As to Dr. Aaron Bowen's refusal to provide records to lawfully established mental health advocacy resources.
"The place is not better. Things have not changed. And for our clients, it's becoming more dangerous."
Attorney Josh Mozell. December 03, 2018.
Public corruption involves a breach of public trust and/or abuse of position by federal, state, or local officials. Legislators, public employees, and other public servants may face severe consequences for violating the public trust. The range of penalties includes censure, removal from office, permanent disqualification from holding any state position, restitution, decades in prison, and fines up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Penalties For Violations of State Ethics and Public Corruption Law. National Conference for State Legislatures. December 03, 2018.
The obligation of an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner.
"Accountability" defined. www.businessdirectory.com
"Have I entered the third world, or what?"
PJ Reed. January 11, 2011.
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| Dr. Cara Christ Current Director, 2015-18. Current. AZ Department of Health Services. "Things at ASH are much better now." (2015) |
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| Will Humble Former Director, 2008-15. AZ Department of Health Services. Former. |
INTRODUCTION: A bit of history.
Don't let those smiles fool you.
For a period of not less then seven years circa 2008-2015, Will Humble, in his capacity as the Director of The Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS), actively condoned misconduct in the administrative offices at Arizona State Hospital (ASH). This includes Humble's patent refusal to acknowledge evidence to this effect, an extensive body of which was provided by the formal investigation of ASH by a major Phoenix area news media source, ABC/KVNX Ch 15, most specifically in the period 2013-2015. The most critically negative consequence of this issue relates to care needs and established civil/human rights of the patient community at ASH.
Consistent with the above described misconduct of this highly entrusted state officials documented behavior in context, Humble unexpectedly resigned his position with ADHS in early spring, 2015, literally weeks before the final production (of the findings) of a formal federal investigation about the operation of ASH. Unexpected may well be a bit an understatement, given that Humble's full tenure in the ADHS system extended well back into the 1990s. I contend that Humble was alerted at that point in time when the proverbial shit hit the fan at ASH (by whom we may never know), and that he was therein protected from being held accountable for his role in what some mental health advocates characterize as the ugliest public mental health care facility scandal in the new millennium.
Other directly involved state employees in this scandal include (but are not limited) to individuals either once (*) or still working (**) in the ADHS Office of Grievances and Appeals (Kara Burke **, Margery Ault **, Teresa Bedoni **), the executive offices at ASH (Donna Noriega *), the Office of the Arizona Attorney General (Joel Rudd *), and as this blog publication has reported far more then once, former ASH CEO Cory Nelson (*), (who Humble actually promoted in the ADHS construct in late 2014, despite rapidly developing evidence about Nelson's atrocious misconduct circa 2012-2014).
Approximately four months after Humble's hasty departure, in May, 2015, Dr. Cara Christ was appointed as his replacement by Governor Doug Ducey (elected January, 2015). This appointment was actually an in-house promotion, as per the usual in basically any form of bureaucracy, Christ having previously served as Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director of ADHS's Office of Public Health beginning in 2008. It need be noted that Christ's actual specialty in medicine is in obstetrics and gynecology, not exactly an area of speciality that might serve a true understanding of psychiatric medicine, or that of the needs and rights of persons affected/disabled by serious mental illness.
Subsequent to this appointment, in July, 2015, Christ herself made in in-house promotion of Dr. Aaron Bowen, who to that point has been the acting Assistant Director of ADHS Office of Behavioral Health Services (BHS), into the position of CEO at ASH. Again, a clear example of bureaucratic favoritism; in relation to which it should be noted that Bowen had worked directly alongside short time Deputy Director of BHS, Cory Nelson (who was summarily fired in spring, 2015).
Over the first year of Bowen's time at the helm of the ASH operation, a handful of incidents occurred which basically gave the staff of this blog publication a heads up about the likelihood that the operation of ASH had not, in fact, much improved at all. This, despite the fact that Christ had stated in an July, 2015, email to PJ Reed (paoloreed@gmail.com) that:
"Things at ASH are much better now."
