If it happened to you at an Acadia Healthcare hospital in Missouri, it was not okay.

Three psychiatric hospitals in Missouri belong to Acadia Healthcare, a company out of Franklin, Tennessee. Lakeland Behavioral Health in downtown Springfield, Acadia's since April 2011. And the two CenterPointe hospitals, St. Charles and Columbia, bought on the last day of 2021. In May 2025, 31 former Lakeland patients, every one of them a child at the time, sued Acadia in Greene County. By then a former Lakeland staffer had already pleaded guilty: two felonies, a 15-year-old patient. Any of those three hospitals, you or your kid, and this page is about you.

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This applies to you no matter what

You were at CenterPointe, not Lakeland. Every filed record on this page is about Lakeland; we say so again below. CenterPointe is here because the same company has run St. Charles and Columbia since the start of 2022, and a claim about what a company let happen in its hospital is a claim against the company. Pick the hospital and the questions send the name along.
You were an adult. CenterPointe's beds are mostly adult beds, and Lakeland has a unit for people 55 and up. Missouri's clock for an adult is a different, shorter one, five years, so answer the age question the way it was and let a lawyer read your dates.
You were given a shot and the rest is blurry. The 28-plaintiff petition describes injections staff called "booty darts" that, it says, left kids incapacitated and unable to remember. If your memory has holes in it, that is part of the record, not a hole in your case.
It was another patient. In January 2024 state surveyors wrote Lakeland up for not reporting, and not promptly investigating, a sexual incident between two minors on a co-ed adolescent unit. Who was supposed to be watching is the question, and it is the hospital's to answer.
You told someone and nothing changed. The petition says Lakeland let "staff members accused of sexual improprieties" keep working there. A report that went nowhere is a fact for the file, not a strike against you.
You're a parent, or a court sent your child there. Judges as far away as northern Michigan placed kids at Lakeland in 2025. Use the "asking for my child" button; the questions rewrite themselves for you, and the call is the same call.

The Acadia lawsuits in Missouri and the public record: what is on file, and when

None of what follows is ours. A guilty plea in Greene County, two petitions filed there, a state inspection report, a Senate committee and Acadia's own filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission wrote it, and every line links to where we read it. Where it says "alleges," that is the word: Acadia, Lakeland and the named executives have admitted nothing in court, and no judge or jury has decided the civil cases. One thing about the three hospitals, said plainly: the records below name Lakeland and Acadia. The two CenterPointe hospitals are on this page because the same company has run them since the end of 2021, and no separate record on either is cited here.

December 31, 2021

Acadia closed its purchase of CenterPointe Behavioral Health System for $139 million in cash: four inpatient hospitals with 260 acute beds and ten outpatient locations, "the largest dedicated behavioral healthcare provider in the state of Missouri," in Acadia's words. From that day the St. Charles and Columbia hospitals were Acadia's. Lakeland had been Acadia's since April 2011. Acadia 8-K exhibit, February 28, 2022.

January 10–17, 2024

State surveyors inspecting Lakeland for Medicare found the hospital "failed to recognize" that a sexual incident between two minor patients on its co-ed adolescent step-down unit "warranted a self-report to the Bureau of Hospital Standards" and "a prompt investigation": a 14-year-old told staff on January 4 what had happened on December 20, and precautions began six days later. A staff member had recorded the girl's statement on a personal cell phone; a supervisor told her to delete it. CMS inspection report, Lakeland Behavioral Health System, January 2024.

June 12, 2024

The Senate Finance Committee published "Warehouses of Neglect," its two-year investigation, begun July 2022, of four youth residential treatment companies, Acadia among them. Its conclusion: the harms children suffered "are the direct causal result of a business model that has incentive to treat children as payouts and provide less than adequate safety and behavioral health treatment." It describes Acadia facilities in other states. It does not name Lakeland or CenterPointe. Senate Finance Committee report (PDF).

November 8, 2024

The one conviction on this page. Mark Allen McMannamy, 42, worked at Lakeland. According to the court records the patient was 15, it was January 2024, and what he wanted was nude photographs on his phone, a vape pen offered in return; he told police he knew the kids there "often had issues with past sexual assaults." He pleaded guilty on September 13, 2024, two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, which is a Class B felony in Missouri, and Greene County Circuit Court gave him eight years on each count, concurrent, not stacked. Lakeland's statement was that it had fired him and cooperated with police. Springfield Daily Citizen, November 11, 2024.

