Abuse persists at Montana Developmental Center

"Do I have an opinion about whether the facility is incapable of being rehabilitated? Yes, I do. I do think that it’s incapable of being rehabilitated." Bernadette Franks-Ongoy, executive director of Disability Rights Montana http://www.disabilityrightsmt.org .

According to a recent Montana Department of Justice report, staff neglect at the Montana Developmental Center http://dphhs.mt.gov/dsd/MontanaDevelopmentalCenter led to the latest in a long string of instances of client abuse at the state facility in Boulder. The latest MDC incident involves an alleged sexual assault in the facility’s secure Assessment Stabilization Unit on Jan. 28, when staff members Beau Welch and Tyler Fletcher took a break at the same time and left a resident with a history of sexual aggression unsupervised for 26 minutes. During that time, the report claims, the client in question sexually assaulted a 19-year-old intellectually disabled male resident. (The names of the clients involved were redacted from the publicly available report.)

By Ted McDermott

Full Story: http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/missoula/disability/Content?oid=2119185