Judges can jail alleged defaulters — who are not covered by the presumption of innocence — without a trial.
It may not be a crime to be poor, but it can land you behind bars if you also are behind on your child-support payments.
Thousands of so-called “deadbeat” parents are jailed each year in the U.S. after failing to pay court-ordered child support — the vast majority of them for withholding or hiding money out of spite or a feeling that they’ve been unfairly gouged by the courts.
But in what might seem like an un-American plot twist from a Charles Dickens’ novel, advocates for the poor say, some parents are wrongly being locked away without any regard for their ability to pay — sometimes without the benefit of legal representation.
Randy Miller, a 39-year-old Iraqi war vet, found himself in that situation in November, when a judge in Floyd County, Ga., sent him to jail for violating a court order to pay child support.
He said he was stunned when the judge rebuffed his argument that he had made regular payments for more than a decade before losing his job in July 2009 and had recently resumed working.
“I felt that with my payment history and that I had just started working, maybe I would be able to convince the judge to give me another month and a half to start making the payments again,” he told msnbc.com. “… But that didn’t sit too well with him because he went ahead and decided to lock me up.”
Miller, who spent three months in jail before being released, is one of six plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit filed in March that seeks to force the state of Georgia to provide lawyers for poor non-custodial parents facing the loss of their freedom for failing to pay child support.
‘Debtors’ prisons’?
“Languishing in jail for weeks, months, and sometimes over a year, these parents share one trait … besides their poverty: They went to jail without ever talking to an attorney,” according to the lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Southern Center of Human Rights in Atlanta.
While jailing non-paying parents — the vast majority of them men — does lead to payment in many cases, critics say that it unfairly penalizes poor and unemployed parents who have no ability to pay, even though federal law stipulates that they must have “willfully” violated a court order before being incarcerated.
They compare the plight of such parents to the poor people consigned to infamous “debtors’ prisons” before such institutions were outlawed in the early 1800s.
“I try very carefully not to exaggerate, but I do think that’s an apt comparison,” said Sarah Geraghty, the attorney handling the Georgia case for the Southern Center for Human Rights.
“And I think anyone who went down and watched one of these proceedings would agree with me. … You see a room full of indigent parents — most of them African-American — and you have a judge and attorney general, both of whom are white. The hearings often take only 15 seconds. The judge asks, ‘Do you have any money to pay?’ the person pleads and the judge says, ‘OK you’re going to jail,’” she added.
The threat of jailing delinquent parents is intended to coerce them to pay, but in rare cases it can have tragic results.
In June, a New Hampshire father and military veteran, Thomas Ball, died after dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself ablaze in front of the Cheshire County Court House.
In a long, rambling letter to the local Sentinel newspaper, the 58-year-old Ball stated that he did so to focus attention on what he considered unfair domestic violence laws and because he expected to be jailed at an upcoming hearing on his failure to pay up to $3,000 in delinquent child support, even though he had been out of work for two years.
The ability of judges to jail parents without a trial is possible because failure to pay child support is usually handled as a civil matter, meaning that the non-custodial parent — or the “contemnor” in legal terms — is found guilty of contempt of court and ordered to appear at a hearing.
He or she is not entitled to some constitutional protections that criminal defendants receive, including the presumption of innocence. And in five states — Florida, Georgia, Maine, South Carolina and Ohio — one of the omitted protections is the right to an attorney.
Randall Kessler, a family law attorney in Atlanta and chairman of the American Bar Association’s family law division, said states have a great deal of leeway in family law, which includes child support cases.
“The main reason states are patchwork is because family law is a local idea,” he said. “It’s very infrequent that the federal government gets into family law, except for international custody every now and then and violence against women. ... Each community’s laws are different in the way they treat child support collection, and the right to a lawyer and the right to a jury trial varies.”
He noted, however, that the ABA last year approved a resolution urging "federal, state, and territorial governments to provide legal counsel as a matter of right at public expense to low-income persons in ... adversarial proceedings where basic human needs are at stake, such as those involving shelter, sustenance, safety, health or child custody."
Supreme Court: No right to a lawyer
The child support program currently serves approximately 17 million U.S. children, or nearly a quarter of the nation’s minors, according to a recent study by Elaine Sorensen, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute.
Critics of incarceration without representation had hoped that the U.S. Supreme Court would end the practice in its ruling in Turner v. Rogers, a case involving a South Carolina man who was repeatedly jailed for up to a year after failing to pay child support.
But the court ruled 5-4 in June that poor parents are not entitled to a court-appointed lawyer when facing jail for non-payment of child support. Instead, the justices said, states should use “substantial procedural safeguards” to ensure that those who have no means to pay are not locked up.
That is likely to force the states that don’t guarantee the right to an attorney to tighten their policies, said Colleen Eubanks, executive director of the National Child Support Enforcement Association, which represents state agencies. “Obviously they’re going to have to look at changing the rules,” she said.
Ken Wolfe, a spokesman for the federal Administration for Children and Families, which imposes some rules on state child support enforcement agencies in exchange for funding, said the agency expects to issue guidance to the states next month regarding the Turner case. He declined to provide any details.
