The videos that showed staff members at the state's hospital for the criminally insane huddling around a patient's bed, kicking him, pouring liquids on him and flipping his mattress onto the floor have led to an inquiry into what the abused patient's brother says is a "culture of menace" at the Whiting Forensic Division of Connecticut Valley Hospital.

The investigation, prompted by a whistleblower complaint, led to the state police arrests this fall of 10 staff members, including forensic technicians and a nurse. Thirty-seven employees have been suspended to date, and seven fired.

The abuse case also has revealed, state Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, said recently, that Connecticut's maximum security facility for patients who are found not guilty of serious crimes due to their mental illnesses has been operated in "a system where there was a lack of oversight, with no checks or balances," for years.

The hospital is unlicensed, has been billing Medicaid and Medicare improperly for as long as two decades and has been paying tens of thousands of dollars in overtime to overtired employees due to staffing inefficiencies, according to Somers. There are no regular independent audits to ensure that best practices are in place, she said.

In addition to the state's obligation to provide quality care to the patients, the cost of operating the Middletown facility, which has 106 maximum security beds and 141 enhanced security beds, is "a huge issue," Somers said.

"It's $1,500 a day to care for these people, or $567,000 a year," Somers said. "For that much money, we could put them on a cruise all year long."

Somers, co-chair of the General Assembly's Public Health Committee, organized a public hearing to elicit testimony from the hospital's operators and provide a forum for patients and their families, employees and others. On Nov. 13, the committee members grilled the commissioner of mental health and others in leadership positions and listened to testimony from concerned parties during a nine-hour hearing.  

"It's not comfortable to have this conversation, to ask these questions, but it has to be done," Somers said. The Public Health Committee is continuing to gather information and eventually may introduce legislation to fix the broken system, Somers said.

A spokeswoman for Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services Commissioner Miriam E. Delphin-Rittmon said earlier this month that there have been no new developments in the investigation since the public hearing. Delphin-Rittmon testified that after reviewing the videotaped abuse, she was sickened and has been haunted by it ever since. She said she immediately contacted state police and fired Whiting's director and director of nursing. She said the department is taking steps, including hiring and training new employees and bringing in an outside behavioral health consulting firm, to ensure "such appalling incidents never occur again."

The Day attempted unsuccessfully to contact family members of southeastern Connecticut residents who are living at Whiting. Somers said she has received "email after email" from one area family member who does not want to be identified out of fear that staff at Whiting will retaliate on the family member housed there.

Abuse caught on camera

The most dramatic testimony at the Nov. 13 public hearing came from Al Shehadi, the brother of abused patient Bill Shehadi.

"People were crying in the audience," Somers said. "It was unbelievable."

Shehadi, of Greenwich, testified that his 59-year-old brother, who had killed their father 22 years ago, has suffered from serious mental illness since he was 21 and has become increasingly psychotic, divorced from reality and physically frail over the past 10 years.

His brother, Shehadi said, is not easy on himself or those around him, whether it be family, other patients and staff. Bill Shehadi, the brother said, is prone to self-harm, poor at reading social cues and prone to inflexible and ritualistic behavior, such as walking around a room repeatedly tapping each of the four walls or flipping a light switch on and off, over and over again.

For all that, Shehadi said his brother is not to blame for the actions of the staff. Shehadi said he watched four to five hours of video and that the abuse his brother suffered is "hard to imagine." He said he obtained the 10 arrest warrants issued in the case and created a spreadsheet of roughly 50 incidents of abuse that occurred over 24 days in February and March 2017. Two-thirds of the incidents occurred between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. and Bill Shehadi was asleep when many of them began, the brother said.

"Beyond almost daily acts of similar abuse, the videos convey an atmosphere of constant menace," Shehadi testified. "It wasn't just staff kicking my brother. It was long periods in between kicks with staff resting their feet and legs on his bed, next to his head and body, their feet constantly tapping, stretching, moving. As if to remind him they could kick again whenever they wanted. It wasn't just staff pushing him down on his bed or kicking him off his bed. It was the staff circling around his bed again and again, leaning over and staring at him. It was the feeling of cats playing with a cornered mouse that was most disturbing."

The abuse occurred even though staff members knew there was a surveillance camera in Shehadi's room. Somers said it was revealed that nobody had been monitoring the cameras. The Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services has since installed cameras throughout the CVH campus and hired an outside firm to monitor them in real time, according to the commissioner.

During the investigation, it also was revealed that some patients at Whiting are allowed to play "Grand Theft Auto" and other violent video games. During the public hearing, Dr. Michael Norko, newly appointed director of Whiting, testified that some adult patients had earned the privilege of playing video games, though it has since been taken away after what Norko characterized as a difficult conversation with the patients.

k.florin@theday.com

Whiting patients from southeastern Connecticut

Among the New London County residents who reside at the Whiting Forensic Division of Connecticut Valley Hospital are:

Alec Chattin, 20, of Ledyard was committed to Whiting for 19 years in March 2017.

Chattin, who had not been taking his medication, went into his mother's bedroom during a "psychotic break" with a .22-caliber rifle on Jan. 25, 2016. The gun did not fire when he tried to shoot her. He dropped the rifle and stabbed Brenda Chattin with a folding knife, severing the main tendon to her index finger, slashing her ear from top to bottom and cutting her left side and arm. He then began choking his mother, but eventually called 911 and asked her for a hug.

According to testimony at his insanity hearing, Chattin had been diagnosed with several conditions, including Asperger's disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, sensory integration disorder, depression and anxiety disorder.

Alan Nadeau, 33, of Lebanon was committed to Whiting for 54 years in 2016. 

Nadeau fatally stabbed a family friend, Christopher Beloin, with a bayonet at Nadeau's family home in Lebanon on April 12, 2015. After the crime, Nadeau turned himself in at the Colchester State Police barracks with a computer bag containing a laptop and a bayonet-style knife with blood on both sides of its 8-inch blade.

He was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect after a trial in New London Superior Court at which a forensic psychiatrist, Kenneth Selig, testified that he had a "long-standing, serious, life-altering psychotic disorder."

Laura MacDonald, 50, of East Lyme was committed to Whiting for 37 years in 2014.

She set two major fires in Norwich in 2012 while on probation for a previous arson case. During her insanity trial in Superior Court, a psychologist testified that MacDonald is in need of 24-hour supervision in a clinical treatment center "where she can be closely monitored to prevent her from engaging in dangerous and destructive behavior."

She had a long history of mental illness. Her diagnoses include schizoaffective disorder, drug and alcohol abuse, bulimia and borderline personality disorder.