A charity that runs group homes for troubled children from Tucson and beyond faces a state hearing this week to see whether the homes should be shut down for jeopardizing the health and safety of those under its care.
Mary’s Mission, fined $18,000 and cited 64 times since 2019 for deficiencies at its two homes for 11- to 17-year-olds, also faces a new allegation it illegally operated a third, unlicensed home that came to the state’s attention when a suicidal teen with a knife was wounded by a staffer who hit him on the head with a chair, public records show.
The nonprofit is fighting a bid by the Arizona Department of Health Services to revoke the state licenses of the two original homes and obtain an injunction against the third.
All three sites are in neighboring Cochise County about 100 miles southeast of Tucson, and are largely funded by taxpayers through the state Medicaid program for those with low incomes. The charity reported $1.9 million in revenue in its most recent nonprofit tax return.
Mary’s Mission’s CEO William Lacey, a retired Army major who founded and has run the homes for more than a decade, did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Detailed questions were emailed to his work address and to his attorney Chris Russell on Nov. 23 and Nov. 29. A phone message describing the allegations was left with a receptionist at Russell’s Sierra Vista law office Nov. 29.
Lacey has kept quiet for months about the problems at his facilities, which came to light in August in an Arizona Daily Star investigation that he also did not comment on.
State inspection reports the Star examined showed Lacey’s two licensed homes were the worst of their kind in Arizona, with dozens of violations including chronic overcrowding, lack of nutritious food, faulty dosing of prescription medicines and failure to demonstrate that children were receiving proper mental health care.
Lacey is expected to be a witness at the three-day administrative hearing in Phoenix from Dec. 1 to Dec. 3. The administrative judge is expected to issue a written report about three weeks later that makes recommendations about whether Mary’s Missions two homes should be shut down.
Officials from two Southern Arizona fire districts also are slated to testify in support of state claims that Mary’s Mission falsified a fire inspection report after building an illegal addition to its girls home — an addition that lacked proper fire protection and where girls slept under bedroom windows that were nailed shut, public records show.
In the most recent case, state inspectors responded in mid-June to a complaint about an unlicensed behavioral health home for teens operating in a single-family house not from from Mary’s Mission’s longtime girls home.
The complainant said a “minor juvenile was reportedly hit in the head with a chair by a staff member of Mary’s Mission,” an inspection report said. The 17-year-old had a knife and initially threatened staff, then threatened to use it for self-harm before an ambulance took him away with a head laceration, it said.
Investigators who examined the facility’s internal records found the unlicensed home was dispensing psychiatric medications to some of its 17- and 18-year-old residents, an activity that requires a state license. Underage residents also were left unsupervised at certain times of day, the state report said.
Residents’ private medical information was illegally exposed, with sensitive paperwork such as prescription notes and insurance billings left out in the open on desks and countertops, it said.
Meanwhile, Mary’s Mission’s accreditation has been revoked by its Tucson-based accreditor
The Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities, which has accredited Mary’s Mission’s Sierra Vista boys home on an off since 2010, revoked its latest accreditation and removed Mary’s Mission from its website soon after the Star initially reported on the problems.
Tucson attorney Darren Lehrfeld, general counsel for the accreditor, said in an email that the accreditor has no authority to enforce licensing and regulatory matters.
