Centerstone of Florida knowingly sent mentally ill clients to an unlicensed assisted living facility operated by an 80-year-old convicted felon, an employee confirmed in a deposition tied to a double-murder case, an indication the taxpayer-funded behavioral health hospital violated state law.
Mary Jennings, a convicted drug and welfare fraud felon with no formal training in the mental health field, had been running the unlicensed assisted living facility in Bradenton. Jennings, who was the focus of a monthslong investigation recently published by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, said on Friday that her home had recently been shut down but did not say by which state agency. According to Florida statute, it is a third-degree felony to run an unlicensed assisted living facility.
“You shut me down,” Jennings told the Herald-Tribune when asked who closed her operation. “You know what you did.”…