Hospital techs guilty of patient assault

GOLDSBORO -- Two fired employees of a state mental hospital in Goldsboro were convicted Tuesday of beating a patient.

Wayne County District Court Judge David Brantley sentenced former Cherry Hospital workers Taniko Dominique Upton and William Kenneth Johnson to four weekends in jail for misdemeanor convictions of assaulting a handicapped person. The judge also ordered supervised probation and community service.

Handled by a special prosecutor from the N.C. Attorney General's Office, the case is a rare example of state mental hospital workers disciplined internally for abusing or neglecting patients, as well as punished by the criminal justice system.

The beating at Cherry occurred August 18, the same week federal regulators were at the hospital investigating the death of a patient who choked on his medication, fell and was then left sitting dazed in a chair for more than 22 hours without food, water or adequate medial attention.

“There is a culture of violence there,” Assistant Attorney General Doug Thoren said of Cherry Hospital as he urged the judge to sentence the former state employees to jail time. “It needs to stop.”

Tuesday's verdict came after two female health care technicians who worked at Cherry through a temporary agency testified they saw Upton and Johnson beat a patient on August 18.

Both temps also said they were later pressured by Cherry employees to keep quiet about what they had seen.

The trial opened with the testimony of Whitney Hodgin, the temp who reported the assault. She said she had been working at Cherry about two months when a female patient got in a verbal altercation with a male patient in an outdoor breezeway used as a smoking area.

Hodgin said she and fellow temp Crystal Jones separated the female patient from the male patient. Soon, all the patients but the male involved in the argument returned inside. Four staff members remained outside as well.

Both Hodgin and Jones testified the patient, a 30-year-old man with bipolar disorder, then had an exchange of words with Upton, a health care technician. Without warning, Upton then punched the patient in the stomach, the women said.

Johnson grabbed and held the patient as Upton continued to beat him. The patient collapsed to the floor in a fetal position as the two Cherry workers, both large men over six feet tall, continued to punch and kick him in the head and upper body.

Neither woman tried to stop the beating, which they estimated lasted two to three minutes.

“I froze,” Jones said. “I'd never seen anyone beat up before.”

When the patient and four employees returned inside, the battered man went to a nurses station and reported the assault. The patient also went up to a Cherry Hospital police officer then walking through the ward and said he had been “jumped by two guys,” according to courtroom testimony. He was also examined by a physician assistant, who observed bruises on his neck and heard complaints of soreness in the ribs.

None of the Cherry employees reported the assault.

That night, after she left the hospital, Hodgin called a hotline operated by the temporary agency she works for and said she had witnessed a beating. She said she didn't report the assault to hospital officials because she feared retaliation, a fear she said was still with her in court three months later as she testified a few feet away from where the two accused me were sitting.

“I didn't know if I would be next if I said anything,” Hodgin said. “I was scared. I was in shock.”

Hodgin's employer called the hospital the next morning, where an internal investigation was launched. Photographs of the patient taken that day, presented in court, showed scratches and extensive bruising on the head, neck and torso.

Jones admitted on the witness stand she initially mislead investigators, saying she didn't see any assault. She said she had been pressured by Upton and Johnson, who she described as friends, to lie.

“I denied it,” said Jones, who said she was stressed out by the incident she refused to return to work at Cherry. “They said if we stick together, nothing will happen.”

Hodgin also testified that after she came forward, Cherry employees attempted to persuade her to back off.

“I've been harassed at work about it,” she said. “They've called me a snitch.”