Rumina Slazas and her children are suing Moore County. (Photo courtesy of Disability Rights NC)
A Moore County woman and her two disabled children are suing Moore County claiming that the county improperly retained custody of the children after her cancer treatment and violated the children’s rights by failing to arrange for proper care.
The federal lawsuit Disability Rights North Carolina filed last week says Moore County dropped Rumina Slazas’s daughter at the pediatric emergency department at UNC and left her there, refusing requests from the hospital to pick her up. Slazas’s daughter is referred to in the lawsuit as S.S. and is now 15.
In all, Slazas’s daughter, who has intellectual and developmental disabilities, spent nearly nine months at UNC Health before Moore County transferred her to a psychiatric residential treatment facility in South Carolina. S.S. spent about four months there before she was allowed to return home to her mother. Moore County rejected options that would have allowed S.S. to live in a group home or with a former special education teacher. Moore County sent S.S. to the psychiatric residential facility even after being told she did not have a diagnosed mental illness, the lawsuit said.
Slazas’s son J.S., now 16, lived for a while in the county’s social services office before being transferred to an intermediate care facility. J.S. has intellectual and physical disabilities that limit his ability to walk, balance and care for himself, the lawsuit says.
Both of the teenagers regressed because they did not receive needed care while in the institutions, the lawsuit says. The lawsuit asks the court to award the family damages and find that the county violated their rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“MCDSS (Moore County Department of Social Services) does not know how to care for children with autism,” Slazas said in a press release. “Instead of seeking out and listening to advice from disability professionals about how to provide my children a loving, family-like home, they institutionalized both of them. Both of my children returned home traumatized and far worse off than when they were removed from my home.”
The Moore County attorney and the county’s social services director did not respond to emailed questions about the lawsuit, why the county retained custody of the teens, or how it decided where they would live.
According to the lawsuit, Slazas was rushed from Moore County Regional Hospital to Duke University Hospital on July 8, 2022, where she was diagnosed with cancer and admitted for inpatient treatment.
For about a month, her children lived with a family member who tried to help out, said Holly Stiles, assistant legal director for litigation at Disability Rights.
The Moore County social services department took custody of the children on August 8, 2022.
Slazas returned home about a week later and continued to receive medical care for the rest of the year. She was able to care for her children by early 2023, or sooner, if she had the proper support, the lawsuit says.
When Slazas asked about her children returning home, the county refused saying “she might have cancer again in the future.”
Slazas spent the following months trying to get her children back.
When Slazas visited S.S. in the South Carolina treatment facility, she found bruises on bite marks on her daughter that the staff could not explain and reported symptoms she suspected were the result of overmedication. Moore County responded by telling the facility to limit parental visits, the lawsuit says.
S.S. was returned home after a year in county custody, and J.S. after about 16 months.
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