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The public defender's office says the girl was wrongfully held in a detention center and should not be placed in a co-ed mental health facility.
By CURTIS KRUEGER
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 29, 2001
A teenager has spent four months in Pinellas County's Juvenile Detention Center, even though a judge has ruled that what she really needs is treatment in a mental health facility.
"It's ludicrous. It's appalling," Judy Estren, director of the public defender's juvenile division.
During her time in the detention center, the young woman has been charged three times with felony battery on detention workers, a development her attorneys say might never have happened if she had been in an appropriate mental health facility.
Now the Department of Children and Families says the young woman, who recently turned 18, can be sent to Tampa Crossroads, a 15-bed mental health facility for adults in St. Petersburg.
But Estren plans to argue in court today that that, too, would be a poor choice. She stressed that Tampa Crossroads is a well-regarded facility but noted it is home to mentally ill adult men and women -- not the best setting for such a young woman whose symptoms of mental illness include her tendency to disrobe at inappropriate times.
"They're going to put her at risk with adult males who are mentally ill," said Violet Assaid, director of the mental health division of the public defender's office. "It's not for someone that age with the problems that she has."
Assaid said it makes no sense that the woman has been "languishing in the detention facility where she picks up new charges."
The case began with the woman's arrest in April, when she was 17 and considered a juvenile, Estren said. She was arrested first on a misdemeanor domestic battery charge on her mother and later in a similar incident against her sister. Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Peter Ramsberger eventually ruled she was mentally incompetent, meaning she is incapable of fully understanding the charges against her and her rights as a defendant.
That means prosecution of her case is stayed, or halted, until she can receive counseling designed to restore her mental competence. If she later becomes competent, the case against her can proceed. The Times is withholding her name because she was charged as a juvenile.
Shawnna Lee, spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Families, said that under the law, the department does not provide treatment to restore competency for juveniles unless they have been charged with felonies. She said this girl was not charged with a felony until about June. "But then she turned 18. And when a person turns 18 and becomes an adult, it's harder to place them in a forensic hospital situation," Lee said.
She added that "I can understand her concerns, and obviously we want what's best and in the interest of the client."
She said Tampa Crossroads might be only a temporary placement for the young woman.
Dan Kane, executive director of Tampa Crossroads, said "historically we have worked with very young women in that program. Some of them have had similar issues. We have always been able to maintain the safety of the clients in that particular program."
Elliott Steele, president of Pinellas County's chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, said incarcerating mentally ill people without proper treatment can lead to "a person becoming delusional or psychotic, which very well could result in an altercation either between a guard or a fellow inmate."