May 5 and May 7, 2025

These were not the first. One suit, No. 2431-CC01339, for a single former patient who was 15 in 2022, had been on file since November 7, 2024. Then, on May 5 and May 7, 2025, two petitions were filed in the Circuit Court of Greene County. The first, No. 2531-CC00540, for three former patients, names Lakeland, Acadia Healthcare and Acadia Management Company. The second, No. 2531-CC00547, for 28, names Lakeland, Acadia Healthcare Company and four Lakeland executives. Both allege that staff sexually abused minor patients. The 78-page petition is the one with the detail. Injections that sedated residents. Incidents that never reached the police. Witness statements and disciplinary records destroyed. All of it alleged, none of it proven yet. Lakeland said it "does not tolerate assault, abuse and neglect." KSMU, Ozarks Public Radio, May 9, 2025.

August 5, 2025

Greene County prosecutors dismissed without prejudice all twelve counts against a second former Lakeland employee, the one charged in March 2024 over alleged conduct with three teenage patients in 2022 and 2023. Without prejudice means they could come back. The prosecutor's reason, in his own filing: the victims "have made the decision not to participate further in the legal process." Nothing was proven against him, he was never convicted of anything, and we don't name him here. Springfield Daily Citizen, August 6, 2025.

May 14, 2026

Interlochen Public Radio reported that a Michigan court placed three Grand Traverse County children at Lakeland in 2025, the year the suits were filed, and read the 28-plaintiff petition: it makes abuse allegations for every year from 2011 through 2024, and alleges Lakeland's executives allowed "staff members accused of sexual improprieties to continue to work at the facility" while "inadequately investigating" the allegations. Acadia referred the reporter to its 2025 statement. Interlochen Public Radio.

July 28, 2026

Acadia filed its quarterly report with the SEC. It discloses that in September 2024 the company and its subsidiary Lakeland Hospital Acquisition, LLC each received a grand jury subpoena from the Western District of Missouri, issued by the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, concerning "admissions, length of stay and billing practices"; the subpoenas were reissued in December 2024, the SEC has sent its own, and "no findings or conclusions have been made." That investigation is about admissions and billing, not abuse. The filing does not mention the Greene County suits. Acadia Healthcare Form 10-Q, quarter ended June 30, 2026.

We checked this on September 13, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from July 28, 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in an Acadia Healthcare lawsuit in Missouri

The company. Acadia Healthcare Company, Inc., a Delaware corporation, headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee, NASDAQ ticker ACHC. It owns the three hospitals through subsidiaries, Lakeland Hospital Acquisition, LLC in Springfield being one and the CenterPointe hospitals it bought at the end of 2021 the others. It has been sued by name in Greene County, twice, and one petition names Acadia Management Company too. That matters. A hospital is a building and a license; the company behind it decides how many people work a unit, who gets hired, what happens when a child says something. The petitions say Acadia made those decisions for Lakeland. That is an allegation, and Acadia has answered nothing in court that we have found.

The theory is negligence, in ordinary words. Not a wrong diagnosis. Not a treatment error. A child on a locked unit cannot leave, cannot choose who works her hall, cannot phone home when she wants. Whoever runs that unit took on the watching. Read the 28-plaintiff petition and the list is long: it alleges Lakeland didn't report incidents to police, kept accused staff on the floor, investigated badly when it investigated at all, and destroyed statements and disciplinary write-ups. Each of those is something the plaintiffs still have to prove. Notice what none of them is about, though. A diagnosis. They are about the institution, and the company that ran it.

The person who did it, where there is one to name. One former Lakeland employee has been convicted, on his own guilty plea, of two felonies involving a 15-year-old patient. A second was charged and the charges were dismissed without prejudice in August 2025; he has been convicted of nothing and we do not name him. Nobody has been charged in connection with CenterPointe that we have found, and no filed record on this page concerns either CenterPointe hospital. We say that plainly because a page like this should never make a case sound bigger than it is. Lakeland has its own page, with its own record, at /lakeland-behavioral-health-survivors. This one is about the company above it.

Your deadline: the Missouri statute of limitations for abuse in a psychiatric hospital

Two clocks, and the one that matters most for a claim against Acadia is the shorter one. Against the person who did it, Missouri's childhood sexual abuse statute, RSMo 537.046, runs to ten years after your 21st birthday, so age 31, or three years from the day you connected the harm to what happened, whichever is later. But in 2016 the Missouri Supreme Court read that statute to reach the abuser only, not the institution that let it happen. A claim against the hospital or the company runs instead on Missouri's general five-year rule (that's RSMo 516.120), and for a child the five years don't start until 21, under RSMo 516.170. So the plain answer: file by 26. It also does not start until the harm is, in the statute's words, "capable of ascertainment" (RSMo 516.100), and that is argued case by case.

