In his resignation letter, G. Douglas Bevelacqua said he was quitting because of officials meddling with his work.
"It would be a grave disappointment to me if the investigation were sanitized," Deeds told reporters during a brief interview, in which he complimented Bevelacqua.
Since 2010, Bevelacqua had served as inspector general for behavioral health and developmental services, a unit of state government now under the Office of the State Inspector General.
Bevelacqua remained with that agency, keeping his focus on mental health issues. As such, he oversaw the inquiry into the Nov. 19 death of Deeds' son, 24-year-old Austin "Gus" Deeds, who stabbed his father at their Bath County home before taking his own life hours after undergoing a mental health evaluation.
The release of the report into the incident has been delayed. In a resignation letter to Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Bevelacqua said agency revisions to it "will diminish the Report's usefulness as policy makers consider changes to the Commonwealth's emergency services response system."
"If I were responsible for publishing this report, it would have been issued weeks ago and it would have contained conclusions that were removed because they were considered speculative or too emotional," Bevelacqua wrote in a letter dated March 1.
Proposals to overhaul mental health laws and boost funding for psychiatric treatment have been a focus of the 2014 General Assembly session.
Deeds' SB260, which would lengthen to 24 hours the term of emergency custody orders, is the subject of legislative negotiations with the House of Delegates. The bill would require the state to set up a psychiatric bed registry and establish a bed-of-last-resort rule in state hospitals so there is always a place to accommodate people in crisis.
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Mental Health Inspector Quits Over Deeds Report
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2 comments:
In the Commonwealth of Virginia, we have over 6000 seriously mentally ill people in jail instead of in care facilities.
We have psychiatric hospitals emptied of sexually aggressive, physically assaultive individuals who are dumped into assisted living facilities alongside the frail elderly.
We have public guardianship programs that are a very large part of the problem, not the solution.
We have young people like Gus Deeds who are simply depressed or on the verge of developing symptoms of more serious mental illness killing themselves, their parents, police officers, students, members of the public.
Six years after the Virginia Tech massacre, the situation is worse than ever.
And our arrogant, parochial, short-sighted, pee-brained mental health officials and Assistant Attorneys General are more worried about liability than responsibility, blame than compassion, cover-up than truth.
Bill Hazel, James Rothrock, A.A.G.'s, Mr. Inspector General, please note: we know what happened to Gus Deeds. We know what happened to Creigh Deeds. It's actually been in the newspapers, which you might try reading. You can't cover this one up. You can't sweep it under the rug.
So you might as well do the unthinkable. Do your job, and fix the problem.
I hope Deeds' SB260 goes through.
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