What happened to you at Lakeland was not okay.

Lakeland Behavioral Health System is the old Springfield Hospital, 440 South Market Avenue, downtown. Kids, mostly, since 1998; the owner, since April 2011, is Acadia Healthcare, a Tennessee company. In January 2024 police arrested one of its staffers. He had asked a patient who was fifteen for nude photographs, and by that September he'd pleaded guilty to two felonies. Then the lawsuits came. One in November 2024, two more in May 2025, thirty-two former patients in all, every one of them a minor when they were admitted. If you were a patient at Lakeland, or your child was, this page is about you.

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You were given a shot and the rest is a blur. The 28-plaintiff petition says staff "routinely use" injections the kids called "booty darts," and that they left residents "incapacitated and vulnerable to sexual assault." A memory with holes in it is part of the record here, not a hole in your case.
It was another patient. Twice, in June 2018 and again in January 2024, state surveyors wrote Lakeland up over what happened between two patients on a unit where staff were supposed to be doing rounds. Who was watching is the hospital's question to answer, not yours.
You told someone and nothing happened. In January 2024 a 14-year-old told staff what had happened to her; six days went by before anyone put precautions in place, and the risk director told surveyors he "had been busy with the other two self-reports." A report that went nowhere is a fact for the file, not a strike against you.
He was never convicted. One former staffer pleaded guilty; a second had every charge dismissed in August 2025 because the girls did not want to go through it again. Your claim is against the hospital for what it let happen. It does not need a prosecutor to win first.
Your year is probably already in there. 2011 to 2024, every single year, and the 28-plaintiff petition has an allegation for it. No gaps. 2012, 2023, whichever was yours.
You're a parent, or a judge sent your kid to Springfield from two states away. Courts as far off as northern Michigan placed children 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 Lakeland lawsuits and the public record: what is on file, and when

None of what follows is ours. Two state inspection reports, a guilty plea and a sentence in Greene County, three civil petitions filed there, and the reporters who read them wrote it, and every line below links to where we read it. Where it says "alleges," that is the word: Lakeland, Acadia and the executives named in the petitions have admitted nothing in court, and no judge or jury has decided the civil cases. One man has been convicted, on his own plea, and we say so exactly.

June 20–28, 2018

State surveyors inspecting Lakeland for Medicare found the facility "failed to protect two patients (#9 and #10), from sexual misconduct" when a patient with a documented history of sexual aggression was roomed with one who had none; the incident is on the hospital's own video, between 8:20 and 8:48 PM on June 20, while staff were doing 15-minute rounds. Surveyors called the risk to every patient in the building "Immediate Jeopardy," the most serious finding a hospital can receive. The census that week was 85. The jeopardy was lifted on June 28 after Lakeland changed room assignments and its monitoring policy. CMS inspection report, Lakeland Behavioral Health System, June 2018.

January 10–17, 2024

Surveyors were back. Their report says Lakeland "failed to recognize" that a sexual incident between two minor patients on 3 South, an 18-bed co-ed adolescent step-down unit, "warranted a self-report to the Bureau of Hospital Standards" or "a prompt investigation." A 14-year-old told staff on January 4 what had happened on December 20; precautions began January 10, "six days following" her statement. A staff member had recorded the girl's statement on a personal cell phone, and a nurse supervisor told her to delete it. The director of risk management told surveyors he "had been busy with the other two self-reports and had not investigated." CMS inspection report, Lakeland Behavioral Health System, January 2024.

September 13, 2024

Greene County, the plea. Mark McMannamy, 42, the former Lakeland staffer arrested that January, pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. The probable cause statement has him offering a 15-year-old patient a vape pen for nude photographs, on his phone, and making sexual advances toward her; by the police account he admitted asking for the photos, and, asked how old she was, said fifteen. Lakeland's statement at the time: he'd been fired in January, and the hospital was "fully cooperating with law enforcement." KOLR / OzarksFirst, September 16, 2024.

