‘He’s no safer there than he is at home’: One family’s nightmare at St. Mary’s Home for Children

Their fears were realized barely one day after he was admitted.

In his first year at St. Mary’s, Trevor ran away twice, once found walking along Route 295 heading to Boston. He easily obtained sharp objects at the facility and used them to cut himself. He and the other children were fed cheap meals or fast food. The family found broken glass on the playground. The facility was dark and dirty, a boarded-up broken window blocked out the sunlight.

Donna Goulet-Truppi and Paul Truppi also said St. Mary’s made mistakes with Trevor’s medication and hasn’t followed its safety plan for him.

In voice memos and text messages he shared with the Globe, which were recorded and shared with his grandparents’ permission, Trevor described chaos at the facility and said he does not feel safe.

“I want ppl to know what they put me through,” Trevor texted the Globe. “It’s like living in a house full of tyrants.”

The nonprofit facility, once an orphanage operated under the Episcopal Diocese, is under contract with the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, to provide psychiatric residential treatment services for children. It also has a school for children with various learning, emotional, and behavioral challenges, and provides outpatient services for those affected by sexual abuse and exploitation.

A few weeks after the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth, and Families recommended St. Mary’s to the Truppis, the agency and the Office of the Child Advocate launched investigations of the home. What they found alarmed DCYF enough to stop placing children there in November. In January, the child advocate reported it found abuse, neglect, an overwhelmed staff, and disturbing turmoil at a place that cares for the state’s most vulnerable children.

Trevor, who asked to be identified by just his first name, turned 16 years old at St. Mary’s last June. He is still there, along with 10 other children.

The Truppis agreed to be interviewed by the Globe because they don’t believe St. Mary’s is taking the concerns documented by the Office of the Child Advocate seriously. Its longtime executive director stepped down when the report came out, but there have been no other substantial staff changes. The Truppis worried that going public would lead to retaliation, that DCYF would transfer Trevor to another facility far from them. Still, they said they feel driven to speak out.

“Some of these kids have nobody there,” Goulet-Truppi said. “There’s nobody looking out for them.”

St. Mary’s interim chief executive, Charles Montorio-Archer, declined to be interviewed about the family’s concerns, as well as what changes he’s made in the last few months at St. Mary’s. “We are focused on getting the work done to improve the lives of every child in state care, whether at St. Mary’s or with other providers,” he said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for DCYF said the state is continuing to work with St. Mary’s before placing children there again.

“Although progress and improvements are being made, DCYF has continued to identify areas that need to improve,” said Misty Delgado, the agency’s chief of staff. “Currently, DCYF is evaluating the steps necessary to generate meaningful program improvement at St. Mary’s.”

The Truppis are watching as the state tries to fix the place while their grandchild is in its care. There’ve been some bright spots. They say that Trevor has bonded with his clinician and made a few friends. The Truppis said the campus school has been “excellent” at understanding Trevor’s needs and helping him catch up to his grade level. He has made the honor roll twice. When they complained to the clinical director about broken glass on the playground recently, she notified the facilities manager to clean the grounds.

But the Truppis remain concerned about Trevor’s safety and whether St. Mary’s will be held accountable. Trevor sent the Globe text messages and voice memos about conditions there. At times, he said, he was losing hope.

“They ain’t listen to them. They ain’t have a voice,” Trevor texted, about his grandparents. “This place takes control.”

St. Mary’s has long had a reputation as a place children flee, and other parents whose children were treated there had warned the Truppis about their own frightening experiences. They told the Truppis their children had been able to obtain drugs and sharp objects to hurt themselves, and felt neglected by an overwhelmed staff.

The Truppis said they were desperate. By the time Trevor was 15, he had already been through so much.

They’d been Trevor’s legal guardians since he was small, because his parents, who were addicts, were unable to care for him. When he was 7, Trevor contracted acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, or ADEM, an autoimmune condition that caused temporary paralysis.

