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Closure for a Quack
Victim
Date: 2000-03-20
By Tim O'Brien
In 1993, V. Miller Newton
titled his doctoral dissertation in clinical neuropsychology,
"Guiding Youth Through the Perilous Ordeal." To hundreds of teen-
agers who have been subjected to his bizarre methods at the
rehabilitation treatment centers he ran in New Jersey and three
other states, the title is rich irony.
Their ordeal was documented
in a suit by one of those patients, Rebecca Ehrlich, who, like
others in Newton's program, never got the treatment for the disorder
that led to her enrollment.
At age 14, Ehrlich was
placed in KIDS of Bergen County Inc. in Hackensack by her parents on
Feb. 24, 1987. They sent her there not for drug or alcohol use,
school problems, juvenile delinquency or running away, but for
family and behavior problems.
Ehrlich, a freshman with a B
average at Wayne Hills High School in Wayne who never tried drugs or
alcohol, was an obstinate, rebellious teen-ager. Like most parents
who came to Newton's program, Rebecca's family was desperate for a
solution to their daughter's problems and for family peace.
Ehrlich was pulled out of
school; cut off from family and friends; imprisoned in locked,
guarded rooms; strip-searched; denied books, telephone calls and
letters; denied the right to read anything or speak to anyone
privately; and deprived of sleep.
For six years -- until she
was graduated in June 1993 -- she was a virtual prisoner, moving
about with an "old timer" constantly holding her by the back of her
pants, a practice called belt-looping.
She was the victim of
routine physical and emotional abuse. She couldn't shower or
defecate in private. She was roughed up for so much as crossing her
legs or making eye contact with another patient while being forced
to sit ramrod in a plastic blue chair, locked in 12 hours of
so-called group therapy sessions seven days a week. Even lunch and
dinner was eaten in the blue chairs.
All this, for $9,500 a year.
On Dec. 23, 1999, after five
years of teeth-pulling discovery and obfuscation by Newton, Rebecca
Ehrlich -- now 27 -- got some compensation for the pain the six-
year ordeal caused: a $4.5 million settlement of her suit in Hudson
County Superior Court. The settlement, reached 11 days before a
trial to be heard by Judge Maurice Gallipoli, ended the case of
Ehrlich v. KIDS, HUD-L-4592-95.
The money is to be paid by
malpractice insurers for Newton, his wife, his nonprofit
corporations, and four defendant psychiatrists, Raymond Edelman of
Teaneck, Zisalo Wancier of Closter, Harry Panjwani of Ridgewood and
Alvin Galitzin, who died about 10 years ago.
Newton's insurance carrier
will pay $2 million of the total. The psychiatrists' carriers will
pay the total of their policies, which comes to $2.5 million.
Ehrlich will receive $3.5 million up front and $1 million paid over
time.
'Renting Signatures'
Meanwhile Newton, whose
centers have now been closed down, has retreated to Madeira Beach,
Fla.
Ehrlich's lawyer, Philip
Elberg, had said in court papers that he would argue at trial that
"Dr. Newton" was a cult leader, charlatan and insurance fraud
artist.
Elberg, a partner with
Medvin & Elberg in Newark, charges that Newton, who received his
master's degree in divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and
sports a nine-page, single-spaced resume, lacked credentials or
qualifications to be a "clinical director" or to provide treatment
for compulsive behavior problems. KIDS had held itself out as a
place for treatment of such problems, as well as for drug and
alcohol abuse and eating disorders.
The psychiatrists named in
the suit -- all medical directors at KIDS -- admitted in depositions
that they allowed program graduate staffers or senior patients at
the Hackensack rehabilitation facility to stamp their signatures on
necessary regulatory forms, charts, letters and insurance claim
forms. Elberg called the practice "renting signatures."
Ehrlich's 1987 intake
diagnosis, for instance, was rubber-stamped with the signature of
Panjwani -- five years after Ehrlich was admitted. Panjwani later
swore he never saw her, or evaluated her, and "would not know her
from a hole in the wall." He explained that his rubber-stamp was
used for the "bookkeeping ... and record keeping ... required by
accreditation."
At the end of discovery in
Ehrlich's case, Newton admitted that no one with any professional
license ever diagnosed, evaluated or treated Ehrlich. (Years later,
a New York psychologist would diagnose her as having a bipolar
disorder and associated mental problems.) Newton also said that all
such evaluations or treatment were done by unlicensed and untrained
"peer counselors," namely, participants who had gone through the
program's five phases.
