CEDAR RAPIDS – Nurses Olivia Berger, Lora Smith and Angela Timmerman are among seven current and former Independence Mental Health Institute (MHI) employees who filed tort claims against the state facility in April. They say their life-altering injuries directly resulted from repeated assaults by patients, due to lack of workplace safety and gross negligence of employees and administrators there.
The MHI workers say the lack of security – with no cameras, no security guards, malfunctioning radios and improper training – directly resulted in repeated assaults on staff members by patients. The systemic failures created an environment for incident after incident and “repeated harm suffered by employees as a result of nonexistent or insufficient corrective action on the part of the responsible individuals,†according to their claims.
Timmerman was attacked in August of 2024, by an adolescent patient who ripped a large clump of hair from her scalp and threw her to the ground before foot-stomping repeatedly on her head. Her injuries required spinal surgery and have limited some of her mobility. Though she still suffers from PTSD and nightmares, Timmerman says she filed a claim, “To bring awareness to this whole situation because something needs to change. Somebody is going to die, and I don’t want for that to happen.â€
“When you left for work you didn’t always know that you were going to come home in the same condition you went to work in,†recalls Smith, who was brutally kicked in the abdomen by an MHI patient, causing the devastating miscarriage of her baby boy in June of 2024 (a pregnancy achieved after six months of invitro treatments). “It’s the most unsafe working environment you could walk into; a room full of schizophrenic, violent, paranoid, mentally ill patients and you have no real protection or security… there was no appropriate training at any level.â€
“There was really a disconnect between people working (in the wards) compared to management. They worked in a completely different building,†said Berger. After being attacked four times over the course of about a month in 2023 – including a sexual assault – Berger said she had sent several emails to management asking for support and improved security measures. No improvements had been made when on August 19th an unprovoked patient violently punched her in the face twice, causing a traumatic brain injury, concussion, hearing loss, headaches, PTSD, emotional trauma, anxiety, nightmares, panic attacks, hypervigilance, vertigo, floaters in her eyes, bruising on her arms and legs, contusions and lacerations around her eye.
When Berger reached out to Cedar Rapids attorney Darin Luneckas to file a workers’ compensation claim, she shared her story with the attorney and said there were other people suffering from serious injuries due to patient attacks at MHI.
“I believe we are looking at perhaps the most dangerous work conditions of any private or public employer in the state of Iowa. What we’ve seen so far may just be the tip of the iceberg,†said Luneckas. “If you’re going to send violent patients – inmates deemed mentally unfit to stand trial – to MHI, it shouldn’t be a situation where they are delivered to the facility under armed guard in handcuffs, then released to roam free in an institute ward. It’s laughable to look at these women and their injuries and have state leaders say employee safety is a priority. It’s clear that it’s just the opposite there and management couldn’t care less about safety.â€
“The State of Iowa should be setting the gold standard for worker and patient safety. Instead, they brazenly continue to demonstrate a complete and utter disregard for the safety of innocent workers who have committed their lives to helping others,†said West Des Moines attorney Bobby Rehkemper. “The leadership that has created and exacerbated these dangerous conditions has been given every opportunity to re-evaluate, self-assess and correct their deficiencies voluntarily and they arrogantly refuse to. So, these battered and bruised, brave women and men are courageously leading the charge to force positive and desperately needed change that will benefit workers and patients alike.â€
