Did a Wrap Mat Kill Janaia?

By Elizabeth Scheinberg

Camera Catches Shoving Match with Group Home Worker Before Teenager’s Heart Stopped

A video shows a healthy 15-year-old going into her bedroom at a for-profit AdvoServ facility. Thirty-two minutes later, she had no pulse. Nobody’s saying what happened.

by Heather Vogell, ProPublica, Nov. 2, 2016, 7 a.m.

Since the fateful September night Janaia died, ProPublica journalist Heather Vogell has been the only reporter to successfully secure comments about Janaia's death from any of the AdvoServ five employees in her room where the disabled teen lay dying.

One worker who was in the home that day, Tosha Skinner, told ProPublica in a brief interview that Janaia was subjected to a “wrap-up behavior” intervention shortly before she stopped breathing. Skinner was present but didn’t participate, she said. It’s not clear what Skinner meant by “wrap-up behavior.” For years, AdvoServ has used “wrap mats,” which resemble full-body straitjackets, on some of its clients. Critics say such mechanical restraints traumatize patients, and most residential programs no longer use them. Delaware bans such tactics in most cases, and Maryland officials have instructed AdvoServ for years not to mechanically restrain children or teens.

ProPublica was able to provide a slide show on the use of Wrap Mats in another story on Advoserv in 2015. The images that follow belong solely to ProPublica and we are grateful they've been published them to educate the public as part of awareness of the various forms of mechanical restraints, the use of which many states are trying to eliminate despite the AdvoServ Lobby. https://www.propublica.org/article/advoserv-profit-and-abuse-at-homes-for-the-profoundly-disabled.

Did a wrap mat kill Janaia? For it's part, AdvoServ told reporter Vogell that there were no wrap mats in the house.

An AdvoServ spokesman said last week that no “wrap up” procedure involving mechanical restraints was used on Janaia that day. There were no wrap mats in the house, he said. https://www.propublica.org/article/advoserv-profit-and-abuse-at-homes-for-the-profoundly-disabled.

Of course, this statement raises one potentially very important question? Are there any Wrap Mats in the state? Could there be one maybe five minutes down the road at the striking Au Clair Estate? There are a lot of places to hide a mat on a farm...

Steel your stomachs for the following graphics. And whatever you do, do NOT imagine that it's your child lying on the mat.