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Sides settle Maryville suicide
case
Dave Orrick
Daily Herald Staff Writers
Posted Friday, May 20, 2005
Lawyers involved in the civil lawsuit over a ward of the state who killed
herself at Maryville Academy have reached an agreement to settle the case, but
told a judge Friday they want to keep the details secret.
"We'd like to make sure that nothing with respect to the settlement actually
gets filed," said a lawyer who appeared before Judge Michael Hogan Friday at the
Daley Center in Chicago. The lawyer refused to identify herself after the
hearing.
The case is a wrongful death suit on behalf of Maryville ward Victoria
Petersilka, who hanged herself on Feb. 9, 2002. Petersilka's relative, Jennifer
Hess, sued Maryville, the Des Plaines home for troubled youth, in 2003.
Complete secrecy is unusual for wrongful death cases in Cook County, because
Rule 12.15 of the court says the plaintiff "shall file" a petition for approval
of the settlement, and that the judge must decide how much lawyers in the case
are paid.
When Little City, the Palatine facility for the developmentally disabled,
settled a wrongful death case in July 2004, for example, the judge's order
included the amount and how it was to be disbursed.
The judge Friday did not indicate if he would agree to secrecy, but he noted
that none of the parties involved in the case seemed to object.
If the documents remains secret, it will remain unknown whether a Maryville
lawyer will be involved in the settlement.
That lawyer, Robert C. Yelton III, was added as a defendant to the lawsuit in
February 2004. Lawyers for Petersilka alleged that Yelton "aided and abetted"
Maryville in its creation and cover-up of two different, conflicting reports
about Petersilka's suicide.
Yelton and his attorney did not return calls.
The false report ignited a firestorm of controversy after it was discovered, and
it spurred two investigations by DCFS' Office of the Inspector General. More
controversy came after a University of Illinois at Chicago professor criticized
the office reports as a whitewash.
State-paid monitors were brought in, and Maryville's leader, the Rev. John
Smyth, promised changes. But in September 2003, as FBI subpoenas were issued to
investigate possible federal health care fraud, DCFS Director Bryan Samuels
declared the Des Plaines campus "not safe" and announced the state was
essentially severing ties with the facility. A national agency later pulled its
accreditation.
According to the suit, the original Maryville report said Petersilka had
threatened to kill herself before doing so. The altered report said she had
simply threatened to run away.
The difference was crucial because, had Maryville authorities known of her
suicidal intentions, certain precautions, such as regular checks on Petersilka,
should have been taken, the suit claims.
In later investigations, Maryville maintained that the alteration was not an
attempt to cover up the fact that it was aware of Petersilka's suicidal
intentions, but that the original report had been false, and that the Maryville
program manager John Siers had lied about the suicide on the first report only
to justify a restrictive physical hold that was placed on Petersilka that day.
The UIC professor, Ronald Davidson, accused the Office of the Inspector General
in an Oct. 27, 2002, letter to then-DCFS Director Jess McDonald of glossing over
Maryville's actions.
His letter notes that DCFS regulations clearly say agencies must report any
instance of falsified documents rather than just turn over what they believe to
be the true report - regardless of what a lawyer advised. The letter implies
this was known to Maryville. In fact, the CFS-119 form that Maryville submitted
to DCFS on the incident has a check box for falsified documents.
"Getting bad legal advice does not absolve an agency from having to abide by the
same commonsense ethical behaviors that all other DCFS providers in Illinois are
expected to follow," Davidson's letter said.
The firm that DCFS consulted at the time, Yelton & Kehl, does not list child
welfare law as one of its specialties on its Web site. In court filings, it
vigorously denied doing anything wrong.
However, a judge approved taking a deposition of Yelton and Maryville's Fr.
David Ryan, ostensibly to discover just what advice Yelton gave Ryan about the
falsified report.
DCFS and Maryville would not comment Friday on the secrecy provisions of the
settlement.
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