In 2019, New York agreed to pay $2 million each to the families of three developmentally disabled residents of a group home who had been beaten, smacked and humiliated by workers who called the facility the “Bronx Zoo.”
But the mistreatment did not end for one of those residents, a 52-year-old woman identified only as Z.O., according to court papers. Workers retaliated against Z.O. by withholding her daily constipation medicine, according to court papers, and she eventually died in a hospital from complications of massive bowel obstruction.
Now, five years after the original settlement, the state will pay Z.O.’s family an additional $10 million.
“The state failed this woman in every possible way,” said Ilann M. Maazel, a lawyer who brought the lawsuits over the treatment of the woman, in a news release. “Staff abused and neglected her and then, as if that were not enough, they killed her.”
Erin Silk, a spokeswoman for the state’s Office for People With Developmental Disabilities, which oversees the state’s more than 1,000 group homes, said in a statement that the agency’s highest priorities are “providing high-quality services and keeping people safe.”
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of Z.O. We believe this resolution is in the best interests of all parties involved,” Ms. Silk wrote.
The attorney general’s office, which represented the workers named in the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon. Nor did the Bronx district attorney.
For decades, the state has known about abuses against disabled and mentally ill New Yorkers at facilities responsible for caring for them, but has repeatedly failed to stem the problem. In 2013, then Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo created the Justice Center for the Protection of People With Special Needs in response to reporting by The New York Times that found rampant abuse at the homes, insufficient oversight and minimal penalties for wrongdoing.
Critics have said that the justice center was poorly conceived, and judges have repeatedly challenged its power to prosecute cases. And in the years since it was created, abuses and deaths at the homes have continued.
The $10 million settlement, which still must be approved by a federal judge in Manhattan, is the most recent effort by the state to resolve a case that began in 2014 with a whistle-blower’s accounts of abuse at the home.
Depositions about what took place within the walls of the brick building on Union Avenue that housed 24 developmentally disabled residents were staggering.
Residents were smacked, punched and pushed. One worker regularly hit a resident while he ate, making him cower in fear at mealtimes. And records documented a resident who had bruises on her breasts, arms, stomach, legs and buttocks for weeks at a time. She received no medical attention.
When people called the home, some of the employees answered, “Good morning, Bronx Zoo,” according to court papers. Employees who wanted to report misconduct faced retribution.
As the allegations came to light, a civil rights lawsuit was filed in 2016 on behalf of three residents, including Z.O.
In the first settlement in the case, in 2019, the state agreed to take the extraordinary step of surrendering control of the group home to a private nonprofit agency.
The state also agreed to pay $6 million, with each of the three plaintiffs getting $2 million. It was that payment and the stipulation that the home would be given to new owners that started the events that led to Z.O.’s death, according to court papers.
Z.O. had a medical plan that included prescriptions for three separate daily laxatives and stool softening medications because she had a history of constipation, as well as a prior abdominal surgery, according to the lawsuit.
However, in the fall of 2019, she stopped getting her medication, the lawsuit said. But the staff created records showing that the resident had gotten her medication daily — including for a week after she had been rushed to the hospital.
Another plaintiff in the initial case, referred to as D.K., also required emergency medical attention for bowel impaction, the court papers said. While D.K. was able to recover quickly, Z.O. did not.
Z.O. was rushed to the emergency room in October, according to the lawsuit, where she underwent numerous procedures and spent months moving in and out of hospitals. She was intubated for weeks at a time, suffering waves of seizures and pneumonia, the lawsuit says.
She died five months after she was first hospitalized, in March of 2020, from complications from the bowel impaction.
On the day of Z.O.’s death, staff at the home exchanged messages that the lawsuit called “disturbing” and explicitly link Z.O.’s death to animus toward her and her sister, who is her guardian.
A supervisor, Elizabeth Gonzalez, sharing the news of her death, texted that “her sister must be Happy.”
Bernicia Sogbesan, another employee, in a text called Z.O.’s sister a “bitch” and wrote that “she still digging for money.”
A state investigationsubstantiated allegations of misconduct by 13 workers, but the state did not fire any of them. A New York Times review found that instead of being terminated, employees cited for neglect and abuse were typically sent to other jobs in the system.
The criminal legal system also failed to produce any penalties. The Justice Center and the Bronx district attorney each said in 2019 that they lacked sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges.
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