'No one was overseeing his care'

By BARBARA WALSH, Staff Writer

Copyright © 2002 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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CASTAWAY CHILDREN: Maine's Most Vulnerable Kids Follow this three-part series on the plight of Maine children with mental illness and get more information including where to find help, a glossary of terms and how to voice your opinion, here. To top of story

Many families and foster parents claim Maine has done a shoddy job of making sure children are safe and treated well when they're placed out of state for mental health treatment.

Historically, it has been rare, they say, for a Maine caseworker to visit children or make sure they are safe and receiving proper treatment.

Foster mother Tina Campbell seethes over how her 11-year-old foster child was treated when he was sent to Charter Brookside in New Hampshire.

"This child was a badly damaged kid, he was sexually and physically abused by his biological family and the state of Maine made him worse," Campbell says. "They sent him to a hospital out of state and never checked up on him."

After the boy was placed in Campbell's Cornish home, he suffered severe depression and often tried to hurt himself. Once he locked himself in his bedroom.

"He was breaking glass picture frames and saying, 'I'm going to cut myself,' Campbell said. "It took three state troopers to get him out."

Campbell repeatedly tried to find the boy a treatment bed in Maine but was unable to do so. He was taken to the emergency room several times after trying to hurt himself, including an episode where he attempted to choke himself by swallowing checker pieces.

"That night, they drove him to Charter Brookside in an ambulance," Campbell says.

The boy stayed at the Nashua hospital six months in 1998, and no caseworker from Maine called or visited the child, Campbell says.

"The state of Maine was his guardian and they were the only person that had the ability to go down there anytime they wanted to talk to that kid, and not one person did it," Campbell says. "Not one person talked to him during his entire stay."

Campbell kept in contact with the boy by phone and visited the boy after he had been at Charter Brookside for three months. She was stunned at his appearance.

"He had gained 80 pounds," Campbell says. "Here's a normal sized 11-year-old and they let him eat whatever they wanted. I couldn't believe what he looked like. It was so sad."

During one phone call, the child also told Campbell his roommate had touched him sexually.

"I told him to tell someone as soon as he hung up the phone," Campbell says. "It disgusted me. No one was overseeing his care there. There were quite a few damaged kids from Maine at Charter Brookside, and no one was looking out for them."

Ronnie and Jay Sprinkle's foster child also was placed at Charter Brookside. Before the boy was hospitalized in New Hampshire, the Windham couple cared for him in their home for two years. But it was a struggle. The boy had been tortured as a baby and the abuse left him angry and uncontrollable.

"As an infant, he'd been burned with a cigarette lighter and tied down in his crib and left there in his feces for days," says Jay Sprinkle. "It was horrendous stuff. The mother took off cross country and left the child with hitchhikers."

The boy was five when the Sprinkles took him into their home. He threw feces on the wall, dug at himself with sharp objects. He kicked, punched, bit people. The couple tried to find counseling and at-home help in Maine without luck.

"There was absolutely nothing for him," Jay Sprinkle says.

The boy grew sicker and was placed in St. Mary's, a short-term psychiatric hospital in Lewiston, while his caseworker unsuccessfully searched for a treatment bed in Maine. Unable to find one, the boy ended up at Charter Brookside. The Sprinkles visited him during his stay and were appalled at how the hospital was run.

"The place was a pig sty," Sprinkle says. "His bathroom looked like it had never been cleaned. The floors were filthy."

And their foster child looked unkempt and unclean. He wore clothes that didn't fit him. His teeth were caked yellow with decayed food. The hospital lost his shoes, so the boy wore a pair that were too tight and blistered his feet.

The Sprinkles also worried about the lack of supervision. Children often did what they wanted.

"We watched one girl, who had sexual abuse issues, stand on top of a cooler and go nuts," Ronnie Sprinkle says. "No one was watching her."

After federal investigators learned that many children were having sex with each other, the hospital was shut down in 1999. The Sprinkles learned about the shutdown after their foster child was moved to Lakeview Neurological Center in Effingham Falls, N.H.

While that hospital was cleaner and better run, institutional care did not help their foster child get better. The 8-year-old child often was punished and restricted to his room.

"He was restrained at Lakeview all the time," Ronnie Sprinkle says. "He doesn't do well in institutional settings. He falls apart. He doesn't even understand the rules."

Unless he was being restrained, the boy rarely was touched or held. He eventually was placed in a group home in Maine.

"Kids at these places don't get nurtured, hugged," Ronnie Sprinkle says. "They don't get asked how they're feeling. Everything is rules and regulations."

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