But Libba Patterson, a law professor at the University of South Carolina and a former director of the state Department of Social Services, said the Supreme Court ruling provides “very weak protections” for poor parents and is unlikely on its own to solve the problem of wrongful incarceration of poor parents.
“It depends on the extent to which the court is truly interested in making a full inquiry on the ability-to-pay issue and on the resources the court has and the amount of judicial time,” she said.
Even in states where the non-custodial parents do have the right to a lawyer, those without the financial resources to meet their child-support obligations still frequently land in jail.
A 2009 study by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan policy think tank in Washington, D.C., found that only half of the child support debtors in California prisons had reported income in the two preceding years. And the median net income of the others was a mere $2,881.
65 percent of paycheck taken
Geraghty, the Southern Center for Human Rights attorney, said part of the problem is that courts often order poor parents to pay too much for child support in the first place, increasing the likelihood that they will fall behind on payments.
“One of my former clients worked at the Piggly Wiggly (supermarket) and they were taking 65 percent of her paycheck,” she said. “It left her in a position where there was simply no way that she could survive on the amount that she had left.”
No one can say how many parents are jailed each year for failing to pay child support, because states typically do not track such cases.
But an analysis of U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics in 2002 by the Urban Institute’s Sorensen suggested that approximately 10,000 parents were jailed that year for non-payment of child support, representing 1.7 percent of the overall U.S. jail population.
Most observers believe that number has risen as a result of the troubled U.S. economy.
In fiscal 2009, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the Child Support Enforcement program saw child support collections decline for the first time in the history of the program, dipping 1.8 percent, the GAO reported in January.
At the same time, payments collected from unemployment insurance benefits nearly tripled, and the number of cases in which children were receiving public assistance also rose.
Military veterans, who often struggle to find work when they leave the service, appear to be particularly at risk.
Lance Hendrix of Adel, Ga., an Army veteran, said he fell behind on child support for his 4-year-old daughter after he left the service and couldn’t find work.
“I was arrested and I went to jail and they asked me all sorts of questions,” said Hendrix, who also is a plaintiff in the Georgia lawsuit. “I was never told I was under arrest. And I was never read my rights. So I did not know what rights I had. Of course, I’ve seen all these movies, but half that isn’t true.”
Not having a lawyer in a civil contempt hearing increases the likelihood that the parent will be jailed, even if he or she is not guilty of “willfully” defying the court’s order, say critics of the policy.
‘Wrongfully imprisoned’
“In the absence of counsel … it appears that the opportunity to raise the defense is often missed, and large numbers of indigent parents are wrongfully imprisoned for failure to meet child support obligations every year,” according to a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the Turner case by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.
The deck is further stacked against the delinquent parent because the state often acts as the plaintiff, seeking to recover the cost of providing public assistance to the child, Geraghty said.
Officials of Georgia’s Child Support Services agency declined to comment on the state’s child support enforcement policies or the lawsuit.
But Seth Harp, a retired Georgia state senator and former member of the state’s Child Support Guidelines Commission, said the state’s judges use incarceration sparingly.
“The methodology to put someone in jail requires that the person be taken to court before a judge and there they have to be found in willful contempt — someone who actively refuses to seek work or is hiding assets, something like that,” he said. “Judges don’t want to put people in jail. … The whole purpose is to get these people to support their children.”
Harp said he’s seen the tactic work repeatedly in his long career as a family law attorney.
“You can’t get blood out of a turnip, but you can put the turnip in the cooler,” he said. “And in 34 years of doing this, it’s amazing, you put someone in the cooler and the money seems to come.”
Judge Janice M. Rosa, a supervising court judge in New York’s 8th Judicial District and a board member of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, said the system in her state adequately protects non-custodial parents by guaranteeing them a court-appointed lawyer if they cannot afford one and carefully determining that they have the ability to pay.
“No one here is going to jail when a factory closes down and you’re one of hundreds looking for a job,” she said. “… Every state has said that debtors’ prisons are illegal, and you have to give these people a way out. You can only put them in jail if they have money and won’t pay.”
Attempt to assist both parents
Eubanks, the National Child Support Enforcement Association official, said state programs in general are doing a better job in recent years of ensuring that the poor aren’t unfairly locked up by instituting programs to help non-custodial parents improve work, life and parenting skills.
“Five to 10 years ago, the program was pretty much about enforcing support. But now it’s moving to the understanding that if parents are going to support their children, they need assistance,” she said. “Our philosophy is to provide whatever tools we can to both parents to support their children.”
She also said the recent Supreme Court decision prompted the association to conduct training and outreach to ensure that state agencies are aware of the issue and have adequate safeguards in place to prevent indigent parents from being wrongly jailed.
That is no comfort to Miller, the Iraq war veteran who was jailed for three months. He said jailing parents who fall behind on their payments is counterproductive and should be reserved for only the most egregious violators.
“I feel like it’s more unfair to the kids, because now not only do the kids not get any money, nor do they even get to spend time with their fathers once they get locked up,” he said. “The closest you can get is visitation, and who wants their kids to see them behind bars or behind glass.”
See video link and original story below...
