Three former medical staff members at D.C.’s only for-profit psychiatric hospital have been indicted in the 2020 death of a patient who officials said went untreated for at least 21 minutes after he was found having difficulty breathing.
The charges, announced by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, followed years of reports from disability-rights advocates detailing allegations of abuse and neglect at the facility, the Psychiatric Institute of Washington (PIW) in Tenleytown, as well as lawsuits from former patients and scrutiny from the D.C. Council and city health officials.
The employees — psychiatric technicians Nelson Kuma and Richard Hounnou and nurse Norma Munoz-Bent — were charged in D.C. Superior Court with criminal neglect resulting in the death of the 58-year-old patient, who is identified in the indictment by his initials, G.W.
“They stood over him without offering help,” Pirro said at a news conference Wednesday, describing video footage she said shows G.W. lying on a mattress without receiving CPR for at least 21 minutes as the psychiatric technicians fist-bumped and chatted and the nurse cuffed the wrong area of the patient’s arm to check his blood pressure.
The three defendants were released pending trial after pleading not guilty this week to the charge, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. Their attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
“When medical professionals are paid to save lives, and instead, they stand and watch a life disappear and slip away, that is not mere negligence. That is criminal behavior,” Pirro said. “And we will prove these allegations at trial.”
In describing the video, Pirro echoed the findings of a 2021 report by Disability Rights DC, a federally designated watchdog organization that she credited for documenting abuse and neglect incidents at the private facility. PIW, which has been operating since 1967, treats adults and teens with substance abuse issues or mental distress, including patients who are involuntarily committed.
Disability Rights DC said that it was unclear whether PIW investigated the patient’s April 2020 death, as its policies required, but that the “video footage is widely inconsistent with PIW staff’s documentation of the circumstances surrounding his death.” The watchdog group’s report said nursing staff at the facility failed to follow a doctor’s order to provide 24-hour supervision to G.W., whose estate later filed a lawsuit saying he suffered from a life-threatening heart condition. Pirro noted that G.W. had a “code blue” medical emergency at the facility two days before his death.
The D.C. Council’s health committee has held oversight hearings and visited the Tenleytown facility as allegations of harm to patients have mounted. Incidents documented by Disability Rights DC include the arrest of a PIW staffer accused of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old patient, and multiple patient-on-patient assaults that sent some of them to the emergency room with broken bones.
D.C. Council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large), chair of the health committee, said she has pushed for regulators from the D.C. departments of health and behavioral health to make regular visits to PIW.
“A grand jury indictment is a serious matter, and I, along with my health agency partners will be reviewing the charging documents when they are made available,” Henderson said in a statement.
The U.S. attorney’s office set up a tip line to report incidents at the psychiatric hospital: 202-252-0809.
Spokespeople for the hospital’s parent company, Universal Health Services, and an attorney who has represented it in court did not respond to a request for comment.
Other behavioral health facilities owned by the company have been the subject of investigations and lawsuits, including a $535 million judgment against a facility in Champaign, Illinois, found negligent in the rape of a 13-year-old patient, and a $300 million award for three womenwho said they were sexually abused at Cumberland Hospital in New Kent County, Virginia.
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