The center can also investigate cases on its own, and it has a special prosecutor authorized to prosecute criminal allegations. State law requires that the Justice Center alert the offices of the local district attorney and medical examiner when deaths involve allegations of abuse and neglect.
Now advocates for people with developmental disabilities are trying to reform New York state’s system for investigating these cases. It was determined that criminal charges were not warranted in any of these cases.” Of these cases, 46 had at least one substantiated allegation of abuse or neglect, which may or may not have caused or contributed to the death in question. “In 2016, the Justice Center closed 114 abuse and neglect investigation cases in which a death was involved.
But those that do still have little chance of ending in a prosecution. In fact, the Justice Center declared that 4,169 closed abuse and neglect cases had at least one substantiated allegation in 2016, but only 114 prosecutions were initiated by either the Justice Center or a local district attorney that year, according to the Justice Center’s 2016 annual report. “Many developmentally disabled residents like Carolyn have died needless and very painful deaths,” Catherine said. But only a few dozen end with an arrest or prosecution, as data from Justice Center reports shows. The center’s investigators informed the sisters that they had found that the allegation was substantiated.īut two years later, no one has been arrested or prosecuted for Carolyn’s death.Ĭarolyn Jirak’s death was one of hundreds of cases closed by the Justice Center with substantiated allegations of abuse and neglect each year. Her younger sisters, Catherine Jirak Monetti and Patricia Jirak, suspected that abuse in the home caused Carolyn’s death, and they filed a complaint with the Justice Center for the Protection of People with Special Needs, a 4-year-old New York state agency charged with investigating allegations of abuse and neglect of people with developmental disabilities. She had been living in a group home for the disabled in Suffolk County. She was diagnosed with double pneumonia, and she had already had a broken knee and an infected ankle wound earlier that year.īut before her death, Carolyn could not even speak about what ailed her, because she had a severe developmental disability and very little verbal ability. Carolyn Jirak died in March 2015, at the age of 62, over a week after being admitted into the Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead, New York.
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