2/26/2009
DAVID CLOUSTON
ESBON — Lea Daniels had had all she could take the day she walked off the job at the White Rock Academy in Esbon. The male staffers had taken the boys somewhere — she wasn’t sure where — leaving her alone and in charge of a handful of adolescent girls who were growing increasingly agitated. One of the girls, Daniels knew, was taking lithium and had severe mental problems and violent tendencies. On one occasion the girl had elbow-punched Daniels in the stomach. “I complained to Ted (Madsen, one of the facility owners) and reminded him that he had told me he would not accept ‘patients,’ just ‘students,’ and he told me the only reason they took her was because they needed the money,” Daniels said. Daniels says she was not given a policy handbook or any training after she took the job at the residential treatment center for troubled adolescents ages 11 to 18. When the male staffers and their charges returned, she walked out the front door. “They just totally misrepresented themselves,” she said, of the operators. The facility was closed down by Kansas Department of Health and Environment officials last week after multiple allegations of health and safety code violations dating back to September. KDHE spokesman Mike Heideman said this week that the White Rock Academy has complied with orders to remove the remaining 24 students from the academy to either their parents’ custody or another facility. So far, the operators have not filed a request for an appeal hearing on the state’s suspension order, he said.
Read more about the White Rock Academy in Friday's Salina Journal.