Unable to pay child support, poor parents jailed - US news - Crime & courts - msnbc.com
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Everything Happens For A Reason
This evening I finally returned a phone call from a long distance friend who has been kind enough to wait till I worked through my accident & figure out my recovery in my head before receiving a call from me. I truly appreciate her being so kind!
It's been a struggle for the last few months.. I have been on serious medication which has basically kicked my ass.. my head injury has played a major role in my day to day life.. I'm lucky I can remember what I said yesterday most days.
Anywho, thank you Jules!
Now, as for why I am beginning today's blog with a thanks to Jules...
Well, Throughout the years, I've had to accept that everything happens for a reason.
Today, I received a post from Kaleah's Website "the Narcissism Free Website", and it covered exactly what I was telling Jules about an hour earlier...
I've spent the last 10 years desperately trying to figure out how I managed to be taken out of my children's lives. During my search I've had to learn about Parent alienation, Stockholm Syndrome & most importantly..
Cognitive Dissonance and Conversatinal Hypnosis.
I had to learn how Cognitive Dissonance occurs & how Conversational Hypnosis worked before I would be able to figure out how my children went from cherishing me and our relationship to tossing it and me in the garbage. I'd have to learn how someone that adores another could suddenly hate that same person.
I also needed to figure out what Neuro Linguistic Programing (NLP) was..
I've had to understand what kind of people would be evil enough to create Cognitive Dissonance in another person, or who would intentionally manipulate anothers mind for their own benefit.
I've had to go to the depths of ugly within myself and revisit my abandoned abused inner child. I've had to learn all about her and how she responds to the world she lives in.
I think it's fair to say.. I've had to go through hell and back before "I'd get it!"
Knowing what "it" is... was the hardest part of all..
One part of the "it" is being ok enuff with myself and my inner child so that she/I don't respond to every perceived hurt,or to every perceived attack, or perceived abandonment.
The other part of the "it" is knowing my inner child and calming her down enuff to know when there are people around me who are operating off their own perceived hurts, perceived attacks, or perceived abandonment issues.
The latter part is a little harder, because when 'others' are acting off their perceived hurts, perceived attacks, or perceived abandonment issues. They are then operating off their inner child's hurts and their own self preservation. And in doing so, they are "in reality" hurting, attacking and abandoning us.
Whewwwwww say that fast three times! Ok, ok, ok all joking aside...
Those of us who have been alienated from our children can get them back into our lives once we are able to focus on our inner abused/abandoned children.
Once we 'go there' and come out the other side.. we can take whatever their inner scared children give us...
However, before taking on such a huge job, I suggest you learn all you can about Cognitive Dissonance... and take an in-print into your conscious of the blog below... (Her blog helped me enormously to get where I am today)
http://www.narcissismfree.com/blog/?p=361
The Path Back To Self | Recovery from Narcissistic Abuse
Here are one of the better definitions of Cognitive Dissonance that I have found, but do your own homework...
Cognitive Dissonance and learning
Covert hypnosis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It's been a struggle for the last few months.. I have been on serious medication which has basically kicked my ass.. my head injury has played a major role in my day to day life.. I'm lucky I can remember what I said yesterday most days.
Anywho, thank you Jules!
Now, as for why I am beginning today's blog with a thanks to Jules...
Well, Throughout the years, I've had to accept that everything happens for a reason.
Today, I received a post from Kaleah's Website "the Narcissism Free Website", and it covered exactly what I was telling Jules about an hour earlier...
I've spent the last 10 years desperately trying to figure out how I managed to be taken out of my children's lives. During my search I've had to learn about Parent alienation, Stockholm Syndrome & most importantly..
Cognitive Dissonance and Conversatinal Hypnosis.
I had to learn how Cognitive Dissonance occurs & how Conversational Hypnosis worked before I would be able to figure out how my children went from cherishing me and our relationship to tossing it and me in the garbage. I'd have to learn how someone that adores another could suddenly hate that same person.
I also needed to figure out what Neuro Linguistic Programing (NLP) was..
I've had to understand what kind of people would be evil enough to create Cognitive Dissonance in another person, or who would intentionally manipulate anothers mind for their own benefit.
I've had to go to the depths of ugly within myself and revisit my abandoned abused inner child. I've had to learn all about her and how she responds to the world she lives in.
I think it's fair to say.. I've had to go through hell and back before "I'd get it!"
Knowing what "it" is... was the hardest part of all..
One part of the "it" is being ok enuff with myself and my inner child so that she/I don't respond to every perceived hurt,or to every perceived attack, or perceived abandonment.
The other part of the "it" is knowing my inner child and calming her down enuff to know when there are people around me who are operating off their own perceived hurts, perceived attacks, or perceived abandonment issues.
The latter part is a little harder, because when 'others' are acting off their perceived hurts, perceived attacks, or perceived abandonment issues. They are then operating off their inner child's hurts and their own self preservation. And in doing so, they are "in reality" hurting, attacking and abandoning us.
Whewwwwww say that fast three times! Ok, ok, ok all joking aside...
Those of us who have been alienated from our children can get them back into our lives once we are able to focus on our inner abused/abandoned children.
Once we 'go there' and come out the other side.. we can take whatever their inner scared children give us...