Newton was also forced, by a
demand for admissions, to concede that he could find no published
study, report or book that advocated his treatment protocol.
Instead, he pointed to his
own unpublished studies. Two such studies were cited in footnotes in
a book he wrote. But after three motions demanding production of
those studies, Newton certified that he couldn't find them.
Defendant Wancier admitted
that he signed treatment plans for Ehrlich eight months after the
plan allegedly was put into effect. He, too, conceded never actually
meeting with Ehrlich. "I may have seen her in the hallway."
Wancier acknowledged that
Newton had him sign treatment plans so they could be submitted for
insurance claims. He later left the program, partly because his
paychecks bounced.
Fellow psychiatrist Edelman
said in a deposition that he tried to get Newton to change his
methods, but Newton would not take the advice of a doctor.
Newton has an unlisted
number in Madeira Beach, and could not be reached. His attorney,
John O'Farrell of Morristown's Francis & O'Farrell, said he does not
discuss his cases with the press. The lawyers for three of the
psychiatrists did not return telephone calls seeking comment. The
lawyer for Galitzin, Justin Johnson of Fairfield's Lunga, Evers &
Johnson, confirmed the settlement but declined to comment.
Warning Signs From Early
1980s
Though Newton, 61, is
finally out of New Jersey, Ehrlich, Elberg and his co- counsel,
Robert Jones, don't deserve all the credit.
State regulators,
prosecutors, insurance carriers, other patients-cum- plaintiffs and
investigative print and broadcast journalists have been after Newton
-- a former Methodist minister and failed politician -- since he
reinvented himself as a rehabilitation guru in Florida.
But he always seemed to
survive, billing himself as Dr. Newton, the clinical director, even
though his initial Ph.D., awarded in 1981, was in public
administration and urban anthropology from The Union Institute in
Cincinnati, which bills itself as an "alternative ... learner-
directed" school with no campus or attendance requirements. Later
resumes describe Newton's Ph.D. as being in "medical anthropology."
His clinical neuropsychology
doctorate was awarded from the same school, in September 1993, 13
years after he became a clinical director at a similar Florida
treatment program and nine years after he opened KIDS in New Jersey.
In early 1998, the state
Department of Human Services threatened to cut off Medicaid
reimbursement for Newton's program unless corrections were made. The
program had depended on the money because most of its patients no
longer were suburban youths covered by private insurance but urban
teen-agers.
The state cited, among other
things, the use of physical restraints and the use of senior
patients with no qualifications to help run the program. In
Ehrlich's case, records show, she was restrained more than 100
times, for such offenses as having a penny or a hair barrette in her
possession.
By then, KIDS had been
kicked out of its Hackensack location for nonpayment of more than
$400,000 in back rent. But, relocated in Secaucus and redubbed KIDS
of North Jersey Inc., Newton's center fought on, winning two stays
from the Division of Mental Health Services in order to file two
plans of correction.
On May 1, 1998, when the
agency finally pulled the plug, Newton pushed for reconsideration,
which led to hearings before Administrative Law Judge Daniel McKeown
in the fall of 1998. After the hearing, when more former patients
and parents testified about sleep deprivation, beatings, kidnappings
of escaped patients, a total lack of privacy for so-called
newcomers, and a total "blackout" from the outside world, McKeown
recommended that Newton's final appeal be dismissed.
Simultaneously, Elberg and
Jones were tightening the noose in Hudson County. They obtained a
highly damaging deposition by a former staffer who said Newton
doctored and withheld records. The attorneys also moved,
successfully, to unseal part of the hearing before McKeown, which
had been closed by the Office of Administrative Law.
By the fall of 1998, Newton
was close to throwing in the towel and closing his remaining KIDS
center. Regulators had shut him down in Texas, Utah and California,
while some insurers and governmental agencies had stopped paying
claims because the treatment had not been provided by doctors. His
goal of opening up to 25 KIDS of America centers is now in ashes.
KIDS of North Jersey finally
closed on Nov. 2, 1998, and Newton and his wife, Ruth Ann, the KIDS
assistant director, returned to their home in Florida.
In June 1999, the state
filed an action against KIDS for $1 million in Medicaid overbillings.
