Former patients sue Putnam mental facility

As seen in this report

Two former residents of a private mental-health facility, which was fined by the state last year for breaking the law, have filed a class-action lawsuit against companies that run the facility, alleging they were abused physically and emotionally.

The suit, filed in federal court in White Plains, names as defendants companies affiliated with two residential treatment facilities in Southeast as well as the principals of those companies and several employees. The defendants include SLS Residential Inc., SLS Health, SLS Wellness, Supervised Lifestyles Inc., Chairmen Alfred Bergman and Joseph Santoro, a psychologist and several others employed by SLS.

The lawsuit, filed by former patients Nicholas J. Romano and Deborah A. Morgan of New Jersey on behalf of themselves and many unnamed patients, seeks $75 million in compensatory damages, $150 million in punitive damages and an injunction that would bar SLS from further violating patients' rights.

The plaintiffs, who are in their early 20s, also claim that SLS violated the rights of its patients under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

SLS runs residential treatment facilities for adolescents and young adults at two distinctive houses, one on North Brewster Road and the other off Putnam Avenue and Route 6 opposite Drewville Road.

The state Office of Mental Health last year fined SLS Residential $80,000 for violations of the state Mental Hygiene Law and ordered that it stop admitting patients - and stop violating the rights of the patients it was treating.

The OMH said SLS Residential routinely restrained clients and kept them from making phone calls. It also found that staff would search patients, their rooms and packages sent to them.

Spokeswoman Jill Daniels said the OMH has since allowed SLS to admit new patients.

She said the company has requested a hearing, scheduled for next month, to respond to the claims of violations. SLS has not paid the $80,000 fine and won't be required to until after the hearing, Daniels said.

The lawsuit says money was one reason that SLS staff prohibited patients from making and receiving phone calls, because if patients complained to their families and were removed, SLS would lose money.

"SLS advertises and holds itself out to the general public as a treatment facility that provides compassionate and effective treatment for individuals suffering from severe mental illness," says the suit filed by attorney Michael H. Sussman of Goshen. "... The corporate and individual defendants have made these false representations to induce individuals suffering from mental illness to enter SLS, for which their insurance companies pay daily rates as high as $900."

The families of Romano and Morgan paid in excess of $200,000 to SLS for "treatment that was harmful and exploitative," the suit says.

The abuses that Romano and Morgan allege to have suffered while at SLS are similar to the claims of violations for which the state fined the company last year. The pair allege that they and many other patients were subjected to those abuses and were assaulted by SLS employees.

Romano was a patient in 2004 and 2005, and Morgan was there in 2005 and 2006. Morgan was placed in an isolation room that SLS called the Intensive Treatment Room, but instead of treating her, staff members would taunt, ridicule and humiliate her, the suit says.

Romano said he was forced to participate in a group situation in which he and other patients were degraded and punished.

Sussman said the OMH findings prove that the patients who claim they were mistreated were telling the truth. The fact that SLS employs people who abuse patients shows that the company can't be trusted, which is why the suit seeks the injunction, he said.

"What's gone on appears to have been very exploitative to the very vulnerable," Sussman said.

Reached Thursday, Santoro said he would have an attorney call for comment, although none did. Previously, a spokesman for SLS noted that the state's findings last year were unlike any report SLS had received in its 20-year history and said an overwhelming majority of patients were satisfied with their treatment.

SLS made news last year when it took a Pleasantville lawyer to court to keep him from protesting outside SLS facilities.

Attorney Glen Feinberg, whose son was a patient at SLS in 2001 and 2002, felt that his son was traumatized from the treatment and wanted to picket SLS facilities to warn others. Feinberg, who was supported by the New York Civil Liberties Union, eventually won the right to picket.