That is why the quiz asks two age questions. Born in 2000 or later and you are inside on the abuser's clock this year and, for most birthdays, on the company's too. Born between 1995 and 1999 and it turns on which claim and on when the damage became clear, which is the first thing to ask about. Born earlier and it is a discovery conversation with a lawyer, not a date on a calendar. If you were 18 or older when you were a patient, the five years run without the wait to 21, so anything since about 2021 is the window a lawyer needs to look at. Don't do this math alone. Answer the questions and let someone who does it every day read your dates.

Since August 28, 2025, Missouri also says a nondisclosure agreement in a childhood sexual abuse case is void and cannot be enforced. If someone had you, or your parents, sign something on the way out, it does not close this.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told anyone, or you told a nurse and it went in a chart and nowhere else. The January 2024 inspection found exactly that at Lakeland.
You were sedated, or on so many medications you weren't sure what was real. The 28 plaintiffs describe the same thing.
You were there because a court, the Children's Division or a judge in another state sent you, and you figure that counts against you. It doesn't.
It was another kid. You are not blaming them. You are asking who was supposed to be watching a co-ed unit of teenagers.
You were at CenterPointe, and you have read every word above about Lakeland and wondered whether this is for you. It is. The same company; say which hospital.
You live in Kansas or Arkansas or Illinois now. Springfield is an hour from the Arkansas line, St. Charles is across the river from Illinois, and the claim is in Missouri wherever you sleep tonight.

Facilities covered

Lakeland Behavioral Health System, 440 South Market Avenue, Springfield, Missouri 65806 — the acute units, the residential treatment center and the senior unit; Acadia's since April 2011; the records on this page are about Lakeland, and it has its own page at /lakeland-behavioral-health-survivors · CenterPointe Hospital, 4801 Weldon Spring Parkway, St. Charles, Missouri 63304, 150 beds, adolescents, adults and seniors · CenterPointe Hospital of Columbia, 1201 International Drive, Columbia, Missouri 65202, 80 beds. The CenterPointe hospitals are listed because Acadia has run them since December 31, 2021, not because any record cited here puts an incident there. Acadia's Missouri outpatient programs and its McCallum Place center in St. Louis are covered by the "another Acadia facility" answer. A different psychiatric hospital in Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas or Illinois? The questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue Acadia Healthcare?

Thirty-one former Lakeland patients did, in two petitions filed in Greene County Circuit Court in May 2025 that name Acadia Healthcare Company, and a third suit was filed in November 2024. Whether you can turns on where you were, how old you were and when you were born, which is what the questions above sort out. A lawyer gives you the real answer, for free.

Who owns CenterPointe Hospital now, in St. Charles and in Columbia?

Acadia Healthcare. It closed on CenterPointe Behavioral Health System on December 31, 2021, $139 million in cash, and has owned both hospitals since. Before that, a different company owned CenterPointe. That's why the quiz says "2022 or later" for those two hospitals. No filed record on this page concerns either CenterPointe hospital; they are here because the same company runs them.

How long do I have? The Missouri statute of limitations for sexual abuse

Short version. Against the person who did it, you have until ten years past your 21st birthday under RSMo 537.046, or three years from the day you connected the harm to it if that comes later. Against the hospital or Acadia, the Missouri Supreme Court has said the general five-year rule applies, tolled to 21 for a child, so 26, and starting only when the damage was capable of ascertainment. An adult patient gets the five years from that point. Two clocks, so a lawyer reads your dates.

Is Acadia Healthcare under investigation?

Acadia's own July 2026 SEC filing says the Justice Department's Criminal Division has had grand jury subpoenas out to Acadia and to Lakeland Hospital Acquisition, LLC since September 2024, about admissions, length of stay and billing, with no findings made. That is not an abuse investigation, and we won't pretend it is. What is public on abuse is one guilty plea, one set of charges dismissed without prejudice, a January 2024 state inspection report and the civil petitions.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Nothing. Every case is on contingency: the lawyer gets paid out of what's recovered, and only then. Nothing recovered, nothing owed. The call is free and so is the review.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

You answer 7 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed Missouri attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.