Trevor was hospitalized, and his grandparents thought he was going to die. The inflammation left scarring on his brain and created developmental delays that took years to understand and treat, the Truppis said.

Trevor cycled through multiple psychiatric hospitalizations, at Hasbro Children’s Hospital and Bradley Hospital, and a stew of medications that caused aggressive behavior. He has chronic health problems, seizures, and depression.

Trevor was bullied and lonely and fell behind in school, and nothing his grandparents told him seemed to matter. “He had no self-esteem. He felt like he wasn’t good enough,” Paul Truppi said.

Then, in February 2022, his mother died. Trevor overdosed. He wanted to die.

Frantic, the Truppis said they turned to DCYF, after a doctor at Bradley Hospital, a psychiatric hospital for children, told them the agency would have better access to programs that could help Trevor. “This is our grandchild that we’re worried about,” said Paul Truppi. “Please, let’s get him someplace where he can get the help he needs.’”

DCYF recommended St. Mary’s.

The Truppis begged DCYF to find somewhere else. There was nowhere else.

Rhode Island is woefully short of psychiatric residential treatment facilities for children, with St. Mary’s the only one in the state. DCYF currently has 80 children placed in out-of-state intensive residential treatment facilities, some as far away as Tennessee. While the state is planning to build a facility for girls next year, DCYF has a contract with St. Mary’s for placements, spending $1,000 a day per child, and is moving forward with an $11 million expansion there to add more beds.

The Truppis decided it was better to make the 33-mile trip from Tiverton to visit him in North Providence, rather than have him somewhere far away.

“There was no choice, because otherwise the placement was Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas,” Goulet-Truppi said. “We reached out to them for help for our grandchild, so we could stay together as a family. Had I known how it was going to turn out, I definitely wouldn’t have gotten DCYF involved.”

They didn’t know that one week before Trevor was admitted to St. Mary’s, a teenager had overdosed in one of the bathrooms, according to the child advocate’s report.

At their home in Tiverton and at the psychiatric hospitals where Trevor had been admitted, sharp objects and medications were kept locked up and Trevor was never left alone.

On April 27, 2023, Trevor’s first day living at St. Mary’s Hope unit, a new staff member who hadn’t been fully trained was left alone in the building, against DCYF and St. Mary’s policies, according to the child advocate’s report, and two teens went into an unlocked office and stole the keys to one of St. Mary’s vans. They drove off down Fruit Hill Avenue before being stopped by the police. Trevor also went into the office and grabbed a pair of scissors, which he used later to cut himself. The bloody blades were found in his pillowcase a few days later.

The Truppis were among the families who spoke to the child advocate’s investigators, and the incidents they described to the Globe appear in the child advocate’s report and in police logs.

By mid-May, the Truppis had had enough. Paul Truppi called the DCYF hot line to tell the agency they were taking Trevor out of St. Mary’s. The place was filthy, Trevor was in danger, and he told his grandparents he’d nearly been hit by a car when he tried to run away. His furious grandparents didn’t wait for approval from DCYF or St. Mary’s, which were responsible for Trevor’s care. They drove to St. Mary’s and took Trevor home.

“We were just so frustrated with the way everything was there, and then we were so worried that something was going to happen,” Paul Truppi said. “He’s no safer there than he is at home. ... So we just said that’s it. We absconded with him.”

They were the third family in two years to take their children out of St. Mary’s out of “fear for the child and their mental well-being,” the child advocate found. Even St. Mary’s told the advocate they didn’t fault the Truppis for taking Trevor out.

But, a few days later, the Truppis said, a Family Court judge ordered them to return Trevor to St. Mary’s. The judge ordered St. Mary’s to keep the Truppis involved with Trevor’s care and follow through on grief counseling that had been promised for their grandchild.

But, things didn’t improve, the Truppis said. On Trevor’s 16th birthday in June, the staff found pills and sharp pieces of plastic, glass, and metal in his room, and a notebook stained with blood.