Christ's best excuse, I feel, when it comes to the hows and whys for the crisis that ASH is (yet again) mired in today, flows from the fact that she is not trained in psychiatric medicine (as stated above).
Bowen, on the other hand, is a licensed doctor of psychology, and has no such excuse.
DISCUSSION.
As per established record in recent months, dateline December 2018, it has been exposed that the current administrators of ASH are willfully engaged in failing to release/provide critical information and data; either public record as may apply, or material(s) that by law is to provided to particular qualified public service entities. These records include accident and incident reports compiled at the Hospital itself (public record) that are required to be provided to the state of Arizona's ASH Independent Oversight Committee; and private patient records that are, as per the Hospital Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (Pub. L. 104-191, 110 Stat. 1936), which are to to be provided to the Arizona Disability Law Center. Both of these entities have been established in accordance with both state as well as federal law, the core objective being oriented towards ensuring that ASH's disabled patient community is provided with medical care in a manner consistent with contemporary standards of law and policy.
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| L-R: Donna Noriega, Cory D. Nelson, Jeff Bloomberg. All of whom were fired from ADHS in 2015. |
In the words of an employee working in ASH administrative office, as documented in May, 2015, one key aspect of Nelson's egregious misconduct was described as follows:
"When I arrived, he (Nelson) was using a black Sharpee to redact information out of the report before providing the copy to the investigative journalist. As he was crossing out information, he said 'This is the type of shit that gets people in my position fired!' "(See: "Records. Top AZ mental hospital officials accused of falsifying records, information." By David Biscobing. KNVX/ABC Ch15. May 18, 2015.)
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| Cory Nelson Former-since fired Chief Executive Officer Arizona State Hospital |
Prior to the eruption of scandal at ASH (2015), Nelson was hired as the CEO at ASH by a former director of Arizona Department of Health Services named Will Humble in 2011. The decision to grant Nelson this opportunity was made despite his highly questionable record as state health care official in South Dakota circa 2005-2010, wherein he left that state in a relative cloud of fiscal scandal and sleazed way into the position as ASH CEO in spring, 2011. (SEE: "Two former SD officials lose Arizona Jobs." Bob Mercer. Rapid City Journal. June 08, 2015.)
And, as well all know today, during his tenure at ASH (and on as it led to his short term position as Deputy Director of ADHS' Mental Health Services), Cory D. Nelson and his associate staff then fell into a depraved pattern of willfully violating virtually all aspects of their overall obligations, granted to him and they via the public trust. Said public most necessarily includes the ASH patient community, patients' families, and on that obligation goes to the very extremes of the greater Arizona citizen community. The tragic death of April Mott is only one bright line body of evidence with respect to the significance of Nelson's misconduct in relation to the greater public's welfare. This carries in no uncertain terms to any such person(s) employed via the public trust, including the current administrators at ASH, and to those working in the broader ADHS construct.
1) Enter Dr. Aaron Bowen.
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| Roger David Forney One time ASH security Guard. Convicted child sexual predator. These sorts of people. |
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| Donna Noriega Former-since fired (2015) Chief Executive Officer Arizona State Hospital |
Christ, meanwhile, did at one point state to us that "things at ASH are much better then they were...." Which we were willing to accept, consistent with the fact that, beginning with the very first efforts of author PJ Reed to address abuses of ASH patients when he was actually hospitalized at ASH in his own right, our sole intention(s) and efforts have been of good faith.
"This is the state hospital, what do expect? Do you think you can change the system?"
