Care or Chaos? Inside the Portsmouth teen center at the heart of abuse allegations
PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) – When Alyssa Hertle, 15, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, entered Harbor Point Behavioral Health Center last August, neither she nor her mother, Rachelle, knew it had been cited in a congressional investigation for abuse.
Alyssa had experimented with drugs, but her primary diagnosis was elopement; she was a chronic runaway. Rachelle, the chief operating officer of a mental health practice, has experience in the mental health field. During her search for a suitable facility for Alyssa, Harbor Point emerged as an option.
However, Harbor Point was mentioned 10 times in the report 'Warehouses of Neglect' from the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, stemming from an investigation that began in July 2022.
According to the report, the findings included…
'Dragging or throwing of children''Rather than de-escalating a situation, a staffer hit the child'Violence among children 'including kicking and punching the child in the face' and 'the child was kicked in the head' A staffer telling a child 'I will slap the sh*t out of you, I don't care''Staff gave children incorrect and/or mislabeled medications'
Harbor Point, operated by Universal Health Services, declined to respond on camera but provided an extensive response online.
Alyssa and Rachelle Hertle stated that while Alyssa was not physically abused, conditions at Harbor Point were often chaotic, leaving parents uninformed.
They highlighted issues related to lack of communication, insufficient attention to critical details, and what they believe to be violations of the patient's bill of rights.
'We weren't told about her daily activities. We weren't told about what was going on,' Rachelle said. 'They were giving her or attempting to give her medication that was not hers,' which Rachelle and Alyssa consider a violation of her rights. 'Denying outgoing calls is actually a violation of their human rights,' Rachelle said.
Harbor Point CEO Freddie Anderson responded to concerns in an email to WAVY, stating:
FULL TEXT OF RESPONSE FROM HARBOR POINT BEHAVIORAL HEALTH CENTER
Monday, Feb 10, 2025
Chris,
I received your inquiry and am providing the below responses. Please confirm receipt.
Due to HIPAA patient privacy laws, I cannot offer comment on specific patients or their care.
As a matter of facility protocols here at Harbor Point Behavioral Health Care, I can confirm that family involvement in patient care is critical to a patient's success. We engage with families and guardians to provide transparency and to elicit their full involvement in supporting their loved one during treatment. Engagement with families includes phone calls, zoom sessions, meetings, emails, and of course direct phone calls between patients and families. We seek to accommodate the schedules of family members as needed to ensure maximum participation. Our treatment plans are centered around the whole child.
Our therapy staff hold the necessary qualifications to treat and care for patients as required by the State licensing department and the VA Licensing Board.
As a matter of regulatory compliance, any medication error is promptly reported to the State via the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS). Harbor Point Behavioral Health Care is in compliance with all local, state and federal regulatory reporting requirements. In addition, the facility takes all necessary remedial actions following each reported concern.
For additional information on the response to the Senate Finance Committee Report, please see: https://uhsthefacts.com/
Harbor Point Behavioral Health Care, located in Portsmouth, VA, provides inpatient, outpatient and specialty behavioral health programs for children and adolescents. Our compassionate clinical staff is committed to the delivery of evidence-based, individualized, high-quality care that support strong patient outcomes.
Freddie Anderson, Jr. | CEO
He emphasized that therapy staff possess the necessary qualifications to treat and care for patients as required by the state and noted that any medication error is promptly reported to the state. Anderson also highlighted that Harbor Point's compassionate clinical staff is committed to achieving strong patient outcomes.
However, Rachelle Hertle claimed that a staff member who treated Alyssa was, at best, vague about her qualifications.
'She assured me that she was licensed as a therapist,' Rachelle said. 'Later, I saw on a piece of paper that her title was actually 'resident in counseling.' Now her email signature says 'licensed eligible clinician' instead of therapist. I had never seen that title before.'
State regulators told WAVY that in 2024, they received 19 reports of abuse, neglect, or rights violations from Harbor Point.
Most of the reports involved peer-to-peer altercations, and regulators noted that conditions have improved since August. At that time, Alyssa entered Harbor Point and reported that staff turnover was an ongoing problem.
'We constantly had different staff, and we'd ask, 'Who are you? Why are you here? If you can't handle working with kids who clearly have issues, then you shouldn't work there at all,'' Alyssa said.
As far as the development of any useful skills, Alyssa said she was taught by Harbor Point staff to crochet while she was there.
'Now when I try to do it, I get bored. I think that says a lot about everything we had to do at Harbor Point,' the speaker said.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., says improving the lives of adolescents and children requires action at both the state and federal levels.
