Of Retaliation, Intimidation, and Criminal Abuses of Authority: The Hearings Continue

On December 17, I will be representing the interests of the patient community at The Arizona State Hospital in the fourth of five (total) appeal hearings in the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings in Phoenix (number five thus far, we the team are still considering the merits of filing more), in relation to very serious violations of established law and policy during my 13 months of hospitalization at the The Arizona State Hospital (ASH), which is Arizona's sole long term public mental health facility. As I have described at length in over 180 previously written and published articles (to date), the senior clinical and administrative staff at ASH maintain operations in graphic defiance of very critical standards of care specific to the needs and rights of the seriously mentally disabled American citizens hospitalized there. I attest to this fact, for I am a well educated individual who has experience specific to law and policy in a variety of settings, including that of federally protected civil rights, and directly related state and federal codes applicable to the function and practices of medical facilities and professionals, and during my time at ASH, I witnessed and experienced these abridgments of such law on a nearly daily basis. The attitude of the senior staff at ASH with whom I had regular contact took the form of utter incompetence and willful negligence/disregard for these standards, and at those times when I chose in good faith to openly address these issues, senior clinicians and administrators alike said to me in no uncertain terms:

"We do not care one iota about your allegations and concerns, and there is nothing you can do about it, for you are mentally ill, and as such, we have unregulated control over all aspects of your very existence." 

Inherent  to this attitude, I experienced attendant and only slightly veiled threats that flowed directly from the fact that such administrators and doctors do, in reality, have a fairly wide degree of power over each and every ASH patients lives; they use this power to blatantly manipulate any given patients status at ASH, rather than remain dedicated to ensuring that the patients receive optimum care and treatment, and they do so at the expense of the patients themselves, the patients' families and loved ones, and the taxpayers of Arizona as a whole. In my case, when I refused to relent in my willingness to openly voice dissent over patient abuse, I was almost immediately subjected to systematic applications of retaliatory action(s) that was clearly designed to intimidate me into silence, actions that at times put me at great risk of harm, were directly detrimental to my emotional well being and psychological stability, and which fly in the face of the both criminal and civil laws and policy, as well as state and federal protections that are afforded to any American citizen who exercises the unalienable right to report violations of their most fundamental civil and human rights. 

In this context, the December 17, 2012, hearing is directly related to the issue of retaliation, specific to an action that was imparted on me following my having exercised my right to formally voice concerns about possible staff wrongdoing; such retaliation is common at ASH, and manifests via the abuse(s) of power and authority described above. As such, retaliation is a matter of standard practice at ASH, and I attest to the fact that my case is anything but unique. And the fact remains, any form of retaliation in the context of ones' exercise of fundamental civil rights is highly egregious no matter how you look at it. There are any number of patients at ASH who have been subjected to unjust retaliation or are otherwise being denied reasonable care and treatment as a direct consequence of speaking out in the face of abject abuse and mistreatment, and in many such cases, the given patients specific disorder restricts their ability to meaningfully stand up for their rights, a state of reality that the staff at ASH take full advantage of.  Herein, my dedication to seeing that incidents and events specific to my experiences at ASH be brought to the table in any fashion possible. 

To date, these hearings have been more a matter of record than anything, for I learned very quickly how shortsighted the legal process at this level is. In one of the previous hearings that I took part in, for example, the assigned administrative law judge refused to review specific statutes that I cited while referencing the merits of my allegations; while in another, the given court stated that the Arizona Attorney General (who represent the interests of the Hospital itself, rather than those of the aggrieved citizen-patient) has more authority in such venues than the administrative law judges themselves. I initially sought relief by filing my appeal rights through the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings because doing so is consistent with applicable administrative codes of procedure, but I now know that the fundamental structure of Arizona's administrative system in this context is distorted and in blatant contradiction to established understandings of due process and equal protection under established state and federal law. But these hearings are in no way a waste of time, for as stated, they are all being included in the record as my work progresses, and in time, they will serve as fodder for future actions that I will take once I have exhausted my rights to seek redress through these sorts of administrative hearings. 

I made numerous good faith to address these issues while I was hospitalized at The Arizona State Hospital, and when my assigned primary psychiatrists (Laxman Patel, Pervaiz Akhter, Lynn Lydon, and Sylvia Dy) and associate administrators (Dr. Steven Dingle, Chief Operating Officer Donna Noriega, Patient Advocate Sonya Serda, and current Chief Executive Officer Cory Nelson) chose to ignore or otherwise reject my expressed concerns, I effectively told them that would not get away with it if I had anything to say about it. And I do, I have a whole lot to say about it, and that is precisely what I am doing today. I warned them, in effect, but their given overconfidence in the fact that to date they have for the most part gotten away with their shit led them to discount the significance of that good faith warning. So be it. 

That said, I am not able to discuss much of anything specific to my ongoing investigations and related testimony about the horrific conditions at ASH, for as stated in prior articles, I am currently engaged in producing a manuscript for publication and distribution to all/any interested parties who for whatever reason disagree with the fact that the staff at all levels of employ at The Arizona State Hospital engage in one or another form of graphic patient abuse and related violations of the protections afforded to ASH patients through the Americans With Disabilities Act, and other like edicts of public law and policy. The bottom line reality is that the administrators and senior clinicians at The Arizona State Hospital are maintaining operation of that facility at a dismally substandard level of medical-mental health care and practice, and they are getting away with it. This is unacceptable to me, my publisher, my associate editor, and my personal friends (some of who are active in fairly high levels of power and authority in their own right), and with their respective support, I will in time be producing a textural document fully detailing all aspects of my experiences at ASH specific to the issue of patient abuse. In producing that document, I will thoroughly illustrate the various manners in which retaliation is imparted on ASH patients (along with numerous other elements of the "ASH experience"); and I will continue to name names (as allowable under the law), cite documented events and related patterns of abuse and administrative negligence/wrongdoing (including the presence of such in the Arizona Department of Health Services), and I will illustrate the ongoing related legal process as it all plays out. 

paoloreed@gmail.com