Mother of Sarah Clark suing GT County

TRAVERSE CITY -- The mother of a young Kingsley woman who hanged herself in the Grand Traverse County Jail filed a federal lawsuit against the county.

Sarah Clark, 21, stretched a noose made of socks around her neck and hanged herself in a shower room at the jail Feb. 28, 2008. She died a few days later at Munson Medical Center.

Attorneys for Clark's mother, Wendy Blodgett, recently filed suit in U.S. District Court. It names the county, former Sheriff Scott Fewins, current Sheriff Tom Bensley, two corrections officers and the jail as defendants.

The suit alleges jail officials didn't do enough to prevent Clark, who had a well-documented history of depression and suicide attempts, from killing herself.

Jail records contained repeated mentions of Clark's suicidal tendencies as recorded during her previous stays there, and jail staffers knew she was a suicide risk, according to the suit.

The suit seeks an unspecified amount in monetary damages, though Blodgett contends she's far more concerned about forcing the jail to improve its policies.

"I'm not doing this to bring my daughter back," she said Wednesday. "I'm doing this to save the next person."

The suit asks the court to order sheriff's officials to train personnel to adequately determine when an inmate is a suicide risk, appoint an independent third party to monitor suicide prevention training, and retrofit jail facilities to lower the risk of suicide attempts.

Jail personnel left Clark to shower unsupervised for about a half-hour, and the day before she hanged herself they denied her request to meet with a Community Mental Health caseworker, the suit alleges. Those and other actions indicate the sheriff's department was "deliberately indifferent to Clark's constitutional right to remain safe while incarcerated at the jail."

"If I'm baby-sitting your four-year-old and I put him in the bathtub and walk away for 30 minutes, whose fault is that when the child drowns?" Blodgett said. "In my own house I was constantly monitoring her for physical and mental reasons ... the sheriff's department said don't worry, and I left her (at the jail) because I thought she was safe."

Corrections officers named in the suit are Christopher Boven, who escorted her to the shower, and John McPeake, who conducted her medical screening when she arrived at the jail Feb. 24. McPeake recommended Clark for close supervision, but declined to officially designate her as a suicide risk.

In a response to the lawsuit, attorneys for the county contend 30 minutes wasn't an "inordinate" amount of time for Clark to be left in the shower, and they deny allegations that jail employees knew Clark was a suicide risk or acted in any way to endanger her.

They also refute the allegation that Clark was denied the right to meet with a mental health worker.

The pain has slowly eased for Clark's family in the year since her death, Blodgett said, though the loss still hurts.

"There's good days and bad days, but our support system is so huge," Blodgett said. "It's still a little shaky, but emotionally we're going to be fine."

Photos

Wendy Blodgett, mother of Sarah Clark, has filed a federal lawsuit. Record-Eagle

Sarah Clark