POINT IN FACT: It was only after Dr. Laxman Patel (quoted above verbatim, January 22, 2011) refused to acknowledge the significance of PJ's initial reporting of staff misconduct and related abuses of patients to this man in late winter, 2011 (Patel was PJ's first assigned primary attending ASH psychiatrist, one of five such assigned primary providers in thirteen months!), that PJ chose to turn to the ASH/ADHS consumer grievance system as a means to bring these issues to light. (See this blog: "Fundamental Fact #1: Of Laxman Patel, a case study.") But as reported throughout the life of this publication, no other such efforts prevailed during the entire course of PJ Reed's time as an ASH patient; nor, as a matter of plain fact, in the latter months after his February, 2012, discharge from ASH, wherein PJ took those grievances via the appeal process to the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings, did any other like effort to rely on the state health care system lead to anything resembling meaningful response or attention. All elements of this abject lack of respect for PJ's concerns literally exacerbated his depression and related mental health struggles as an ASH patient; the feeling being that, because PJ is affected by mental illness, he is not deserving of the same respect that American's across the board are deserving of when it comes to such civil discourse. And it is clear that, solely due to the graphic disconnect between ASH administrators/ADHS officials and the ASH patient experiences, this nature of negative impact on the wellbeing of ASH patients across the board is far from unusual. And it goes even farther even today, gets even worse.
As wonderful as it may have been to receive direct response from Cara Christ circa 2015, there was no actual reason to take anything for granted. Lord knows that patterns of outright, misaligned propaganda disseminated by Christ's immediate predecessor, Will Humble, taught us all to well just how far these people are willing to go in order to deny the public accurate information in context. We have, thus, remained in close contact since 2015 with a range of individuals who bear direct relation to the ASH operation, from current and former ASH staff, to the membership of the ASH Independent Oversight Committee, and so on. And only therein, as the years have passed, we were forced to accept that nothing much has improved at ASH, if anything at all. This reality extends to misconduct by both Bowen as well as Christ herself, and has also been reported more then a few times in mainstream media, as well as herein, over the last three years. (See this blog: "The Hope of Dr. Aaron Bowen To Convert The Operation of Arizona State Hospital To A For-Profit Institution." November 08, 2018).
Failure to release/provide critical information and data; public and patient records that are required by law to be provided to certain qualified entities.
As stated at the outset of this essay, information has recently emerged suggesting that ASH administrators, namely Dr. Aaron and his immediate staff, are refusing to abide by standards of law and policy by which particular forms of data about the operation of ASH are to be provided to public resources. These records include accident and incident reports, which are public record, in fact, as well as private patient records, which are to be shared with certain qualified entities.
It is apparent that beyond outright refusal to provide and of this data, there in also evidence of omissions of records, such as the October, 2017, stabbing of an ASH patient, which was not included in the 2017 ASH/ADHS Annual Report.
A lie of omission is an intentional failure to tell the truth in a situation requiring disclosure. Specific legal definition of this form of willful deceit includes the term "palter" or "paltering", and looks something like this on paper:
- Merriam Webster, 2018: ""Lying by omission. 1. Something neglected, left out, or left undone; 2. the act, fact, or state of leaving something out or failing to do something especially that is required by duty, procedure, or law liable for a criminal act or omission."
- Legalmatch.com, 2018: "Falsifying documents is a type of white collar crime. It involves altering, changing, or modifying a document for the purpose of deceiving another person. It can also involve the passing along of copies of documents that are known to be false, as well as omission of factual information. In many states, falsifying a document is a crime punishable as a felony. Many different types of acts can be considered as falsifying a document, including:
- Altering or misrepresenting factual information such as prices or monetary amounts
- Stating false information when requested to provide truthful statements
- Forging a signature
- Using official letterheads without authorization
- Willful omission of fact in order to deceive or mislead
- Knowingly using or distributing a fake document
- Destroying information material to an investigation."
-And last but not least, Arizona Office of the Auditor General, 2018: "Public officials with oversight authority have a responsibility to ensure public records are
protected, genuine, and true."
There is no variance in the above definitions of lying by omission and the recently exposed willingness of Aaron Bowen to deny providing ASH records to those entities due such data, as required per established law. This is just the way it is. And Bowen has no excuse whatsoever to not know it. He is patently engaged in the same decrepit misconduct that his predecessor Cory Nelson is known for. All to the direct detriment of the ASH patient community. As I have contended well before now, the core reason for how and why Bowen and his kind carry on with impunity flows from the fact that ASH patients are disabled by serious mental illness. Graphically on point with the far longer history of discriminations against all/any persons affected by mental illness or other like disability.