Human Services officials expressed little hope of recovering
anything, but the action is pending.
An 18-Year Run
But the remarkable aspect of
this story is that it took so long to shut Newton down, given all
the accusations swirling around him and his treatment protocol.
As far back as 1984, as
Newton was starting up in New Jersey, CBS's 60 Minutes broadcast an
expose on Straight Inc. in St. Petersburg, Fla., where Newton had
started out, working his way up to national clinical director by
1982 and running Straight's clinic in Sarasota. Newton said he got
involved after placing his 15- year-old son in the program for drug
abuse.
That show highlighted a suit
brought by 19-year-old college student Fred Collins who went to
Straight to visit his brother and was coerced into the program
himself. He was kept against his will in the intake room for more
than 10 hours, without being allowed to talk to his parents, until
he signed himself in. Collins told 60 Minutes of routine beatings by
peer counselors, patients in the advanced phases, who exercise total
control over newcomers.
Collins busted out by
smashing a locked window. (Others in the four KIDS centers have told
reporters and testified that they jumped from moving cars, jumped
off roofs and ran naked from a host home in the dead of night.
Straight and KIDS use such homes in which parents of longtime
patients take in and lock up newcomers each night).
Collins said he tried to get
out because he was an adult, and made the obligatory written request
to leave. But his request went to a 15-year-old girl who told 60
Minutes she tossed it in the trash, which she was instructed to do.
In Rebecca Ehrlich's case,
Elberg obtained two notes from his client in which she requested to
speak to the county prosecutor and leave. But records show she did
not use the right form or correct request procedure, so her requests
were ignored. One note, handed over in discovery, is marked "wrong C
of C" (chain of command). Elberg says the staffer who wrote that
note testified he did not know what form should be used.
Newton instructed staffers
to toss requests to leave or speak to someone, former patients and
staffers have said in litigation and to reporters.
In 1989 and 1990, Bergen
County Prosecutor Larry McClure investigated KIDS. He found no
criminality, but recommended that the state Attorney General's
Office probe the operation. In one raid conducted by his office, a
dozen youths told county officials they wanted to leave the center
and they were escorted out.
The 60 Minutes segment also
showed Straight Inc. director Bill Oliver belittling the idea that
Collins couldn't go anywhere he wanted. "We have no record of Fred
Collins asking to leave this program at any time."
The jury awarded Collins
$220,000 for his five months in what his attorney called a private
jail.
The Florida Attorney
General's Office investigated Straight in 1983. In 1989, Florida
state prosecutor David Levin described the program for ABC-TV's
20/20 as "... a sort of private jail, utilizing techniques such as
torture and punishment which even a convicted criminal would not be
subject to."
Newton responded on 20/20,
"I don't like the word imprison. Imprison implies punishment." Call
it "an isolation ward if you like," he said, adding that he opposes
violence. Distancing himself from Straight years later, he said that
when "I became clinical director and suddenly found out that there
was this thing going on, I never heard of it before, then I walked
in and said, 'For god's sake, I am against any harm to any kid at
any place, tell us what the problem is so we can fix it.'"
But other former patients
sued, including one who was awarded $721,000 in 1990 and settled for
$400,000. The plaintiff's lawyer, Karen Barnett of Tampa, told The
Record of Hackensack, "Every case we had involved assault and at
least two of them involved assault directed by Newton."
In the midst of the Florida
investigation in late 1983, Straight's Sarasota program closed and
Newton moved to Hackensack, where he started KIDS. Dozens of
ex-patients have said, some in litigation, that he took Straight's
model to more excess in New Jersey.
How excessive? In April
1992, Secaucus Municipal Judge Emil DelBaglivo convicted three male
KIDS peer counselors, all 23, of simple assault for dragging 17-
year-old Channery Soto into a room and pummeling him for a
half-hour. DelBaglivo was quoted in The Record as calling KIDS a
"highly questionable" place. He said something was "radically wrong"
if the program's director would condone what the judge described as
"almost unbelievable" conduct. "Someone should look into it," he
said.
The article also quoted one
of the defendants, peer counselor Michael O'Connor, as saying, "We
knew it was wrong, but [Newton] told us to do it. I was under his
command and that's why I left."
