Stay up to date on the latest news and legislative alerts in mental health law: Email   ZIP For RSS readers
	Mentions in the media Woman files suit in forced strip search (Boston Globe) ER searches trigger painful memories (Boston Globe, Letters to the Editor) Court documents Complaint in Sampson v. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Media contacts Susan Stefan Center for Public Representation 617-965-0776 sstefan@cpr-ma.org Karen Bower Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law 202-467-5730 x 132 karenb@bazelon.org Clyde Bergstresser 617-241-3172 cbergstresser@ campbell-trial-lawyers.com

Woman Forcibly Stripped by Male Guards Sues Beth Israel Hospital

Boston, Massachusetts, June 5, 2006—A lawsuit filed in federal district court today charges that Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and one of its nurses, without justification, had five male guards forcibly strip a woman with a history of sexual abuse who had gone to the emergency room for treatment of migraine headaches. The suit requests damages to compensate Cassandra Sampson for “severe emotional and physical injuries” and reform of hospital policies that discriminate on the basis of psychiatric disability.

Ms.Sampson, 50, had previously used the psychiatric division of the hospital’s emergency department because of disabilities stemming from emotional and sexual abuse as a child. On March 25, 2005, suffering from severe migraine headaches, she went to the emergency department, where staff sent her to the psychiatric division. A nurse told her to disrobe completely. Ms Sampson took off everything but her pants, explaining that her history of sexual abuse made her fearful of removing them. She agreed to a thorough pat-down by a doctor to confirm that she had no unsafe object on her body.

After the pat-down, which confirmed that Ms. Sampson did not have any unsafe material, the nurse still insisted that Ms. Sampson remove her pants. The nurse then called five male security guards into Ms. Sampson’s small room. “I got really scared when they all crowded into the room before they even touched me,” she said. “I started having flashbacks of my father ripping my clothes off.”

While the guards held Ms. Sampson down by her arms and legs and pulled off her pants, she said, “I was screaming, ‘you are raping me.’ One said, ‘I don’t want to rape you,’ and I thought, ‘but you are, you are.’”

Susan Stefan of the Center for Public Representation, one of Ms. Sampson’s attorneys, notes that “hospitals with mandatory clothing-removal policies will tell you that they strip psychiatric patients to keep them ‘safe.’ These policies reflect a really distorted understanding of safety.” An evaluation by a psychiatrist “could have determined whether she was actually likely to harm herself,” Stefan explained.

Further, Stefan said, “such a practice is discriminatory. Nurses wouldn’t have male security guards forcibly strip a rape victim who didn’t want to take her clothes off. Many women with psychiatric disabilities are rape victims. That’s why they have the psychiatric symptoms in the first place. Many hospitals now understand how much harm this practice causes. I wish Beth Israel did.”

The lawsuit, known as Sampson v. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, asks the court to require the hospital to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which mandates “reasonable accommodation” of an individual’s disability. In this case, that would involve waiving the search policy unless a psychiatrist documented imminent risk to the patient or others.

“Such an order would be important nationwide,” said Karen Bower, an attorney with the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, who is co-counsel in the case. “Hospitals, of all entities, need to avoid discriminating against people based on their health conditions. Perhaps the trauma suffered by Cassandra Sampson will help educate medical personnel about their responsibilities.” 

The suit also seeks financial compensation for Ms. Sampson. “After they left me, no one covered me,” she recalled. “I never thought I would be hurt like this again. I knew I didn’t deserve it and that a hospital is never supposed to hurt so badly or invade you the way they made me feel.”

Clyde D. Bergstresser, a partner with the Boston law firm of Campbell, Campbell, Edwards and Conroy, who specializes in representing plaintiffs in major personal injury actions and who is also co-counsel in the case, stated that “it is no surprise and should be foreseeable to any hospital or health care worker that the forcible disrobing of a patient such as Cassandra Sampson with a rape and trauma history is very traumatic and damaging.”  There are claims in the complaint seeking compensation for those damages.

The Center for Public Representation is a non-profit public interest law firm providing mental health law and disability law services. For more information see www.centerforpublicrep.org.

The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is a national legal advocate for people with mental disabilities. For more information, see www.bazelon.org.

Campbell, Campbell, Edwards and Conroy is a national law firm specializing in complex civil litigation. For more information, see www.campbell-trial-lawyers.com.