COBB COUNTY, Ga. — The guardian of a woman with severe autism wants a mental health hospital shut down. She says a patient sexually assaulted her loved one, and the hospital did nothing about it.
The guardian walked Channel 2’s Tom Jones through what the victim says happened.
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“She’s been taught that if something happens to you, you tell somebody,” the guardian said about the victim, who has a mental capacity of a 5 or 6-year-old.
The guardian says the 20-year-old woman says she told staff at Ridgeview Institute in Smyrna something horrible happened to her in her room.
The guardian, who did not want to be identified, says staff asked her to write down what happened.
“And then she says that they didn’t do anything about it. They just laughed. They all just laughed. They didn’t do anything,” she said.
The guardian says the victim told her a man sexually assaulted her.
Ridgeview never told her what happened and never reported it to police, she said.
She had to call police herself.
Smyrna police arrested 36-year-old Martez Williams, who was a patient there. He faces a rape charge.
Dr. Rod Edmond, the guardian’s attorney, says he filed a lawsuit against Ridgeview for its negligence in protecting the victim. “She’s basically gonna have years and years of worsened psychological trauma,” he said during a news conference announcing the lawsuit.
She says the victim was making amazing progress dealing with her autism. Now she says all that progress has been lost after this incident. “She doesn’t feel safe. I can’t leave the home. she wants to come sleep in the bed with me.”
The guardian says the victim keeps blaming herself for what happened. She also says the hospital refused to allow her to speak on her behalf about this incident. That’s even though she says they have paperwork showing she is her legal guardian.
She wants everyone involved in this incident held accountable.
“They need to be shut down. Just shut it down. This should not happen to anyone,” she said.
Jones left a message with Ridgeview’s CEO asking for a response to these allegations. He has not heard back.
Channel 2 Action News has reported police have investigated 40 sex crime allegations at Ridgeview since 2021.
State investigators say seven of those incidents weren’t reported or investigated.
The state ordered Ridgeview to follow proper incident reporting procedures.
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