Father suing Carbon C&Y, Gnaden Huetten campus

The father of a teenage girl has sued St. Luke’s Hospital Gnaden Huetten Campus, the Carbon County Children & Youth Services Agency and 14 people associated with the two after his then 14-year-old daughter was removed from his care after being admitted to the hospital.

The 72-page suit, filed in U.S. District Court, Scranton, calls for a jury trial on allegations the actions of the hospital and agency violated the father and daughter’s 14th Amendment rights to procedural and substantive due process, First Amendment right to association and Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable seizure.

Judge Robert D. Mariani is hearing the suit.

The father and daughter are identified in the suit only as F.T. and S.G.

The father argues the hospital and caseworkers conspired to remove his daughter from his custody; that she was placed with her mother, who failed to supervise her and abused her; then in a foster home that failed to properly supervise her; that he was denied a voice in any decisions; and that the conspiracy triggered a series of events that kept his daughter out of school and made her drug addiction and mental disorders worse.

Carbon County Children & Youth Services Agency Executive Director Sallianne Newton was away at a conference and could not be reached for comment.

St. Luke’s Gnaden Huetten Campus Director of Marketing Lisa Evans Johnson declined comment.

The argument

According to the suit, the father had custody of his daughter since May 2014. Her mother was in prison at the time and had visitation every other month.

On Oct. 6, 2016, the daughter violated her curfew, so her father took away her cellphone. She reacted by running away from home to a friend’s house and “significantly injuring her own face.”

The daughter went to the Lansford police and initially told them her father had injured her face, but she also said that she was unsure of what really happened, and asked officers what a “blackout” meant.

The father also contacted them about his daughter. Police advised him to have his daughter checked at the emergency room because of her history of hurting herself.

At the hospital, she admitted to having suicidal thoughts, hallucinations and thinking about hurting others.

The next day, the father signed papers to admit her to an inpatient psychiatric facility for 72 hours.

But no beds were available, and after her mother visited her, the daughter claimed her father had injured her face.

The state child abuse hotline was called.

That call triggered an interview by an uncertified and untrained and inexperienced Children & Youth caseworker, the father charges.

Because a psychiatric bed was still not available, another caseworker advised the hospital to not release the daughter to her father. The hospital agreed, and the daughter was kept in the hospital’s emergency department from Oct. 7 until Oct. 11, 2016, “without any psychiatric treatment or intervention other than brief daily visits by the psychiatrist on duty that are required by Medical Assistance regulations to obtain payment for the hospital stay.”

After a flurry of communications among caseworkers and hospital staff, the daughter was allowed to go to her now-released mother’s home.

In the suit, the father argues that the decision to not release his daughter into his care is an “exercise of the power to take custody of a child (under state law that allows medical staff to take protective custody of a child) … or kidnapping and false imprisonment.”

Custody

The father also alleges he was not told of the decision and that there was no court order within 24 hours as required.

The father argues in the suit that because there was no risk that he would hurt her, and because there was no court order granting Children & Youth protective custody, and no court order giving her mother custody, the “defendants had no choice but to discharge” her to the care of her father.

Further, when the daughter was discharged, her mother had an “active warrant for her arrest, was on state parole, and had a long history of substance abuse and mental health instability,” all of which the caseworkers knew or should have known.

The suit further argues that the caseworker didn’t wait for the results of a urine screen from the mother to give the daughter’s custody to her.

Less than three weeks later, the caseworker and Children & Youth Services learned the daughter was already truant from her new school in Northampton County, and that county’s Children & Youth Services was aware of “numerous altercations occurring between the daughter and her mother and her mother’s husband, who was living in the home despite being deemed inappropriate to be around children by Northampton County Children & Youth.

Appeal

The father appealed the child abuse determination and on March 16, 2017, the state Department of Human Services expunged the report against him.

On Nov. 29, 2016, Carbon County Judge Joseph J. Matika ruled that until a trial can be held, the 2014 order granting custody to the father should stay in place.

Despite the court order, the lawsuit states, the defendants refused to return the daughter to her father.

The suit also refers to a December 2016, incident in which Slate Belt police were called to the mother’s home because she was making suicidal threats; that the house was in deplorable condition and the mother was so visibly intoxicated the daughter was sent to stay at someone else’s house overnight, again without any knowledge or consent of her father.

On Jan. 4, 2017, the daughter was found to be truant from school by a court in Northampton County.

On Jan. 9, 2017, the mother and daughter had another fight that led to the local police being called and the mother asking Northampton County Children & Youth to remove the daughter from her home.

Because of the fight, the mother’s parole was revoked and she was jailed on Jan. 13, 2017, but Children & Youth took no action to investigate her for child abuse.

Carbon County Children & Youth placed her with her friend in Coaldale, where she continued to be truant from school.

The agency then placed the daughter in a residential shelter care placement at Youth Services Agency, and from there to a foster home.

The father contends he was denied the right to participate in these decisions, nor was he allowed to visit his daughter until late July 2017.

While in the foster home, the daughter was “not taking her medications as prescribed and was regularly snorting meth, abusing cough medicine, taking numerous medications not prescribed to her, including at least three different narcotics, and marijuana. In late July 2017, she overdosed on methamphetamine, caused numerous injuries all over her own face and arms that became infected and expressed suicidal ideation,” the suit states.

On Aug. 3, 2017, she was taken to St. Luke’s Monroe Campus for a drug overdose and suicidal thoughts. She voluntarily entered a psychiatric facility, but left after eight days, “and suffered additional and substantial physical and emotional harm, including sexual assault,” according to the suit.