Michael Carey continues his fight to protect the rights of disabled individuals who cannot protect themselves.
The Glenmont resident’s latest crusade is asking for a 1985 law on institutional abuse and neglect to reflect the current standards of both state penal law and mental hygiene law requiring the reporting of crimes of alleged abuse to appropriate law enforcement officials.
In the months following the passage of Jonathan’s Law in May, which the Carey family had pushed for and which grants families of disabled individuals access to investigation records regarding their loved ones’ care, Carey received records regarding his son Jonathan’s care while at the Anderson School in Dutchess County.
Jonathan was taken out of the Anderson School in the fall of 2004 following abuse allegations. The family has had a lawsuit pending against the Anderson School since 2005.
Jonathan died in February after losing consciousness inside an O.D. Heck Developmental Center vehicle. Two former employees of the agency were found guilty in Jonathan’s death. He was 13 at the time.
No other child should suffer such abuse, neglect and treatment as Jonathan did, said his father Michael, who, through access granted by Jonathan’s Law, now has obtained various state records revealing detailed information regarding his son’s stay at the Anderson School.
Records reveal that Jonathan had meals withheld and was confined to his room for several weeks as a form of behavioral treatment by school officials designed to get him to put his shirt and pants on prior to eating. One letter shows several employees from the Anderson School signing off on the behavior modification, even though Michael Carey believes that, according to state mental hygiene law, the method was a clear standard of abuse. Carey’s information also shows his son suffered bruising around his legs and stomach during the weeks of `behavior modification.`
`They blocked him in his room and were not feeding him,` said Carey. `That was going on for days.`
Jonathan’s treatment at Anderson was investigated at the end of 2004 by the state Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, with three different letters being sent out on Dec. 20.
The letter from OMRDD officials to the Careys states: `The investigation substantiated many of your complaints.` Another letter sent out that day by OMRDD to the Anderson School tells school officials that they have `substantiated improper treatment` and urged the school to take `immediate action to rectify the problem.` A third letter that same day from the state Commission on Quality Care, which oversees OMRDD, to the Anderson School chairman of the board states `the Commission completed their recommendation and recommended to the state Central Registry that Jonathan was unharmed and the complaint unfounded.`
The CQC based its findings on the state social services definition of abuse, a standard Michael Carey is hoping the state will eventually replace with the same standard of abuse used by police agencies.
Gary Masline, a spokesman for the CQC, said the agency is required to make its recommendations based on the provisions of the state social services standards.
`If it doesn’t measure up to that high standard of abuse, it has to be measured as unfounded by law,` said Masline. `Under OMRDD standards, yelling at a child can be viewed as abuse. Under social services law, it is not.`
Masline further stated that Jonathan was not being starved while at the Anderson School.
`They were providing him with alternative meals,` he said. `They weren’t starving the boy.`
In a findings report addressed to Neil Pollack, director of the Anderson School, dated Feb. 14, 2005, and provided by the CQC, one of the investigators of the Anderson School incident said that Jonathan’s updated `support plan,` though not comprehensive, indicated that if he refused his regular meals, `the staff will offer Jonathan a nutritional supplement at the end of meal time.`
In a June 2005 letter to Michael Carey from the CQC, the agency told Carey that investigators visited the school on several occasions and had found that the behavior support plan provided no direction for staff; it failed to follow the school’s own nursing directive to track Jonathan’s food intake for almost two weeks; and the school failed to protect the rights of Jonathan and his parents according to OMRDD directions, `specifically denial of his regular meal without approval from both the agency’s human rights committee` and the Careys.
Carey called the CQC and OMRDD `untrustworthy.`
`Their concern is to protect the agency from litigation,` said Carey.
He said his interest in changing the law is not about getting even or about his own grief and anger; it’s about helping those who needlessly suffer from this kind of abuse.
`Our main focus is to change the system,` said Carey.
State Assemblyman Tim Gordon, I-Slingerlands, said Michael Carey has become a `regular fixture` at the Capitol.
`We certainly want to represent him and some of the measures he has had insight into,` Gordon said.
The first item Carey is asking for is to abolish the definition of institutional abuse and neglect that has created an almost impossible standard for anyone to take action against. The law reads that abuse means anything that causes a `substantial risk of death, serious or protracted disfigurement, protracted impairment or physical and emotional health or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily organ.`
The second thing Carey is urging is to change the law of endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person from a misdemeanor charge to a felony violation. Gordon said this law has passed both the state Senate and Assembly in different forms.
`I have a bill that elevates to a felony mistreatment or abuse of someone in residential care,` said Gordon.
The third request is to ensure all calls into the state mental health hot line of abuse go directly to a law enforcement agency and not just a mental health agency.
`When somebody calls in an abuse or neglect, these are criminal charges,` said Carey of the legislation.“