In another case reported on
a 1989 broadcast of ABC-TV's West 57th St., a peer counselor was
arrested for assault after jumping an 18-year-old man who had just
left the program, and forcing him back with help from another
patient. The victim, beaten bloody, was treated at Holy Name
Hospital in Teaneck.
Newton told the show he had
no knowledge of the incident, but program graduate Christy Johnson
countered that Newton told her to try to persuade the victim to drop
the charges. In return, she said she told the victim that KIDS
wouldn't come after him anymore.
And in 1996 Newton was sued
by the federal government for billing the Federal Employees Health
Benefits Program for treatment by physicians when the physicians
signing the claim form provided no services. Newton, admitting no
wrongdoing, agreed to return $45,000 for 245 claims.
There's much more. As far
back as 1989, another administrative law judge, Edith Klinger,
concluded after a hearing that KIDS was not in compliance with a
host of state safety and health regulations. She pushed for having
the place closed unless it applied for a certificate of need from
the state Health Department.
Klinger conducted a hearin
on a certificate of need application by KIDS rug abuse treatment
center. For five years, KIDS was not licensed by any state agency,
in part, according to state records, because it held itself out as a
program that was following the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. In
fact, KIDS had little resemblance to AA. Newton cut the steps down
to eight and overlaid the operation with what Ehrlich's experts call
cult-like mind control. All patients and parents, in or out, were
designated as in good or bad standing; no contact was permitted with
those in bad standing.
Klinger concluded that
Newton lacked the statutorily required good moral character to get
the program certified, urging further investigation.
By late last year, Elberg
and Jones had more documented information about KIDS and Newton than
anyone else had amassed. They had 28 depositions, including four by
Newton. Most important, they had the original, unredacted treatment
records, documenting every restraint and incident, as well as every
ersatz psychiatric evaluation, diagnosis or treatment, which
staffers testified was essentially the same for everyone at KIDS.
Elberg says three key
turning points led to the settlement.
First, Judge Gallipoli ruled
last March that Elberg could argue for punitive damages if he got to
a jury and allowed the attorney to take discovery on the personal
assets of all the defendants. "That forced the psychiatrists to
think twice about losing their house," Elberg says.
Second, a deposition of
staffer Jeffrey Stallings in January 1999 disclosed that Newton
hadn't turned over many of the original records subpoenaed earlier.
Stallings -- who, like others, left when he didn't get paid for
three months -- testified that Newton altered records in
anticipation of an inspection of the program by regulators. He also
said Newton withheld some records.
"Getting the unredacted
original records was key because then it didn't matter what Miller
Newton said, and I didn't really need witnesses," said Elberg.
Third, in finally obtaining
all the records, Elberg says he could develop an overall strategy of
"showing the perverseness of Rebecca's treatment, especially all her
many setbacks to Phase 1 for unbelievable reasons, including eating
cookies." KIDS claimed that Ehrlich, who spent about 3 1/2 years in
Phase 1 and was overweight, had an eating disorder.
In the end, the case boiled
down to garden-variety counts -- consumer fraud, civil rights
violations, breach of contract, assault and medical malpractice.
The damages, according to
the plaintiff's papers, are the harm done to Rebecca, who really
needed mental health care for her bipolar disorder. Instead, her
condition worsened.
Ehrlich, like dozens of
other ex- KIDS clients, was later treated for post- traumatic stress
disorder, and it was her private psychiatrist who suggested she find
a lawyer and seek closure.
Says Elberg: "She said what
so many have said, that while parents took kids off the street for
safety, the kids were never in a more dangerous place than when they
were in that place."
Newton, meanwhile, is back
in Madeira Beach, where he ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1972
and 1976, and unsuccessfully for mayor in 1988, while he was heading
KIDS in Hackensack.
As long ago as the
mid-1980s, Newton was spouting about the wholesome nature of his
program. He told 20/20 at that time: "Our program is construed as a
teen- age peer culture that is anti-drug, pro- responsible behavior,
pro-achievement, pro- family, pro-good appearance, and pro-good
moral values."
But when his Medicaid
funding was finally pulled by the state, one key reason was the
conclusion by state Human Services officials that KIDS was, in fact,
a program that failed to bring families back together.
Like many others, Rebecca
Ehrlich today has reconciled with her parents, and continues to be
treated for her bipolar disorder.
Web Published Monday,
January 24, 2000 Published in New Jersey Law Journal on: Monday,
January 24, 2000
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