Money can’t bring back 14-year-old Sarah Crider. But I’m guessing her family is breathing a sigh of relief that all the legal wrangling is over. Sarah is the girl who died a year ago in one of Georgia’s mental hospitals of an intestinal blockage…a condition that persisted until her death due to the neglectful actions of the staff at the facility. Last week state officials agreed to settle the wrongful death case with the family for a record-setting $1.25 million dollars.


I blogged about our overwhelming connections to Sarah here. I’m still haunted by our personal connections to Sarah. I honestly don’t remember meeting her while she and LuLu were hospitalized at the same private hospital (and receiving quality care there, I might add). But I do remember her grandmother, the loving, compassionate woman who worked at LuLu’s school and recognized her when we were all there on visitation day.

And I’m haunted that Feb 13, 2006 is the date of Sarah’s tragic death due to gross neglect on the part of “the system” and is also the date that our school district sentenced LuLu to the alternative school (known to students there as “kiddie prison”) – a pathway that could easily lead to outcomes like Sarah’s.

In so many ways, we were (are) just a hair’s width away from this tragedy. I wonder what is going through Sarah’s grandmother’s mind. The pot of money that the state is handing the family and Sarah’s estate is undoubtedly needed. (I know first-hand what legal bills and other expenses pile up in this situation.) But the fact that the state, in settling, admits no wrong-doing is disgusting (yet expected). Yes, they fired one of the doctors involved, but not the one who failed to check on Sarah the night she died.

And, despite the Herculean efforts by some awesome investigative reporters at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Alan Judd and Andy Miller) and the bravery of Sarah’s family to speak out, one can only wonder how much things are really going to change.

After Crider’s death, hospital officials mandated that employees monitor patients’ bowel movements. But less than a year later, the Journal-Constitution reported in April, another patient at Georgia Regional, 59-year-old Michael Ernest Webb, died after he went 19 days without a bowel movement, and employees failed to intervene.

I’m still disgusted at this whole situation. Sarah Crider should not die in vain. To quote Gwen Skinner, director of Georgia’s Department of Human Resources Mental Health Division:

"I would say that any time you have a child die, the system has failed."

And I would add that there are too many children dying out there.

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