However, before taking on such a huge job, I suggest you learn all you can about Cognitive Dissonance... and take an in-print into your conscious of the blog below... (Her blog helped me enormously to get where I am today)
http://www.narcissismfree.com/blog/?p=361
The Path Back To Self | Recovery from Narcissistic Abuse
Here are one of the better definitions of Cognitive Dissonance that I have found, but do your own homework...
Cognitive Dissonance and learning
Covert hypnosis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Why I've been MIA
I'm not sure how many of my readers also know me in the real world, but I'm thinkin.. not to many.
So with that in mind summ'a yawl mite be wudnerin where I've been.
I was in a pretty bad motorcycle accident, which left me in ICU for a lil over a week, then I was healing in "Kindred Hospital"
In case you, like I, don't or didn't know what kind of hospital "Kindred" is... it's a long term acute care hospital.
Well, it kinda went something like this... One minuite I was riding my bike with 25ish other people (see pic above- that was an hour or so before my accident), which I don't remember.. then the next thing I'm aware of is someone or something cutting threw my jeans... (see pic below)
I found out days later, that was them cutting my cloths off in or before or when, (shrug) I was put into the helecopter.
I arrived at Cumiunity Medical Center in P.A. (the closest trauma hospital) via helecopter, with a smashed femur, a cracked skull & a broken eye socket..
En if that wuzzent enuff, I also had a head injury.
There was blood on my brain, what wasn't known was if the blood was from my skull fracture or if my brain was bleeding!
As it turned out... the blood was from my skull fracture-which I rcieved dispite my wearing a DOT helmet.
The first responders at the sceen told my riding buddies that the only reason they were having me airlifted to a hosp. with some chance of survival was due to my wearing my helmet!
I have a google alert for any of the phrases that would bring me the article about my crash from the news paper and today I recieved the article below..
He also survived cuz he was wearing his helmet. I'm not a die hard "wear your helmet freak".. I've actually argued on the other side- if you don't want to wear it why should you have too! As it turned out I was in PA when I went down. PA is a no helmet law state- I didn't have to wear it. But after this past month.. you can bet your last dollar that I WILL!
Please enjoy the rest of this riding season a lil more for me, and always no matter what- Ride Safe!
Louise
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's been 40 years and 250,000 miles of motorcycling for me -- scarcely "dropping" my bike in the driveway. Until last Tuesday evening, when the ER trauma surgeon told my wife I'd not have survived the afternoon's traumatic brain injury without my helmet.
Awakening as if from a bad dream in a hospital bed at Mayo in Mankato with a mild concussion, my most recent memory was playing under a tree with my granddaughter at lunch nine hours earlier.
My confused eyes spotting the slightly abraded motorcycle helmet atop the hospital cabinet nearby, I learned I'd been in a minor accident with my motorcycle.
Witnesses said I stopped quickly to avoid rear-ending cars stopping suddenly ahead of me, ultimately going over with my bike sideways and hitting my head on the street. (A macho biker would say, "Just had to lay it down.")
Retrograde amnesia may prevent my ever remembering jumping on the smaller of my two BMW motorcycles that afternoon -- apparently quickly donning only the helmet and half-gloves to return some DVDs to the public library downtown.
It's scary; the woman who saw it all happen told me, to my astonishment, that I got to my feet conscious, amiably chatty, with only a scraped elbow. The other witness helped me upright and park my motorcycle, and called the police.
Thankfully, the Mankato police officer who lost a brother to motorcycling recognized my condition and called for an ambulance. Visiting with them days later -- my brain healing after losing two hours of memory before the accident and six hours afterward -- it's as if we've never met or talked before!
Though I'm mostly back to normal, my plans for Sturgis 2011 are canceled. If yours are on, use your helmet this week as you head to western South Dakota!
And do enjoy the gorgeous Black Hills vicariously for this recovering veteran motorcyclist.
JOHN BIPES, MANKATO, MINN.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Victory! Peter Spitz Reunited With Son After Outrageous Family Court Injustice
Victory! Peter Spitz Reunited With Son After Outrageous Family Court Injustice
August 2, 2011
In one of the most outrageous injustices of our time, Peter Spitz (pictured right) was separated from his son and almost lost custody of him after his ex-wife shot him in the face and murdered his mother.
Fathers and Families advised Peter, helped him get legal counsel, and also publicized his case, and we are pleased to announce that Peter has now won full custody of his seven-year-old son.
Special credit and thanks goes to talented Colorado family law attorney Brett Martin (pictured below), who took on Spitz’s case and won a decisive victory–the court decision is here.
We also thank Fathers and Families Board Member Robert Franklin, Esq., who covered this case extensively and helped to advise Peter–his write-up of the new decision is below.
Together with you in the love of our children,
Glenn Sacks, MA
Executive Director,
Fathers and Families
From Fathers and Families Board Member Robert Franklin, Esq.:
Original link-
http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?p=17985
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Thomas James Ball
According to research approximately 330 people commit suicide monthly in the U.S. in response to the way family courts and CPS handle divorce, domestic violence and child support.
http://freekeene.com/2011/06/16/thomas-james-ball-self-immolated-in-protest-of-the-justice-system/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_James_Ball
Click links above for full story
My 2 cents- People can we say beyond abuse on the citizens due directly to
Title IV (D) & (E) Federal funding?
http://freekeene.com/2011/06/16/thomas-james-ball-self-immolated-in-protest-of-the-justice-system/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_James_Ball
Click links above for full story
My 2 cents- People can we say beyond abuse on the citizens due directly to
Title IV (D) & (E) Federal funding?
