OSAWATOMIE, Kan. — Troubles at the Kansas State Mental Hospital in Osawatomie have many concerned. This year alone, there were multiple accounts of patients attacking and beating workers. Those speaking out blame inadequate staffing, poor training and budget cuts.
Among those demanding change is the mother of an employee who was raped by a patient in November.
“He threw her on the bed. She was banging on the wall. She was screaming and he had a hold of her throat was choking her,” said the mother of a 21-year-old mental health technician who, according to a police report, was raped.
The mother, who asked not to be identified to protect her daughter, said no employee heard her daughter’s screams. It was two patients who saved her.
“The guy pulled the man off of her and slammed him into the wall and the girl ran out into the hallway screaming she’s being raped,” she said.
The woman’s daughter has been forbidden by the hospital from talking about the attack, but her mother is speaking out because she fears every employee is at risk.
“I pray for these girls every day that they walk out of there every night,” she said.
Complaints about Osawatomie are not new, but they’ve reached a fever pitch in recent months. It’s a state hospital so troubled, it’s constantly in jeopardy of losing federal funding. Employees are leaving in droves, more than 40 percent of the positions are vacant.
“It’s not safe,” said Rhonda Holmes who worked at Osawatomie for 15 years as a mental health technician.
“For years I loved it,” she said before leaving three years ago.
Holmes said that the hospital started accepting only patients who were the most dangerous and troubled as the state mental health budget was cut and fewer beds became available. Employees who quit were rarely replaced, and those remaining received minimal training and were often asked to work double and even triple shifts.
It was a recipe for disaster, but when disaster happened, you were on your own.
Holmes recalled her futile efforts to call for back up when two patients became engaged in a violent fight.
“I hit what we call the panic button to call security,” Holmes said. “Nobody came. Nobody came. There was blood everywhere, somebody was going to die.”
Where was security? For the six buildings that make up the state hospital, there are three security guards. One of those guards must always remain at the dispatch center to take calls.
Employees tell FOX 4 they have complained to management about safety for years. But conditions have only gotten worse. Six months before the mental health technician was raped, another technician was knocked unconscious by an irate patient and life-flighted to The University of Kansas Hospital. And last May, Osawatomie released a patient after only five days of care. Three days later he attacked a man who died soon afterwards.
Those are just the attacks the public knows about, said Stephen Feinstein, a former superintendent at Osawatomie, who was dismissed from the job more than a decade ago after openly criticizing state policy.
“Topeka can control this situation as long as nobody knows what’s going on,” Feinstein said. “I think people need to understand that transparency is critical.”
He’s not alone in that belief.
“We have reached the breaking point,” said Susan Crain Lewis, president of the Kansas Mental Health Coalition.
She said the problems at Osawatomie are a culmination of 10 years of budget cuts. She said this year the community mental health budget in Kansas is half of what is was in 2007, and those cuts are forcing some potentially fatal decisions.
“We have made some decisions as a state that has decreased the pot and that is coming home to roost,” she said.
Angela de Rocha, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, said that although the rape at Osawatomie is tragic, violence is not unusual at hospitals that deal with the mentally ill. She denied that staffing levels were too low to protect the safety of both patients and employees. But she acknowledged there are a lot of unfilled positions that the state is trying to fill. She said in the building where the rape occurred was fully staffed.
De Rocha also disputed budget estimates provided by the Kansas Mental Health Coalition. She said funding for the mentally-ill has actually increased under the Brownback administration.
She said efforts are also being made to improve employee training, which was slashed several years ago from three months to two weeks. FOX 4 asked whether more state funding was needed to provide the safe environment employees are demanding, she said that was a question only the Kansas Legislature could answer.