggression”….
Giving women who are more vulnerable to assault or who are terrified of being in a psychiatric facility the option of same-sex treatment would make their inpatient visits safer, even more productive. This could be particularly important for women who have been the victims of violence, as is the case with so many psychiatric inpatients: The severely mentally ill are far more likely than the mentally healthy to be victims of crime, including sexual violence. One of the few women-only mental health wards is at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, which serves women who, in addition to mental illness, have suffered from traumas like physical or sexual abuse, or addiction. But that unit has just 18 beds.
If female patients don’t have the option of single-sex care, then at the very least they deserve to be in the hands of well-trained, caring, and observant staff members. Other safety measures would also be helpful, like an electronic monitoring system, which Florida’s St. Joseph Hospital installed after a rape was reported, or giving patients the ability to lock doors if they feel threatened, so long as staff members can override the lock if necessary. A woman who just attempted suicide should be free to get a good night’s sleep without worrying about a man crawling into her bed uninvited.
Chianelli does have local defenders. On May 13th, the Journal Sentinel published a story entitled, Chianelli wins plaudits from two supervisors, staff members that described support for Chianelli.
Of those staffers who expressed support for Chianelli in a letter, one can say that they are current employees under Chainelli’s authority, and they are the ones who have been working at a facility that’s been accused of documented patient abuses, and a risking number of sexual assaults. They’re not disinterested bystanders in these accusations, and potential lawsuits.
They have every reason, except perhaps honesty and integrity, to defend a system of which they have been a part. County employees who are defending Chianelli are, at the same time, defending themselves. They have a right to do so, but no one should think they’re disinterested in all this, as they are the ones who have allegedly allowed these many abuses.
(I’ve written before about Milwaukee County’s Behavioral Health Division, and sexual assaults among mental patients at its Mental Health Center. BHD’s Director, John Chianelli, has implemented a policy of trading male-on-male violence among mental patients for male-on-female sexual assault. 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, and Update 4.)