Monday, June 20, 2011
Turner v, Price (10-10)
To all family rights advocates:
Supreme Court issues big win in Turner v. Price (10-10).
http://www.supremecourt.gov/
For the entire case, click the link above..
Supreme Court issues big win in Turner v. Price (10-10).
http://www.supremecourt.gov/
For the entire case, click the link above..
Dosed in juvie jail: Triubled doctors hired to treat kids in state custody
Palm Beach PostBy Michael LaForgia
Sunday, June 19, 2011
By the time Florida started paying Dr. Gold Smith Dorval to counsel and medicate jailed children, the Pembroke Pines psychiatrist already had experience with kids in state custody.
He had used them, authorities said, to bilk the government out of money for the poor.
When Dorval pleaded no contest to a felony grand theft charge, it should have barred him, by law, from working for Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice.
It didn't.
And, like Dorval, other doctors have emerged from past troubles and gotten jobs at DJJ - with authority to prescribe drugs to kids in state jails, a Palm Beach Post investigation has found.
Some psychiatrists took DJJ jobs after they were cited for breaking the law, making grave medical missteps or violating state rules. Others were hired after they were accused of overmedicating patients, sometimes fatally.
All were empowered to prescribe drugs to jailed kids as powerful antipsychotic pills flowed freely into Florida's homes for wayward children.
"It's appalling. A psychiatrist is a psychiatrist. They're licensed, they've been to medical school, and there is a certain trust placed in that person's judgment when they tell you that this child needs to be medicated," said John Walsh, an attorney with the Palm Beach County Legal Aid Society who has represented children in juvenile court. "This just illustrates that we always have to be on guard with children."
In two years, Florida bought hundreds of thousands of tablets of Seroquel, Abilify, Risperdal and other antipsychotic drugs for children housed in state-run jails and programs. The meds were administered in a juvenile justice system that doesn't track prescriptions and has no way of telling whether doctors are prescribing to make kids easier to control.
In some jails and homes, pills were prescribed by psychiatrists who took huge speaker fees from companies that make antipsychotic drugs, The Post found. In others, the task fell to doctors with troubled pasts.
In response to the newspaper's first reports, published last month, DJJ Secretary Wansley Walters launched an investigation into the department's use of antipsychotic drugs. DJJ officials declined to discuss The Post's latest findings, citing the probe.
Spokesman C.J. Drake acknowledged, though, that the department has struggled to find psychiatrists willing to work in jails and programs. He also said DJJ sometimes has relied on companies that employ a stable of doctors, rather than signing a contract with a single physician.
As a result, Dorval went to work in a Broward County jail for children - even though he would have failed a state-mandated background check required by the contract.
Doctor's bogus billings
In the late 1990s, Dorval claimed he was providing juvenile delinquents and other vulnerable children with needed therapy. Instead, state investigators said, he used bogus counselors to bill Medicaid for more than $350,000 in fraudulent claims.
He charged the government for offering more than 24 hours' worth of children's therapy in a single day, investigators said, and structured the scheme around kids who were homeless or in DJJ custody or foster care.
He tended to bill "for those children that the system 'lost,' " according to an affidavit for his arrest.
Originally charged with four felonies in Broward, Dorval pleaded no contest to one count of grand theft in 2004.
Later, to keep his medical license, he agreed to pay $10,000 and was suspended, reprimanded and put on four years' probation.
Although a judge withheld a formal finding of guilt, the plea disqualified Dorval from seeing patients in a juvenile jail. Even so, his employer, Miami-based Compass Health Systems, sent him to work at the Broward Juvenile Detention Center between August and December 2007.
No one screened his background beforehand.
In written responses to questions, Dorval said he was doing as he was told when Compass sent him to work in the Broward juvenile jail.
"At that period you cited, the psychiatrist that was seeing patients at the DJJ was out. Therefore I was designated by the management office to go and cover for that psychiatrist, until they switched me again to another place. I was not aware of any wrongdoing," wrote Dorval, who stressed that he never signed a contract with DJJ. "I am only an employee. Wherever they send me to work I have to go."
As for the criminal charges, he offered this explanation: "This case was a simple matter that became complicated, because my first lawyer messed me up." After wrangling over the facts, "they decided to offer me a plea that would allow me to get a chance to fight for my license to practice medicine," he wrote. "It was a real nightmare that generated in me a post-traumatic syndrome that I will never forget."
DJJ officials declined to comment on Dorval's hiring, again citing the investigation.
Compass officials didn't respond to questions about Dorval.
DJJ had no contract with Compass as of May, records show.
Patient's death missed in screening
In state-operated jails and programs, the rules say DJJ must screen doctors' backgrounds and verify that physicians' hold valid medical licenses. In privately run programs, which house the majority of children in the department's custody, that responsibility falls to contracted companies.