November 7, 2024

A John Doe from Texas filed the first civil petition in the Circuit Court of Greene County, against Lakeland alone. He says he was 15 during a two-month stay at Lakeland in the spring and summer of 2022 and alleges a Lakeland employee "physically and sexually assaulted" him on the campus. He was still a minor when the suit was filed. KSMU, Ozarks Public Radio, May 9, 2025.

November 8, 2024

McMannamy was sentenced to eight years on each count, a Class B felony, the terms to run together under his plea agreement. The Springfield Daily Citizen got hold of the officer's report. He'd asked the girl for "nudes" more than once; she took his phone into a bathroom; and he told police "he knew juveniles admitted to Lakeland often had issues with past sexual assaults." Then, court records show, he was out of state custody on February 27, 2025, on five years' probation. Springfield Daily Citizen, November 11, 2024.

May 5 and May 7, 2025

Two more petitions landed in Greene County that week. The first, for three former patients, names Lakeland, Acadia Healthcare and Acadia Management Company; one plaintiff says he "reported the abuse to their mother, but no investigation followed." The second, 78 pages for 28 former patients born between 2000 and 2009, names Lakeland, Acadia Healthcare Company and four Lakeland executives, and alleges staff "routinely use" so-called "booty darts," that incidents were not reported to police, and that witness statements and disciplinary write-ups were shredded, the evidence "gone with the wind." Lakeland's statement: it "does not tolerate assault, abuse and neglect," and "the two former employees cited in the lawsuit were terminated." Springfield Daily Citizen, May 9, 2025.

August 5, 2025

Charges dropped. Greene County prosecutors dismissed all twelve counts against a second former Lakeland employee, a man charged in March 2024 over alleged conduct with three teenage patients, in 2022 and 2023, one of them fourteen. "The victims in this case have made the decision not to participate further in the legal process," the filing says. Dismissed without prejudice, which is lawyer for: they could be refiled. He denied the allegations to police and was never convicted of anything, so his name isn't here. Springfield Daily Citizen, August 6, 2025.

May 14, 2026

In 2025, the year the suits were filed, a court in Grand Traverse County, Michigan, sent three children to Lakeland; that comes from Interlochen Public Radio, the station up there, whose reporter then went through the 28-plaintiff petition. Abuse allegations, it found, run "for every year, with many years including multiple allegations, from 2011 until 2024," and the petition says executives allowed "staff members accused of sexual improprieties to continue to work at the facility" while "inadequately investigating allegations." Acadia referred the station to its 2025 statement. As of September 2026, we've found no ruling, no trial date and no settlement reported in any of the suits. Interlochen Public Radio.

We checked this on September 13, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from May 14, 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Lakeland Behavioral Health lawsuit

The hospital, and the company that owns it. Lakeland is a psychiatric hospital and residential treatment center, for children and adolescents mostly, plus, since 2013, adults over 60. Its paperwork name is Lakeland Hospital Acquisition, LLC, and that is the name on the petitions. Acadia Healthcare Company bought it in April 2011, and two of the three suits name Acadia too, along with the CEO, the COO, the risk director and the HR director. The theory is plain enough. A company decides how many people work a unit at night, who gets hired, and what happens when a child says something. The petitions say Lakeland and Acadia made those decisions badly, for years. That is an allegation. Lakeland says it does not tolerate abuse and that the two employees it named were fired.

The claim is negligence, in ordinary words. Not a wrong diagnosis, not a medication error. A child on a locked unit can't leave, can't pick who works her hall, can't call home when she wants. Whoever runs that unit took on the watching. Read the petitions and the list is long: staff kept on the floor after accusations, incidents not reported to police, statements and write-ups destroyed, injections that left kids unable to remember. Each of those is something the plaintiffs still have to prove. And notice what none of them is about. A diagnosis. They are about the institution. The two inspection reports above are not allegations, though. They are findings, by the state, six years apart, and both are about the same thing: a hospital that did not see what was happening between the patients it was paid to watch.

