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Updated: Lawmaker Calls For Hearing On Juvenile Psych Facility Abuse

Rep. Katie Edwards
FloridaHouseDemocrats.com

The state continues its investigation into a South Florida juvenile psych facility where a girl’s alleged abuse was caught on camera. A Broward County state lawmaker is also calling for a legislative investigation into the facility. Rep. Katie Edwards (D-Plantation) says the incident is emblematic of the state’s failure to protect children in its care.

It’s a video that’s been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in a week online. The surveillance footage from the Citrus Center for Adolescent Treatment Service in Pembroke Pines shows police officers punching a girl in the face and then spraying her directly in the face with pepper spray. The footage is from April during a riot at the juvenile psychiatric facility. Recently, the state has gotten involved.

Department of Children and Families spokesman Whitney Ray says, “Last week we received a call to our abuse hotline alleging abuse at the Citrus facility. And we take all allegations of abuse very seriously. We’ve opened up an investigation, and we’re going to do our best to get to the bottom of those allegations.”

He says the state has placed children in its care at Citrus Center. The Agency for Health Care Administration, which licenses the facility and makes rules for how residents can be restrained, is also investigating.

Ray says, “We also received a letter last Thursday making some overarching allegations of what is being claimed as some systematic abuse and neglect, mistreatment.”

As first reported in the South Florida Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald newspapers, the alleged victim in the video is a ward of the state. Her public defender says the facility uses inappropriate methods to restrain unruly residents, including injecting them with a chemical sedative, that leaves them unconscious for long periods.

Rep. Edwards represents part of Broward County, where the Citrus Center is located.

She says, “I don’t see how punching a 14-year-old girl in the face or sitting on top of her and spraying pepper spray in her face or injecting her with what is called ‘booty juice’ is helping to rehabilitate these troubled teens.”

Edwards wrote a letter to Rep. Richard Corcoran (R-Lutz), who chairs the House Health & Human Services Committee, asking him to hold a hearing during next month’s committee weeks.  

She says, “I’m very interested in knowing, for example, the type of force that we’re allowing our law enforcement officers and facility staff to be able to use to deal with these types of incidents.”

Edwards says many of her constituents have e-mailed and called expressing concern about recent deaths of several children under state custody. She says it behooves lawmakers to evaluate the standards used in state-run and private facilities that house mentally ill children.

“I think really this incident is part of the overall picture of how our state is administering these types of social service programs,” she says.

Edwards is still talking with House staff about the issue. No official agenda for the House and Human Services Committee has been released.