This is you, Bowen. You.
3) October 03, 2017. The near deadly, preventable stabbing of an ASH patient named Aaron Wallace.
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| April Mott October 15, 1978- August 30, 2011. |
The staff of this blog publication spoke with with Phoenix attorney Holly Giezl during the winter of 2017-18. Ms. Giezl is a firm supporter of the rights and care needs of the ASH patient community as a whole, as well as the ASH Independent Oversight Committee in its role as a state sanctioned advocacy resource that acts in the interest of these rights and care needs.
Ms. Giezl has since that time filed a lawsuit on behalf of the rights of Aaron Wallace, an ASH patient. (See: "Stabbing at State Hospital leads to lawsuit, questions about patient safety and security." David Biscobing. KNVX ABC Ch15. December 03, 2018.)
The suit itself pertains to the failure of providing required safety protections and security at ASH, failure that puts both patients and staff at grave risk of otherwise preventable harm. We saw this when Cory Nelson was at ASH, when he all but unilaterally cut ASH's security staff by approximately 46% in 2012.
POINT IN FACT: Author PJ Reed was present as an ASH patient when Nelson initially began this shit in mid-winter 2011-12, and more then one ASH staff person expressed to him very real concern about their safety at that time. Less then three years later, the AZ legislature had to take direct action as a means to address the heightened presence of patient on patient, as well as patient on staff violence, which only arose due to Nelson's graphic ineptitude as a health care professional.
Today, as a direct consequence of this same issue, Cara Christ and Aaron Bowen are faced with being named in this lawsuit. As we have stated in earlier articles, if Wallace had died as a result of this matter, it is our steadfast belief that the public would have not been provided with much if any accurate information about his incident. But, as we have previously said, "Too bad for them, for he did survive to tell this story...."
In the not so distant past, circa 2011-2018, there have been a number of preventable deaths at ASH and beyond which would not have occurred if not for the depraved selfishness of ASH administrators and persons still working in the ADHS construct.
-April Mott, murdered in 2011 by an escaped and known to be very violent ASH patient, an escape that ASH administrators willfully refused to make public, in defiance of public safety.
- Chris Blackman, who ingested material (physical) substances in 2014, in direct sight of ASH staff, and who later died due to the refusal of ASH medical staff and to provide Chris with deserved emergency care.
- Mary "Frankie" Adams, who- during and episode of life threatening chronic obstructive disorder- had a horse pill sedative forcefully rammed into her throat by ASH medical staff, choking her to death.
- Barbara West, who arrived at ASH as a person dealing with acute suicidal ideation, only to be subject to abject negligence of ASH staff and the related absence of due protection specific to her respective suffering in context; due to which she very easily- quite frankly- did commit suicide within days of her admission to ASH.
These such tragedies must no longer occur. ASH is a hospital, for God's sake, Bowen and Christ are doctors. What more will it take?
4) Timeline 2018
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| Paolo Jack Reed Founding author PJ Reed The Arizona State Hospital and Patient Abuse. "You people are cooked." |
As stated above, then: If Aaron Wallace had died as a result of ASH administrations failure to maintain reasonably safe conditions there, it is our steadfast belief that the public would have not been provided with much if any accurate information about this particularly crucial incident; Bowen and company, meanwhile, would very likely have kept Christ out of the loop. 100% consistent with criminal misconduct circa 2011-15, Nelson and the rest, et al.
But that did not happen. Aaron Wallace survived. Bowen had no chance to cover up the details. So Christ knows all about it, too... And on this newest debacle goes. April had no chance, because of these people. Chris and Frankie are- were- friends of mine, and today they are gone, because of these people. Barbara West's family still grieves her preventable passing because of these people.
