Teen died after banned restraint used
Death at Mason County program not the first
for company that runs it
By Jonathan Osborne
October 23, 2002
Moments before a 17-year-old died in their care
last week, employees at a Mason County wilderness program held the
youth in a restraint similar to one outlawed a year ago because of
its lethal potential. Charles Chase Moody is at least the fifth
youth to die in Texas since 1988 after being restrained in a
facility or program run by the Brown Schools. Officials for the
Nashville-based company acknowledged the deaths and the fact that
Moody had been placed facedown in a prone position.
"Our staff was not trying to take this man into
a prone position, but they ended up falling to the ground in the
course of things," said Diane Huggins, a Brown Schools spokeswoman.
Huggins said the restraint complied with state regulations. The
company offers youth behavioral treatment services at 21 facilities
nationwide, seven of which are in Texas, including the San Marcos
Treatment Center and the Oaks Treatment Center in Austin.
"When they went to the ground, they did fall
forward," Huggins said of the three staff members who restrained
Moody. "This young man was a pretty big fellow: He's 6'1" and
weighed 180 pounds. From our own looking into things and knowing how
our staff responded, we know that they did the best job that they
could to respond appropriately."
Moody, who investigators say was having
difficulty breathing when sheriff's deputies arrived at the camp,
died before paramedics arrived.
Authorities have not released an autopsy or
commented on the cause of death, pending a toxicology report.
However, Moody's father said investigators told
him that his son died from asphyxiation.
"He vomited and nobody even knew it," said
Charles Moody, a Dallas defense lawyer who once represented the
Brown Schools in a case involving a restraint-related death. "I
cannot imagine how somebody could vomit and be unconscious and
nobody knew it until the sheriff arrived. That doesn't happen. There
are many, many unanswered questions."
Moody, who is divorced, said he did not know
that his son, who was taking medication for anger issues and had
been in a treatment facility before for drug and anger problems, had
been sent to the On Track wilderness program in Mason.
The Mason County sheriff's office, the Texas
Rangers and the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory
Services, which oversees such programs, are still investigating.
Huggins said the staff members involved in the incident, whom she
would not identify, have been placed on administrative leave with
pay.
The state's rules on use of restraints on
youth, dated August 2001, do not allow staff members to place a
patient facedown and apply pressure to his back, the so-called prone
restraint. Other forbidden restraints include any that keep the
staff member from seeing the youth's face, restrict the person's
ability to communicate or impair the ability to breathe.
Officials at the Department of Protective and
Regulatory Services said they don't know how many people have died
in the facilities they oversee, in part because their electronic
database goes back to only 1998.
The Brown Schools is the oldest and largest
youth behavioral program in the state, Huggins said, and each year
treats thousands of troubled children and adults in its Texas
facilities.
The other four Texas deaths associated with
restraints at Brown Schools programs occurred not in the wilderness
program but at facilities where "young people with more serious
behavioral and psychological issues are treated," Huggins said.
The first death occurred in 1988 at South
Austin's Healthcare Rehabilitation Center, which has since been
renamed. An 18-year- old, Brandon Hadden of East Texas, died after
being restrained in a straitjacket and held facedown on a bed,
according to Michael Slack of Austin, who represented Hadden's
mother.
"He started to vomit in their presence . . .
and choked to death with two staff members continuing to hold him
down," Slack said.
Charles Moody, who was the defense lawyer for
the Brown Schools in that case, settled it during trial in 1997 for
an undisclosed amount.
"I don't know exactly what I can tell you based
on attorney- client privilege," Moody said. "But there wouldn't have
been a settlement unless there was some question of liability."
In 1990, 17-year-old Diane Harris died in the
Brown Schools' Seguin Community Treatment Center after five staff
members placed her into a "basket hold," in which a person's arms
are crossed in front of the chest. The center has since closed.
A grand jury did not issue any indictments, but
it blasted the center in a report for "the inadequate training of
the staff administering the hold."
"We have taken the unusual step of developing
an official record . . . into the bizarre way (Harris died) so that
this tragedy will not have to be repeated," the report said. "Even
though the hold was not authorized under the center's own policies,
apparently it was routinely used with the knowledge and consent of
the center's management."
Slack's firm, Slack & Davis LLP, also
represented the family of 16-year-old Roshelle Clayborne, who died
in 1997 at the Brown Schools' Laurel Ridge facility in San Antonio.
According to a state report, Clayborne died of an irregular
heartbeat after a violent struggle with hospital staff, during which
they put her in a restraint.
During the altercation, Clayborne said she
couldn't breathe, according to the report, which was obtained
through the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, an international
watchdog group that focuses in part on institutional health care.
The treatment center was placed on probation
for a year in 1997. The lawsuit was settled out of court in 1999 for
an undisclosed amount.
A year later, 9-year-old Randy Steele died of
suffocation at the same facility after a violent outburst. Two
hospital workers held the boy down, during which he vomited and
began having trouble breathing, state officials said at the time. He
later died.
What happened to Chase Moody is less clear.
According to Brown Schools officials, the
Richardson teenager and two other boys became aggressive toward
staff members about 8:30 p.m. Oct. 14. Moody was the only one placed
in the restraint hold.
Huggins said every employee receives training
in proper crisis prevention techniques, and in this case the fall to
the ground was unavoidable.
"When situations like this happen, it is very
devastating," Huggins said. "The young people we serve come to us
with emotional, behavioral and psychological problems. We do
everything that we can to keep them safe, and these are some
unfortunate cases."
But critics such as Jerry Boswell, president of
the Austin chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, say
these cases are occurring too frequently.
"The more you look at a situation like this,
the more incensed you get," Boswell said. "How many children have to
die . . . before you lose a license in this state?"
And Slack, whose firm reviews "hundreds" of
cases involving care facilities each year, said more such cases are
inevitable unless lawmakers address the issue.
"We're talking about very fundamental errors in
judgment that were committed," Slack said.
But caring for troubled youth with such
problems is an evolving process, Huggins said.
"It behooves all of us in our industry to
continue to look at safer ways to handle patients," she said.
"Obviously we need to continue to re-examine the way that we're
handling situations and try to find safer ways to deal with them."
josborne@statesman.com; 445-3621
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