Lawsuit: Hospital neglect led to teen girl’s rape
A 16-year-old female patient alleges inadequate staffing at a College Park psychiatric hospital led to her rape by another patient with a criminal record.
The unidentified assailant was arrested and charged in February with felony rape by Clayton County police. The lawsuit alleges Anchor Hospital has a history of understaffing and a 2014 federal inspection found that “the facility failed to assure that the nursing staff was available per their policy/staffing plan to meet the need of the patients.”
Chris Stewart, who represents the victim’s mother, said his client was being treated at Anchor for issues related to a previous sexual assault when she was in sixth grade.
“There’s video, we’ve been informed by the police, that showed the lookout, showed the perpetrator entering the shower,” Stewart said. “Someone at that facility who monitors the video should’ve been watching, should’ve seen from the video something weird was going on. But they failed to do that.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has just reached out to representatives of Anchor Hospital and will include their response when the complete story is posted later today on myajc.com
About the Author
A native Atlantan, Boone joined the AJC staff in 2007. He quickly carved out a niche covering crime stories, assuming the public safety beat in 2014. He's covered some of the biggest trials this decade, from Hemy Neuman to Ross Harris to Chip Olsen, the latter of which was featured on Season 7 of the AJC's award-winning "Breakdown" podcast.