Such screenings don't catch everything: Doctors who kept their licenses after the state accused them of serious lapses have gone on to work in juvenile jails and homes.
Dr. Charles J. Dack is an example. For six years, Dack, a Lakeland-based physician who is board-certified in addiction and child psychiatry, prescribed a cocktail of antidepressants and powerful painkillers, including methadone and morphine, to a patient named Mary Tuxbury.
Eventually, Dack ramped up the doses of pills Tuxbury was taking, keeping her "at a toxic level of morphine for approximately two and a half years," regulators from the state health department said. In March 2002, Tuxbury was found dead. She was 42.
An autopsy showed she died of "multiple drug intoxication, namely opiates and tricyclic antidepressants."
Regulators charged Dack with failing to meet care standards and inappropriate prescribing. Dack settled the allegations in August 2007. He admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to pay a $7,000 fine and complete a course on "misprescribing" drugs.
A year later, he was hired to care for children at three privately run programs in Central Florida: Wilson Youth Academy, Peace River Youth Academy and New Beginnings Youth Academy. He worked in the homes until April.
Dack didn't respond to messages seeking comment.
Doctor hired after child's death
Other DJJ doctors weren't cited by regulators, but they were accused in court of fatal neglect. Roughly one in eight of the psychiatrists who have worked for DJJ in the past five years has settled a malpractice lawsuit in Florida, records show.
Among these was Dr. Samuel McClure. As a psychiatrist in Orlando, McClure diagnosed an 11-year-old boy named David Morganthal with attention deficit disorder. He prescribed powerful, mind-altering drugs for David - even though the child was much smaller than other kids his age, according to court documents.
One morning in November 2001, David's mother woke to find her son dead on the floor of her double-wide mobile home. When they laid David out at the morgue, he measured less than 4-foot-2 and weighed 49 pounds.
Lab tests showed his blood contained an unusually high concentration of an antidepressant: about 60 percent more of the medication than doctors had expected.
The drug, mirtazapine, still hasn't been approved as safe for children. David was taking the drug along with another antidepressant that hasn't been approved for kids, citalopram.
The autopsy concluded the boy probably died from a seizure and heart problems caused by "reaction to prescription medication."
In 2004, Patty Morganthal sued McClure, the health care company he worked for and others over the death of her son, alleging medical negligence.
While the civil suit still was pending, McClure was hired in January 2006 to care for kids in DJJ's Frances Walker Halfway House and Brevard Group Treatment Home.
A year later, records show, McClure's insurance company paid $500,000 to settle Morganthal's case.
McClure worked in DJJ programs until June 2009. He couldn't be reached for comment.
Overmedicated patients.
Still another DJJ doctor got hired after he accidentally overmedicated kids with an antipsychotic drug during a clinical trial.
In summer 2006, Dr. Sohail Punjwani of Lauderhill tested the Pfizer drug on seven children between the ages of 10 and 16. Six of those kids were overdosed, according to a 2010 warning letter to Punjwani from the federal Food and Drug
Administration.
One 13-year-old "was overdosed on study medication for 20 consecutive days," the FDA said, and he emerged experiencing "sedation and dizziness."
Eighteen months later, Punjwani, who is board-certified in adult and child psychiatry, went to work in the Broward Juvenile Detention Center, placed there by his employer, Compass. He evaluated kids in the jail until June 2008, records show.
Soon after, while working for the state foster care system, he began seeing a difficult patient, 7-year-old Gabriel Myers. Punjwani prescribed mind-altering drugs for the boy, including a combination of an antipsychotic and an antidepressant. In April 2009, Gabriel hanged himself in the shower of his Margate foster home.
A work group formed to study the death never assigned blame to Punjwani, and he was not disciplined by state regulators in the widely publicized case.
A 2010 report by the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, which consulted with a forensic psychiatrist on staff at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, concluded "the medications that were prescribed for Gabriel may have contributed to his actions directly prior to and during" his death.
Drug error blamed on nurse
In an interview, Punjwani said Pfizer's 2006 study was flawed, citing a 2010 FDA warning letter to the drug company, and added that his medication errors stemmed from a mistake by a nurse. He acknowledged, though, that he failed to build in a control that would have prevented overdosing.
Punjwani said he saw "very few" children at the DJJ jail who were taking mind-altering drugs. For these kids, he simply reviewed their files and maintained them on their meds, he said.
And in Gabriel's case, Punjwani said he feels he was a scapegoat.
"My care was totally appropriate and, according to some psychiatrists, went above and beyond the standard of care in the clinical community. Because I saw the patient on time, I had appropriate follow up, I had documentation," he said.
The way his critics portray him, "I look like a child killer," he added. "It's sad. I've been in practice in psychiatry for 25 years, a double board-certified child psychiatrist. Of course there are some bad outcomes. But that does not mean malpractice. That does not mean I've been hurting people."
Two-hour consultations adequate?
At a minimum, state contracts required these and other doctors to spend two hours a week evaluating jailed children.
Every week, in jails and homes that can hold a combined 6,000 boys and girls statewide, children line up to see the psychiatrist.