Weeks later, Trevor ran away for the second time. The Truppis searched into the wee hours of the night, went to the police, and posted on social media begging for help.

State Police found Trevor at dawn, walking on Route 295.

His grandparents felt helpless.

“Trevor has been in other programs ... and we never felt that he wasn’t safe in those places, we never felt like the staff wasn’t adequately trained, we never felt like they weren’t getting the proper nutrition or the facility wasn’t being kept up, until St. Mary’s,” Paul Truppi said. “It just seems like for the amount of money that DCYF pays them, the place should be in better condition than it’s in.”

In January, the child advocate’s office released its investigative report that detailed incidents of abuse, neglect, grave mismanagement, and understaffing at St. Mary’s.

The investigators wrote that “numerous families expressed feelings of anger and frustration, stating that if their children were living at home and were assaulted, their children would be removed. Yet St. Mary’s is allowed to keep children, treat them poorly and get paid for doing so. ... Many parents described being ‘yessed to death’ and placated by top level administration but nothing ever changing.”

Meanwhile, the state is moving forward with spending $11 million in federal pandemic funding to increase the number of psychiatric beds at St. Mary’s from 14 to 26, and raise its total capacity to 51 children. Construction is expected to start sometime this spring and conclude in a year.

However, it’s still unknown when DCYF will allow St. Mary’s to take in more children.

DCYF stopped sending children there last fall, after a child who had run away was hit by a Jeep. The Truppis say that, despite the investigations and promises of change, there are still serious problems.

While some of the staff “are getting nicer,” Trevor told the Globe in a voice memo, there are still problems with safety, cleanliness, and violence. He sent voice memos and texted a Globe reporter, saying, “I want ppl to know what they put me through. That’s y I want my name for everyone to know.”

Broken glass littered the playground, and Trevor said workers had warned him and other children about rats in the basement. One child is violent and lashes out at other children and staff, and hurts them, Trevor said. He and the other children have to go into the basement to get away, until the staff can get the child under control.

“I want staff to handle a crisis better,” Trevor texted. “Violence and chaos in this house needs to end.”

Montorio-Archer, the interim CEO, and North Providence Mayor Charles Lombardi, who sits on St. Mary’s board, have publicly made assurances that care is improving.

Montorio-Archer had pushed back against the child advocate’s findings and included letters from some children detailing what they like about St. Mary’s. In previous interviews with the Globe and TV media about the frequency of children running away — a Globe investigation found police responded to hundreds of calls about runaways — Montorio-Archer described it as “kids will be kids.”

Trevor told the Globe Montorio-Archer had asked his class to write those letters, “and if the whole class does it we will get a prize.”

“The surprise never happened,” Trevor texted the Globe. “That’s y we did it. Not for the hell of it.”

He also said Montorio-Archer was wrong about why children were running away. “Excuse me — I was on the highway trying to run away from this place, because it was total agony,” Trevor said in a voice memo to the Globe.

Neighbors say children are continuing to run away. The North Providence police still respond to calls about missing children.

The police are also investigating two staff members at St. Mary’s for allegedly assaulting two children earlier in April. One allegedly threw a chair at a child and knocked him down, and another dragged a child by his arm, according to a police report released to the Globe.

St. Mary’s had first called DCYF about the incident, and the DCYF investigator noticed discrepancies between what the home reported and what was captured on surveillance videos, according to the police report. The St. Mary’s account left out critical information about how the staff members reacted and downplayed their actions.

The DCYF investigator went to the police and said the agency wished to pursue charges against the staff members.

The Truppis said they are relieved that, finally, St. Mary’s is being thoroughly investigated. The state House and Senate oversight committees are questioning St. Mary’s future, including the $11 million expansion.

They are worried about what happens when the oversight ends.

“My fear is that it’s going to go back to covering this up,” Goulet-Truppi said. “How do I keep my grandchild safe?”

Amanda Milkovits can be reached at amanda.milkovits@globe.com. Follow her @AmandaMilkovits.