St. Mary’s Home for Children on Fruit Hill Avenue in North Providence is the only state-contracted residential psychiatric treatment center for children in Rhode Island. (Michael Salerno/Rhode Island Current)
Broken alarms. Locks that don’t lock. Children assaulting children. Scissors hidden in a pillow. A broken CD becomes a dagger.
The long list of problems at St. Mary’s Home for Children left Rep. Patricia Serpa, chair of the House Oversight Committee, at a loss for words Tuesday evening.
Egregious? Offensive? Unsafe?
“I don’t know what the word is,” said Serpa, a West Warwick Democrat, during a hearing on conditions at the youth residential treatment facility in North Providence.
The private nonprofit on Fruit Hill Avenue is the only state-contracted residential facility to provide psychiatric and behavioral care for youth in Rhode Island. Children aged 6-18 living there have histories of mental illness, abuse or special learning needs, and some have survived trafficking.
Maybe it was a surplus of words that left Serpa unable to choose the right one. The impetus of the two-hour hearing’s discussion was a 119-page report — 392 pages if you count the appendices — published by the Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) on Dec. 19, 2023. The report details eight months of abuse, negligence, assaults, misconduct, general chaos and even a biker gang led by a man named “Bam Bam” enlisted to protect the children from trafficking.