UCLA Abused Women...And?..."So What?!"

It's all about having "conversations" now, and I want to have one about the University of California, which, to my knowledge, has a history of abusing women.

In the past, campus police and administrators have conspired to cover up violent crimes and deny victims and survivors justice and compensation.  They maliciously lied--in writing, by the way--to elected officials who responded to pleas for help from a psychiatric nurse who was attacked in a parking lot and lay unconscious for an hour, bleeding profusely from multiple wounds on her head.  The crime was reported, but police never investigated, even though the location was just yards from the campus police station.  They argued in the emergency room that she had "just fallen."  They falsified her medical records to transform those wounds into "a laceration" during "an unconscious episode." The campus police lied in a letter for administrators to use--repeatedly--for the purpose of obstructing justice.  They falsely claimed that police had investigated, and concluded, "we are unable to determine" if the nurse "was the victim of assault or a simple accidental fall victim."

Dr. Meserve did three days of tests on the victim and concluded that the injuries were sustained in an attack.  The victim's outside doctor gave her a fax he sent to UCLA, saying she had been "mugged" and was "lucky to be alive."  But, since the police never investigated, determinations were hard to come by.

They malevolently changed Workers' Comp providers without informing the nurse just weeks before the statute of limitations would deny her legal recourse.  Maybe the Third Party Administrator who investigated the case for months without being allowed access to police records was making administrators nervous.  When the nurse and her family took UCLA on in court, the mighty university sent a lawyer to plead poverty, convincing the judge to toss out the lawsuit before it became to financially burdensome for the behemoth.

The nurse had been left permanently impaired, lost her ability to work, lost her insurance, eventually endured a fourteen-hour, life-threatening, disfiguring surgery, but it was UCLA with its claims of financial hardship that aroused the judge's sympathy.  She did not feel that the victim, the survivor, deserved her day in court.

The California Nurses' Association also lacked sympathy for the victim, even though she had for years paid them company dues, presumably to protect her from the abuse of corrupt employees.

The CNA had previously hired attorneys for another psychiatric nurse whom the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute had fired on fabricated grounds.  Other nurses were fearful and refused to testify on her behalf--except for the nurse who would later be attacked.  UCLA "lost" documents and delayed legal proceedings--no claims of poverty from the University this time--but when the hearing finally began, the doctor who supposedly had complained about the nurse testified that she was one of the finest workers he had ever known.  Case closed.  That nurse left NPI with a major settlement from the morally bankrupt and contemptible institution.

Another employee was raped and brutally beaten in a UCLA parking lot about a week before the first nurse was attacked.  Instead of issuing alerts and posting the crime on their website as required by law, police and administrators accused the rape victim's husband of being the perpetrator.  When the terrified man, who barely spoke English and was easily intimidated by oppressive authority figures, heard about the second parking lot incident, he called the nurse to warn her that the people in charge could be vicious with her, as they had been with him and his devastated wife.

Yes, they were vicious.  "Monsters," as some women have characterized their abusers.

The victim never had a chance.  The University had two insurance policies--falsified medical records and the totally misleading, mendacious police letter which the victim was never intended to see.  But, it came into her possession a year after the assault, when her Assemblywoman's office contemptuously brushed her off by saying that UCLA "had taken care of the matter."

The monsters answered every inquiry by labeling the nurse a lying malingerer who had only "a laceration."  In a typical echo of the police letter, Nancy Greenstein explained--i.e. lied--to the victim's Congressman that "the UCPD fully investigated the incident and took a report."  Later, she would write, "it could not be determined whether" the nurse "was the victim of an assault or a simple accidental fall."

William H. Cormier, Director of Administrative Policies and Compliance, was the designated stonewaller who answered every complaint with the very useful, "it could not be determined whether..." and "UCLA considers the matter closed."

But didn't the University bear some responsibility in a failure to protect an employee who had lain unconscious in their parking lot--yards from the police station, and feet from the parking administrator's office--and who suffers to this day?

The nurse thought so, and wrote a nine-page plea for help to the University and Regents.  The outgoing president, Mark Yudof, thanked her for the letter "regarding the University's investigation into the cause of the injuries for which you were treated."  Irrelevant, of course.  She knew the cause.

"William H. Cormier has responded to you on this matter."  Only with the lies from the infamous police letter.  "I hope you understand, The Regents and I have nothing further to add to what he has already said."

She understands.  So do I.  That's why I call them "MONSTERS."