Note: Growing Together was founded by former STRAIGHT training director, Dr. ***. *** malpractice suit against KIDS of North Jersey was settled in December, just 11 days before it was scheduled for trial in Superior Court in Hudson County. The $4.5 million settlement came after *** lawyer, ***, spent five years wrangling to get her medical records from KIDS and deposing witnesses to unravel what really happened there. “This case took over my life,” said ***, who is based in Newark. “I got sucked in because the kids’ stories are so incredible.” *** suit against KIDS’ director, ***, also named as defendants four Bergen County psychiatrists who worked there part-time: *** in Closter, *** in Teaneck, and two others who settled on condition that they not be named. One has died, and the other is no longer practicing medicine. In settling the case, the defendants did not admit any guilt. *** said their malpractice insurance carriers paid $2 million on behalf of ***, $1 million for ***, and $500,000 for ***. The other two psychiatrists’ insurance paid the remaining $1 million. *** said the presence of the psychiatrists gave *** credibility, but that the doctors never evaluated her properly or treated *** during her six years at KIDS. According to *** suit, *** admitted under oath that “during the first years she was his patient, she was not examined by anyone with any license at all in the treatment of psychiatric or mental disorders.” *** family says she never had a substance abuse problem, but she was extremely obstinate and sometimes violent. She began to show signs of trouble at age 7 and went to several therapists before landing at KIDS, where *** labeled her as suffering from “compulsive behavior disorder.” After she left, a New York psychologist diagnosed her as having bipolar disorder, formerly called manic-depressive illness. In court papers, *** lawyer argued that there was no proof that KIDS aggravated *** condition. He said her parents could have removed her at any time, that they were aware of the program’s use of restraints, and that they did not object. According to data *** culled from KIDS records, *** was held in restraints 138 times, but her parents were notified only four times. The psychiatrists have their own defenses. *** court papers say that the *** didn’t ask him to evaluate their daughter. Since he worked at KIDS only eight hours a week, he depended on families and staff to alert him to problems. *** said he became the medical director in 1992 after *** was temporarily discharged. He signed one of her old charts even though he had not met her because of a paperwork backlog. He said that when *** returned to the program, nobody advised him. He worked there only four to six hours per week. *** said in an interview that he “didn’t feel comfortable” signing paperwork for patients he hadn’t met but that he was new on the job and didn’t want to say no to ***. “That was my own foolishness,” he said. “I failed, but the program was good for many kids.”