'I'm glad that you guys are staying on this, and we're going to stay on Gov. Glenn Youngkin to see what we can do in concert. These stories are horrific,' Warner said.
Both mother and daughter say even something as simple as more time outdoors would be a significant step forward. Alyssa said she went outside 'maybe ten' times during her five-month stay.
The fights among residents mentioned in the Senate report do not surprise her mother.
'When you treat them like prisoners, they're going to rage against the bars,' Rachelle added.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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As the parent goes back and forth to court, the baby is first placed in a foster home, and because of the Adoption and Safe Families Act enacted by former President Bill Clinton in 1997, within 15 months 'states must initiate termination of parental rights proceedings, except in specified circumstances.' Despite her specific circumstances, the California child welfare system still took Jeffcoat's daughter, Harmony Faith Chase, from her nine years ago. Jeffcoat survived being raped, and found out she was pregnant too late for an abortion. At the time she was 28, unhoused, and struggled with substance use. She didn't have health insurance, couldn't afford an abortion, and had an estranged relationship with her mother, who had custody of her two older children. One day, she went to a hospital in Orange County for an eye infection. That's when she later learned she was tested for drugs. Jeffcoat's next visit to the hospital was when she delivered her daughter via C-section. The first hour of Harmony's life was interrupted when a social worker took her away from her mom's arms and was placed into the foster care system — never to be in the care of her mother again. 'I remember the feeling that I felt of losing my child,' said Jeffcoat, now 37. In 2023, a bill was introduced in California that would, in part, prohibit medical personnel from performing a drug or alcohol test or screen on a pregnant person or a newborn without prior written and verbal informed consent, and would require the test or screen to be medically necessary to provide care. That bill failed to advance from the state's Senate health committee in March 2023. Jeffcoat is currently studying law to become an attorney in dependency law. 'I feel like my own attorney failed me,' she said. 'I want to really be up in there [court] making sure that parents aren't losing their kids to the system. Especially in the timeframe of the adoption, it should not have been able to take place in six months. It takes longer for people to be sentenced to jail or prison.' Jeffcoat said she lost custody of Harmony in 2017 while incarcerated for 6½ months for a probation violation. Family court proceedings went on without her being present. Once released, she spiraled deeper into her addiction. In 2019, she had a fight with another unhoused person about her bike. After waking up nearby a dumpster, it was the moment she said she decided to turn her life around. She contested the adoption. In 2021, she found the adopting parents. For three years, Jeffcoat said she reached out to them with hopes to create a post-adoption agreement to at least regain visitation rights, to no avail. 'I needed to make sure that I get into a position to ensure that they do not continue to do this to other people,' said Jeffcoat, who launched her nonprofit in 2023. Perritt, the doctor who is also a fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society of Family Planning, said people 'universally enter' health care professions 'because they want to change social justice issues, but during the course of medical education and training you are taught to conform to a system that exists already in order to survive it.' The history of the medical field being white and male, increases Perritt's beliefs that health care professionals teaming up with police goes back to the country's Founding Fathers. 'The police, to me, are not simply somebody in a police uniform. It's also the doctors, it's also the nurses, it's also the social workers. It's any and everybody who's a mandatory reporter.' Hospitals and health care providers often set their own drug testing and reporting policies — ones that can conflict with the ethical standards taught in medical training, particularly around informed consent and patient trust. In a notable shift, Mass General Brigham, a major hospital system in Boston, stopped automatically filing child neglect reports solely based on a newborn testing positive for drugs, citing a need to reduce unnecessary family separations. Drug testing shouldn't be considered a family testing system, advocates said. In 1996, after Wright lost custody of Trayquan, who was placed in her father's care, her troubles with the family-policing systems continued when she got pregnant with her third child and second son, Hassan. With an ongoing family court case, the newborn was immediately taken away and placed into a foster home in Brooklyn, New York. Hassan was there for nearly four years. Child protective services continued to return to Wright's life twice: when she went to federal prison for 10 years for a weapons and drug conviction, and survived a domestic violence incident by calling 911. After Wright was released from federal prison in 2013, she earned a criminal justice degree from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She mourned the loss of her oldest daughter to gun violence in 2018, and in 2021 held on tight to Hassan, now 28, when he survived being shot. 'I graduated at the top of my class,' Wright said. The post Hospitals Are Drug Testing Mothers Without Consent, Fueling Family Separations appeared first on Capital B News.
