The Fortress Part Two of Five: Protected in Hell

 

 

Padlocked refrigerator at Oak Park unlicensed group home. Image by Slone Terranella

A Michigan court tasked with protecting its most vulnerable citizens has become home to a roiling controversy charging abuse, exploitation, robbery and neglect.

By Gretchen Rachel Hammond, Slone Terranella, Ellen Chamberlain and Hope Winkles

Editor: Christie Chisholm

Research: Gretchen Rachel Hammond, Slone Terranella, Ellen Chamberlain and Hope Winkles

Forensic investigator: Tim Mulholland, CFE, MSAF

“Get me the hell out of here!”

It was a Saturday evening on Thanksgiving weekend, 2018, and Carolyn was sobbing bitterly in the living room of an unassuming four-bedroom bungalow on Leslie Street in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park.

The home was one of a myriad of unlicensed small group facilities across Michigan’s Oakland, Wayne and Genesee Counties in which adults and developmentally disabled individuals have been placed after being declared an “incapacitated ward” by Oakland County Probate Court Judges, Jennifer Callaghan, Linda Hallmark, Daniel A. O’Brien and Chief Judge Kathleen Ryan.

Carolyn, 64, who like her two roommates, Rita and Mary, asked to keep her last name private, had been moved into the facility by her court-appointed guardian and former Oakland County Public Administrator John Yun.

The three women told this investigation that they had been alone since the previous Wednesday, when all staff left for the Thanksgiving holiday. On their way out, someone had wrapped a large chain around the handles of the kitchen’s refrigerator/freezer combo unit and padlocked them shut.