Some State Hospital staffers regularly break rules, worker alleges

A social worker on disciplinary leave from the Hawaii State Hospital since October said employees regularly help patients leave the hospital out of sympathy, pick on patients they don’t like — and even turn on one another while security guards look the other way.

In the aftermath of the escape and eventual capture of killer Randall Saito last week, Rhoda Kahemalani Palenapa — a 46-year-old, Social Worker IV in the Hawaii State Hospital’s Unit F — said some of the hospital’s 630 staff members regularly violate minor and major rules — from openly using cellphones in areas where they’re banned to smuggling in drugs for patients they like.

Palenapa did not work with Saito, who was sent to the Kaneohe hospital in 1981 after being found not guilty by reason of insanity for killing Sandra Yamashiro at Ala Moana Center in 1979. But her experiences working at the facility may provide insight and help answer questions raised in the wake of his escape — such as how he may have gotten cash and a false ID.

She said in preparation for court-ordered release from the facility, hospital employees routinely help patients acquire government documents, along with any money they would have accumulated through payments such as Social Security benefits.

Even when patients such as Saito have not been cleared to be released, Palenapa alleged that hospital employees may have helped him escape out of sympathy.

“How did Randall Saito get away?” Palenapa asked. “They (hospital employees) help the patients get away because they feel sorry for the patients that have been there a long time.”

In a jailhouse interview outside of Stockton, Calif., Saito refused to say if he had help, where he got the money to travel, or how he acquired a fake ID, according to The Associated Press.

At the Hawaii State Hospital, Palenapa said, Saito was housed in a unit for patients who had committed crimes such as rape and murder while she worked with patients in Unit F “who aren’t as violent.”

Palenapa maintained that Saito would have had access to plenty of money through any Social Security benefits he would have received. From May 2015 to April 2016, Palenapa said she volunteered to inventory patients’ documents because social workers were wasting time and effort reapplying for misfiled records. “If he (Saito) was on Social Security … he had (money and) everything he needed to escape,” Palenapa said.

She said it’s routine for hospital staff members to take patients released by a judge from the Hawaii State Hospital to a bus stop and give them cash.

“We drop people off at the bus and give them $3 because we can’t find housing for everybody,” she said. “I was surprised. But that’s the only procedure I was taught.”

Palenapa alleged that staff members would have been in a position to help Saito get the documents and money he needed to call for a cab on Sunday, pay cash for a chartered flight to Maui and then get on a commercial flight to California.

Seven Hawaii State Hospital workers were suspended without pay on Wednesday and state health officials said more disciplinary actions may follow. Officials said the employees on different shifts “may have inadvertently or purposely neglected” to properly supervise Saito.

At a news conference Wednesday at the Capitol, state Attorney General Douglas Chin declined to provide details on how Saito escaped but said: “This was premeditated. It was intentional. It was planned. This was something that wasn’t done by somebody suffering from a mental defect.”

Palenapa worked for two years at the Hawaii State Hospital until she was placed on leave with pay effective Oct. 6 for allegedly violating federal patient confidentiality rules, according to a letter dated Oct. 6 from the hospital that Palenapa provided to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

On that same day, she filed a police report alleging that a hospital “psych tech” sexually harassed her on three occasions between June and July at the hospital.

In a handwritten, signed statement, Palenapa wrote in a police report that the psych tech “grabbed my butt while I was reviewing patient charts, he grabbed me from behind, rubbed his crotch on me while I was looking for patient personal belongings in storage room he motioned me over to him in our treatment team room grabbed me, fondled me & kissed me until I pushed him away.”

She added in the filing: “I reported this to my boss & was put on leave with pay pending investigation. I was scared for my life and know the hospital will retaliate against me for this.”

Palenapa said she is now on unpaid leave.

She has since filed complaints against the hospital with the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Palenapa, a Kailua mother of four, said security guards this summer gave her a heads-up that both patients and fellow employees were looking to do her harm — then did nothing to protect her.

“They warn you that you’re on your own, ‘Watch your back,’” Palenapa said. “When staff get attacked by patients, it’s usually because the staff allowed it.”

Palenapa wrote in her complaint to the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission that she believes she was targeted because of an affair she had with her direct supervisor.

She told the Star-Advertiser that she was going through a divorce and now regrets the three-month affair that began in the early part of this year and ended in March.

“He could see how vulnerable I was,” Palenapa said of her supervisor. “Once it became more intimate, I wasn’t comfortable. I regret it.”

Palenapa said she then got in trouble for trying to protect a 150-pound, African-American male patient who was being bullied by both patients and staff.

Staff members, some of them 6 feet 3 inches tall, “manhandled (the patient) because of his race,” Palenapa alleged.

State Health Department officials, who oversee the Hawaii State Hospital, issued a statement that read: “The Hawaii State Hospital provides inpatient psychiatric services for court-ordered individuals within a safe and therapeutic environment. The hospital recently earned national reaccreditation by the Joint Commission. As part of the extensive and detailed requirements to renew accreditation, the hospital must maintain a high standard of patient safety and quality of care. All credible allegations of abuse at the hospital are investigated thoroughly by an independent agency. If there was any neglect, mistreatment, or abuse at the hospital, then corrective actions are instituted as required.”

The Health Department did not respond directly to Palenapa’s allegations.

The Health Department did say the hospital holds 202 patients, the maximum allowed under its license. But Palenapa alleged that the hospital sometimes has as many as 215 patients.

“They start to panic when they get to 208,” she said. “They’re smashing them in.”