Paul DeMuro, a former head of Pennsylvania's child welfare system, questioned whether two hours was enough to evaluate each child, assess progress and write prescriptions.
"If you're looking at two hours of consultation a week, and there are 100 kids, and 20 or 25 are on psychotropic medications, how much attention can they give those kids?" said DeMuro, who works as a consultant for juvenile justice policy-makers nationwide. "What else are they going to do other than push pills?"
http://tinyurl.com/Psych-Investigation-Florida
Sunday, June 19, 2011
By the time Florida started paying Dr. Gold Smith Dorval to counsel and medicate jailed children, the Pembroke Pines psychiatrist already had experience with kids in state custody.
He had used them, authorities said, to bilk the government out of money for the poor.
When Dorval pleaded no contest to a felony grand theft charge, it should have barred him, by law, from working for Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice.
It didn't.
And, like Dorval, other doctors have emerged from past troubles and gotten jobs at DJJ - with authority to prescribe drugs to kids in state jails, a Palm Beach Post investigation has found.
Some psychiatrists took DJJ jobs after they were cited for breaking the law, making grave medical missteps or violating state rules. Others were hired after they were accused of overmedicating patients, sometimes fatally.
All were empowered to prescribe drugs to jailed kids as powerful antipsychotic pills flowed freely into Florida's homes for wayward children.
"It's appalling. A psychiatrist is a psychiatrist. They're licensed, they've been to medical school, and there is a certain trust placed in that person's judgment when they tell you that this child needs to be medicated," said John Walsh, an attorney with the Palm Beach County Legal Aid Society who has represented children in juvenile court. "This just illustrates that we always have to be on guard with children."
In two years, Florida bought hundreds of thousands of tablets of Seroquel, Abilify, Risperdal and other antipsychotic drugs for children housed in state-run jails and programs. The meds were administered in a juvenile justice system that doesn't track prescriptions and has no way of telling whether doctors are prescribing to make kids easier to control.
In some jails and homes, pills were prescribed by psychiatrists who took huge speaker fees from companies that make antipsychotic drugs, The Post found. In others, the task fell to doctors with troubled pasts.
In response to the newspaper's first reports, published last month, DJJ Secretary Wansley Walters launched an investigation into the department's use of antipsychotic drugs. DJJ officials declined to discuss The Post's latest findings, citing the probe.
Spokesman C.J. Drake acknowledged, though, that the department has struggled to find psychiatrists willing to work in jails and programs. He also said DJJ sometimes has relied on companies that employ a stable of doctors, rather than signing a contract with a single physician.
As a result, Dorval went to work in a Broward County jail for children - even though he would have failed a state-mandated background check required by the contract.
Doctor's bogus billings
In the late 1990s, Dorval claimed he was providing juvenile delinquents and other vulnerable children with needed therapy. Instead, state investigators said, he used bogus counselors to bill Medicaid for more than $350,000 in fraudulent claims.
He charged the government for offering more than 24 hours' worth of children's therapy in a single day, investigators said, and structured the scheme around kids who were homeless or in DJJ custody or foster care.
He tended to bill "for those children that the system 'lost,' " according to an affidavit for his arrest.
Originally charged with four felonies in Broward, Dorval pleaded no contest to one count of grand theft in 2004.
Later, to keep his medical license, he agreed to pay $10,000 and was suspended, reprimanded and put on four years' probation.
Although a judge withheld a formal finding of guilt, the plea disqualified Dorval from seeing patients in a juvenile jail. Even so, his employer, Miami-based Compass Health Systems, sent him to work at the Broward Juvenile Detention Center between August and December 2007.
No one screened his background beforehand.
In written responses to questions, Dorval said he was doing as he was told when Compass sent him to work in the Broward juvenile jail.
"At that period you cited, the psychiatrist that was seeing patients at the DJJ was out. Therefore I was designated by the management office to go and cover for that psychiatrist, until they switched me again to another place. I was not aware of any wrongdoing," wrote Dorval, who stressed that he never signed a contract with DJJ. "I am only an employee. Wherever they send me to work I have to go."
As for the criminal charges, he offered this explanation: "This case was a simple matter that became complicated, because my first lawyer messed me up." After wrangling over the facts, "they decided to offer me a plea that would allow me to get a chance to fight for my license to practice medicine," he wrote. "It was a real nightmare that generated in me a post-traumatic syndrome that I will never forget."
DJJ officials declined to comment on Dorval's hiring, again citing the investigation.
Compass officials didn't respond to questions about Dorval.
DJJ had no contract with Compass as of May, records show.
Patient's death missed in screening
In state-operated jails and programs, the rules say DJJ must screen doctors' backgrounds and verify that physicians' hold valid medical licenses. In privately run programs, which house the majority of children in the department's custody, that responsibility falls to contracted companies.
Such screenings don't catch everything: Doctors who kept their licenses after the state accused them of serious lapses have gone on to work in juvenile jails and homes.
Dr. Charles J. Dack is an example. For six years, Dack, a Lakeland-based physician who is board-certified in addiction and child psychiatry, prescribed a cocktail of antidepressants and powerful painkillers, including methadone and morphine, to a patient named Mary Tuxbury.
