Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 08:07:35 -0700
To: "MHOCCA List" <mhocca@egroups.com>
From: "Andrew Phelps" <starfish@northcoast.com>
Subject: Re: [MHOCCA] Please help! Legal question

Patrick:

Please help if you can! I need some feedback soon. I have a friend who was terribly abused while in a public psych hospital in California. My friend would like to sue but is concerned because a couple of things appear screwy about California’s legal system.
<snip>
In 1987 Corinne Camp discovered that the staff at Oakcrest, the County Hospital in Santa Rosa were systematically abusing the clients sexually. That turned out to be really hard to fight. But Corinne was a nurse as well as a client, and had a lot of skill and vision, and she persisted. Eventually the County MH Director was forced to resign for covering this matter up, and later he was mildly rapped on the knuckles by the Board of Governors for unprofessional conduct.

But that didn’t mean that the people who were doing this were driven away. It could happen, I’ve heard other cases from other hospitals where rape & getting caught led to dismissal of the employee. But I believe, I recall Corinne told me about this, some of the chief perpetrators continued to work there. And Dale Wolfe, the MH Director, just moved over to San Luis Obispo County where he is earning his retirement and (I hear) being a little bit more conservative about what things he covers up.

IT seems to me that ‘trauma of treatment’ issues are very explosive in California and that employee protections are very strong precisely for that reason. That’s because IMHO that there is no regular argument/rational contention from the clients movement about the boundaries here and thus the question comes up confrontationally and the outcome matches.

This is a political explanation based on fragments of experience rather than a legal insight, but that’s what you asked for.

Respectfully

Andrew