Universal Health Services: Lawsuit against Gulfport Behavioral Says 17-Year-Old Patient Raped 13-Year-Old Patient

June 30, 2020

The family of a 13-year-old girl was promised a safe environment when she was hospitalized for depression at Gulfport Behavioral Health Hospital.

Instead, a 17-year-old male patient raped her, a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Gulfport says.

The girl’s mother filed the lawsuit against Gulfport Behavioral and parent company Universal Health

Services Inc., one of the largest healthcare providers in the country.

The Sun Herald does not identify victims or potential victims of sexual assault, although the mother‘s name is on the lawsuit filed on the child’s behalf. The lawsuit seeks $1 million in damages to compensate the victim for injury and $20 million in punitive damages.

The 13-year-old Gulfport girl had a female roommate the same age at Gulfport Behavioral, the lawsuit says.

The other female was friends with the 17-year-old male patient and “coerced” the victim to go to the boy’s room on March 26, 2019.

The boy then raped her, the lawsuit says.

Attorney Douglas Lee of Hattiesburg told the Sun Herald the boy was charged as a juvenile with statutory rape, but the case is confidential and the attorney did not know if it had been concluded.

The lawsuit accuses Gulfport Behavioral of negligence in hiring, training and supervision of employees and gross negligence because of a disregard for patient safety.

The lawsuit says:

“It was reasonably foreseeable that a seventeen-year-old male patient would seek to have sex with younger female patients like TW, that a thirteen-year-old girl suffering from depression would make an easy sexual target for an older predatory male, and that sexual intercourse would occur unless measures were taken to adequately supervise the teenagers.”

Lee, who is representing the family, says in the lawsuit that punitive damages should be awarded because he will prove at trial that negligent supervision at UHS behavioral centers has led to sexual assaults at other locations.

UHS “was aware that its pattern and practice of allowing the commingling of young teen-aged men and vulnerable young girls had resulted in sexual assaults in the recent past yet did nothing to correct this problem,” the lawsuit says. “Its motivation to allow these sexual assaults on children in its care was continued financial gain.”

UHS did not respond to a Sun Herald email asking for comment on the lawsuit.

Lee said the 13-year-old Gulfport girl suffered emotional and physical damage from the assault. He told the Sun Herald that the girl was suffering from severe depression and the rape added to her problems.

He said she is still in counseling but is doing better.

Source: Anita Lee, “A teen girl was raped by another patient at Gulfport Behavioral, federal lawsuit says,” Biloxi Sun Herald, June 29, 2020.