Eventually, Dack ramped up the doses of pills Tuxbury was taking, keeping her "at a toxic level of morphine for approximately two and a half years," regulators from the state health department said. In March 2002, Tuxbury was found dead. She was 42.
An autopsy showed she died of "multiple drug intoxication, namely opiates and tricyclic antidepressants."
Regulators charged Dack with failing to meet care standards and inappropriate prescribing. Dack settled the allegations in August 2007. He admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to pay a $7,000 fine and complete a course on "misprescribing" drugs.
A year later, he was hired to care for children at three privately run programs in Central Florida: Wilson Youth Academy, Peace River Youth Academy and New Beginnings Youth Academy. He worked in the homes until April.
Dack didn't respond to messages seeking comment.
Doctor hired after child's death
Other DJJ doctors weren't cited by regulators, but they were accused in court of fatal neglect. Roughly one in eight of the psychiatrists who have worked for DJJ in the past five years has settled a malpractice lawsuit in Florida, records show.
Among these was Dr. Samuel McClure. As a psychiatrist in Orlando, McClure diagnosed an 11-year-old boy named David Morganthal with attention deficit disorder. He prescribed powerful, mind-altering drugs for David - even though the child was much smaller than other kids his age, according to court documents.
One morning in November 2001, David's mother woke to find her son dead on the floor of her double-wide mobile home. When they laid David out at the morgue, he measured less than 4-foot-2 and weighed 49 pounds.
Lab tests showed his blood contained an unusually high concentration of an antidepressant: about 60 percent more of the medication than doctors had expected.
The drug, mirtazapine, still hasn't been approved as safe for children. David was taking the drug along with another antidepressant that hasn't been approved for kids, citalopram.
The autopsy concluded the boy probably died from a seizure and heart problems caused by "reaction to prescription medication."
In 2004, Patty Morganthal sued McClure, the health care company he worked for and others over the death of her son, alleging medical negligence.
While the civil suit still was pending, McClure was hired in January 2006 to care for kids in DJJ's Frances Walker Halfway House and Brevard Group Treatment Home.
A year later, records show, McClure's insurance company paid $500,000 to settle Morganthal's case.
McClure worked in DJJ programs until June 2009. He couldn't be reached for comment.
Overmedicated patients.
Still another DJJ doctor got hired after he accidentally overmedicated kids with an antipsychotic drug during a clinical trial.
In summer 2006, Dr. Sohail Punjwani of Lauderhill tested the Pfizer drug on seven children between the ages of 10 and 16. Six of those kids were overdosed, according to a 2010 warning letter to Punjwani from the federal Food and Drug
Administration.
One 13-year-old "was overdosed on study medication for 20 consecutive days," the FDA said, and he emerged experiencing "sedation and dizziness."
Eighteen months later, Punjwani, who is board-certified in adult and child psychiatry, went to work in the Broward Juvenile Detention Center, placed there by his employer, Compass. He evaluated kids in the jail until June 2008, records show.
Soon after, while working for the state foster care system, he began seeing a difficult patient, 7-year-old Gabriel Myers. Punjwani prescribed mind-altering drugs for the boy, including a combination of an antipsychotic and an antidepressant. In April 2009, Gabriel hanged himself in the shower of his Margate foster home.
A work group formed to study the death never assigned blame to Punjwani, and he was not disciplined by state regulators in the widely publicized case.
A 2010 report by the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, which consulted with a forensic psychiatrist on staff at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, concluded "the medications that were prescribed for Gabriel may have contributed to his actions directly prior to and during" his death.
Drug error blamed on nurse
In an interview, Punjwani said Pfizer's 2006 study was flawed, citing a 2010 FDA warning letter to the drug company, and added that his medication errors stemmed from a mistake by a nurse. He acknowledged, though, that he failed to build in a control that would have prevented overdosing.
Punjwani said he saw "very few" children at the DJJ jail who were taking mind-altering drugs. For these kids, he simply reviewed their files and maintained them on their meds, he said.
And in Gabriel's case, Punjwani said he feels he was a scapegoat.
"My care was totally appropriate and, according to some psychiatrists, went above and beyond the standard of care in the clinical community. Because I saw the patient on time, I had appropriate follow up, I had documentation," he said.
The way his critics portray him, "I look like a child killer," he added. "It's sad. I've been in practice in psychiatry for 25 years, a double board-certified child psychiatrist. Of course there are some bad outcomes. But that does not mean malpractice. That does not mean I've been hurting people."
Two-hour consultations adequate?
At a minimum, state contracts required these and other doctors to spend two hours a week evaluating jailed children.
Every week, in jails and homes that can hold a combined 6,000 boys and girls statewide, children line up to see the psychiatrist.
Paul DeMuro, a former head of Pennsylvania's child welfare system, questioned whether two hours was enough to evaluate each child, assess progress and write prescriptions.
"If you're looking at two hours of consultation a week, and there are 100 kids, and 20 or 25 are on psychotropic medications, how much attention can they give those kids?" said DeMuro, who works as a consultant for juvenile justice policy-makers nationwide. "What else are they going to do other than push pills?"
http://tinyurl.com/Psych-Investigation-Florida
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