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Tech Panel Struggles For Information

June 12, 2007

By Bill McKelway

FAIRFAX, Va. — In a public meeting laced with frustration, a key Virginia mental-health official refused yesterday to say whether Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho had ever showed up for court-ordered treatment.

"That's something we can't communicate to you," James W. Stewart III, the state mental health inspector general, told a high-level panel yesterday at George Mason University.

Stewart was responding to a question from Tom Ridge, former U.S. secretary of homeland security and a member of a commission appointed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to look into the April 16 massacre at Virginia Tech.

"Is there any record of [Cho's] having outpatient treatment?" Ridge asked.

Stewart, as well as the head of Virginia Tech's counseling service, Dr. Christopher Flynn, repeatedly refused during the meeting to say whether Cho ever showed up for treatment.

That, said Stewart and others, is something that will remain private because of state and federal laws that keep health records from parents, investigators, victims and the panel.

Stewart acknowledged that he knows the answer but said state law prohibits him from revealing it.

He did reveal, however, that the involuntary outpatient treatment order that a special justice issued to Cho after an incident in December 2005 resulted in Cho voluntarily agreeing to see someone at Tech's Cook Counseling Center.

Citing findings contained in a 33-page report, Stewart said the visit was arranged in a telephone call in which a hospital staff worker at Carilion St. Albans Behavioral Health near Radford handed the phone over to Cho and he made an appointment.

"It was voluntary, for a specific time and a specific place," Stewart said in an interview.

Cho was released at St. Albans at 2 p.m. and was due at Cook an hour later. But his public trail regarding mental-health care apparently ends at St. Albans.

The frustration over state and federal privacy laws regarding the mentally ill spilled over yesterday for panel members, families, physicians, counselors and mental-health leaders.

"We're operating with our hands tied, blindfolded, and maybe even with a gag order," said Diane Strickland, a former judge and a member the gubernatorial panel.

At yesterday's session, the commission's third public meeting, Stewart made public the report, loaded with recommendations and shortcomings of mental-health providers and court personnel involved in Cho's care in December 2005, after he had been taken into custody and a social worker determined he was mentally ill and posed a danger to himself and others.

In another development yesterday, a lawyer for some relatives of Cho's 32 victims said the families are pushing for representation on the panel, fearful that those "who have the biggest stake in this situation are being left out of the process.

"What we are seeing is government watching government, and that is an inherent conflict of interest," said the lawyer, Thomas J. Fadoul Jr.

Peter Read, whose daughter Mary, a freshman at Virginia Tech, died in the attack, read from a statement backed by some 20 other families that called for accountability in the use of money raised in the name of the victims. And he, too, raised the argument that Cho's privacy is trumping reason.

"We do not accept that patient privacy is the sole overriding criterion in making records available to those charged with public safety," Read said.

Massengill said he would forward to the governor the families' requests to join the panel but would not support the effort.

The preliminary report presented by Stewart also revealed that an independent psychiatrist who later examined Cho spent only about 15 minutes with him. That person found that Cho was mentally ill but not dangerous to himself or others.

The report also confirmed that the Blacksburg area's lead mental health agency, the New River Valley Community Services Board, did not follow state law when it failed to create a treatment plan for Cho.

Stewart said that the Cook Counseling Center at Virginia Tech received word that it was supposed to see Cho when he was released Dec. 15.

Contact Bill McKelway at bmckelway@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6601.