Staffer Blames Demotion on Hinckley Report

A psychologist at St. Elizabeths Hospital alleges she was transferred and punished after recommending that presidential assailant John W. Hinckley Jr. be permitted to leave the grounds for unsupervised visits with his parents.

“My career was fine, no problems--until I wrote the recommendation in 1996,” said Susan Lerner, a 15-year employee who said she has clashed with officials at the psychiatric hospital ever since. “Had it been any other patient, this never would have happened.”

She recently has sued in U.S. District Court, naming the District of Columbia government, the D.C. Commission on Mental Health Services and three administrators from St. Elizabeths Hospital as defendants. D.C. officials declined to discuss the allegations in her suit.

“We’re planning to file a motion to dismiss the complaint,” said Arabella Teal, the D.C. principal deputy corporation counsel.

Hinckley’s case has drawn enormous attention to St. Elizabeths since 1982, when he was brought there after a jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity in the 1981 shootings of President Reagan and three others. Over the years, there have been conflicting demands involving treatment. Federal prosecutors have opposed the loosening of restrictions; those who treat Hinckley have said his major depression and psychotic disorder have been in remission for years.

Lerner, 53, who headed Hinckley’s treatment team, signed the June 1996 report in which numerous mental health professionals unanimously urged Hinckley’s conditional release for 12 hours a month to visit his parents. But a hospital review board rejected the recommendation.

Meanwhile, Lerner said, her career took a turbulent turn. Her performance evaluation went down. She was transferred to a job with fewer opportunities to have an effect on patients. And now the hospital is trying to fire her, according to the lawsuit. In one of her many disputes with the hospital, the suit says, her license as a psychologist is threatened.

Lerner, of Germantown, Md., alleges in the suit that job-related stress has rendered her unable to work. Although she was diagnosed in 1982 with multiple sclerosis, she said she had managed her symptoms until officials “pushed me over the edge.”

She has been off work since February, first on sick leave, then on administrative leave without pay.

As for Hinckley, he remains at St. Elizabeths with no unsupervised visits. He occasionally takes short day trips with hospital staff.