Cleveland: 3 charged in teen's restraint death

CLEVELAND -- Three former employees of a Parma treatment center for troubled teens have been charged in the death of a 17-year-old girl who was being restrained face down on the floor.

Involuntary manslaughter and child-endangering charges were filed against former Parmadale center employees Cynthia King, 32, of Warrensville Heights; Lazarita Menendez, 28, of Bedford Heights; and Ebony Ray, 33, of Broadview Heights.

Menendez also faces felonious assault and inciting to violence charges for taking the girl's CD player, which she used to calm down.

They were fired after the death last December of Faith Finley, whose family had entrusted her to Parmadale for treatment of depression.

"They didn't follow the protocol," Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Maureen Clancy said of the three now ex-employees, who were fired shortly after Finley's death.

"The protocol is to get the child up off the floor immediately after the restraint, and check her breathing," Clancy told WKYC. "There's a whole checklist of items they have to review with the child, looking at the child, making sure she's allright."

"Not one of them was done."

Finley died on the floor of one of the cottages at Parmadale. She laid there between 1 1/2 and 2 hours, according to Clancy, while the three women walked away, one of them to take a nap.

The Cuyahoga County coroner had previously ruled that Faith Finley died of asphyxia from having her abdomen compressed, and that she was choking on her own vomit.

"My prayers go out as they do every day, to the young person who died at Parmadale, and to her family," said J. Thomas Mullen, CEO of Catholic Charities which operates Parmadale. He says Faith's death was the first and only fatality in the treatment center's 90-year history.

The grand jury found no fault with Parmadale or Catholic Charities, still Faith's mother is suing them and the three women in a separate case, claiming there was not proper training.

Mullen says the women were carefully trained but did not follow protocol.

"I was confident that our people had been trained prior to December of 2008 and I'm even more confident that they are further trained," he told WKYC. "And a complete review has gone on since that point in time."

A state review of the case found the women did not follow Parmadale's policies. The treatment center handles troubled and emotionally fragile children and youngsters, and recently upgraded its facilities.

"Nowhere in the United States am I aware of anything more state-of-the-art for this type of youngster," Mullen said of Parmadale's current facilities. "So I'm more confident that we can program 60 to 75 youngsters under this roof in a secure, and appropriate, and meaningful way."

The indicted women are scheduled to be arraigned in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court on September 17. Efforts to reach them for comment on the charges were not successful.