The person who did it, where there is one to name. One former employee has been convicted, on his own guilty plea, of two felonies involving a 15-year-old patient, and he is a defendant a lawyer can look at. A second was charged and the charges were dismissed without prejudice; he has been convicted of nothing and we do not name him. Most of the 32 plaintiffs name nobody at all. That is normal. You do not have to know his name, or hers, to have a claim against the place. Acadia runs two other hospitals in Missouri, and there is a page about the company itself at /acadia-healthcare-missouri-survivors. This one is about Lakeland.

Your deadline: the Missouri statute of limitations for abuse at a children's psychiatric hospital

Two clocks, and the shorter one is the one that matters for a claim against Lakeland. 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 March 2016 the Missouri Supreme Court read that statute to reach the person who did the abusing, and only that person. A claim against the hospital or against Acadia runs instead on Missouri's general five-year rule, RSMo 516.120. For a child that clock does not start until 21 (RSMo 516.170), so the plain answer is: 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 when you were born. Born in 2000 or later and you are inside on the abuser's clock this year and, for most birthdays, inside on the hospital'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, not the last. Born before 1995 and it is a discovery conversation with a lawyer, not a date on a calendar. If you were on the senior unit, the five years run without the wait to 21, and when they started is the whole question. Don't do this math alone. Answer the questions and let someone who does it every day read your dates.

One more thing Missouri changed. Since August 28, 2025, 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 the door, 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. Twenty-eight 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, and the state has asked Lakeland that twice.
The man was never charged, or the charges were dropped. The civil claim is against the hospital, and it does not wait on a prosecutor.
You live in Kansas or Arkansas now. Springfield is an hour from the Arkansas line, 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 inpatient units, the residential treatment program for children and adolescents, the sub-acute adolescent program, the senior unit, and any off-site trip staff took you on. Before December 2011 the sign said Lakeland Regional Hospital. Same building, same beds. If that's the name you remember, it's covered. Acadia Healthcare, which owns Lakeland, also runs the two CenterPointe hospitals, in St. Charles and in Columbia, and there's a separate page for the company at /acadia-healthcare-missouri-survivors. Somewhere else, a different children's psychiatric or residential facility in Missouri, Kansas or Arkansas? The questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue Lakeland Behavioral Health?

Thirty-two former patients already have, in three petitions filed in the Circuit Court of Greene County between November 2024 and May 2025, and court records pulled in September 2026 show a fourth, filed July 16, 2025, for two more. Whether you can turns mostly on how old you were, when you were there and when you were born, which is what the questions above sort out. A lawyer gives you the real answer, for free.

Was anyone at Lakeland charged?

Yes. Two former employees, and the record above has both with dates. One of them pleaded guilty, in September 2024, and drew eight years. The other never got to trial; prosecutors dropped every count, without prejudice, in August 2025, because the three girls decided not to go forward, so he was never convicted, and we don't name him. Most of what the 28-plaintiff petition describes, though, is laid to staff nobody has ever named.

Who owns Lakeland Behavioral Health in Springfield, Missouri, and does that matter?

Acadia Healthcare Company, out of Franklin, Tennessee. It has since April 2011. On paper the hospital is Lakeland Hospital Acquisition, LLC, which explains the odd case captions. Acadia is named as a defendant in the two May 2025 petitions, and it runs two other Missouri hospitals, both called CenterPointe. There is a separate page about the company at /acadia-healthcare-missouri-survivors.

I was a patient at Lakeland years ago. Is it too late? What's the statute of limitations in Missouri?

Short version. Against the person who did it, you have until ten years past your 21st birthday, or three years from the day you connected the harm to what happened, whichever comes later; that's RSMo 537.046. 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. Two clocks, so a lawyer reads your dates. Don't decide alone.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Here, nothing. Every case is on contingency, so the lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing, not for the call and not for 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 6 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.