It is still that bad. As one of Aaron Wallace's attorneys put it just the other day (Josh Mozell): "The place is not better. Things have not changed. And for our clients, it's becoming more dangerous."
POINT IN FACT: My (PJ Reed) first ever direct interaction with psychiatric services and actual experience in a psychiatric hospital setting came about when I was forty nine years old; but I had to that time in my life spent time hospitalized in standard medical settings, knee surgery in 1983, salmonella in 1996, and so on. While prior to my (PJ Reed) January, 2011, admission to Arizona State Hospital, I had spent over eight full months in privately managed psychiatric facilities, beginning at the University of Arizona South Campus's Psychiatric Center in Tucson (formerly Kino Hospital), and including in the St. Mary's Hospital extended care unit. I did, for the entirety of that time, witness and experience of range of concerning realities with regard for being hospitalized in such settings, again, my introduction in context occurring rather late in my personal life journey.
But I attest to the the feeling and thought "Have I entered the third world, or what?" within days of my January 11, 2011, admission to ASH. It is night and day, it really is, the gaping difference(s) between state managed mental facilities versus the other. I arrived at ASH, e.g., late morning, and as it only turned out later, a full bottle of Ambien (a sleep medication with a high street value) was immediately stolen form my personal belongings, either by security staff, or the technician staff in ASH's Palo Verde treatment unit. Later that same day I witnessed a Palo Verde charge nurse named Peggy (the old one, with white hair, who never gets out of her chair in the nursing station) psychologically abuse a very sensitive young man named Josh V. to such a point that he fell to his knees in tears. It was that moment, day one, that I stated to that war horse of a nurse: "If that's how you do things around here, you're not going to like me one bit."
IN CLOSING:
"The obligation of an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner."
That's you, Bowen, and you, Dr. Christ. The death of Barbara West... What is your goal, in fact, in refusing to provide full documentation specific to her short lived treatment at ASH? How is that you might actually believe that you'll get away with it? But most importantly, the question of why? Why are you people like this?
(Where in the hell do you come from?)
It's not rocket science. The Hippocratic Oath is based upon the doctrine: Do No Harm. The history of corruption, substandard conditions and care practices in state mental hospitals is extensively glaring to anyone of reasonable intelligence and awareness today. The shortfalls of the psychiatric profession (the one field of medicine not grounded in empirical science) are equally understood by many if not most Americans (it is, just in case you don't realize, essentially common knowledge by now), and the related negative impacts on persons affected and disabled by serious mental illness bears strong appearance in both academic as well as public perceptions.
Bureaucracy, bureaucracy, bureaucracy. The proof is in the pudding. I PJ Reed strongly believe that we would not see such a graphically unwarranted absence of medical ethics in anything outside of state managed public health care bureaucracies. This most necessarily carries into the confines of state managed mental hospitals, where the often crippling affects of severe emotional and psychological illness grant shortsighted if not incompetent medical professionals undeniable opportunity to get away with their unethical wrongdoing.
I wish, I truly do, that it wasn't true. I sincerely wish that that I did not need to go after these people. For if I didn't, it only follows, the life experiences of persons hospitalized in these places would look far better to me today. And it has only become personal because I, too, have been subjected to the abject cruelty of more then one entrusted state health care practitioner, and the ineptitude of more then one entrusted state health care administrator/official; and is due, as well, to the fact that I have many friends still at ASH, persons who may forced to remain there for life due to the debilitating affects of their respective diagnoses.
I sincerely hope you can grasp this by now, whoever you are. I really do.
paoloreed@gmail.com
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I would really love input of any kind from anybody with any interest whatsoever in the issues that I am sharing in this blog. I mean it, anybody, for I will be the first one to admit that I may be inaccurately depicting certain aspects of the conditions
at ASH, and anonymous comments are fine. In any case, I am more than willing to value anybody's feelings about my writing, and I assure you that I will not intentionally exploit or otherwise abuse your right to express yourself as you deem fit. This topic is far, far too important for anything less. Thank you, whoever you are. Peace and Frogs.