Whatever the sign said the year you were there, Piney Ridge or Perimeter, what happened to you inside wasn't okay.

Piney Ridge Center is on Hospital Road in Waynesville, Missouri. Locked doors, 96 beds, kids. Somewhere along the way the company that owns it swapped the sign for one that says Perimeter Behavioral of Missouri, and that's about all that changed. Same campus. Same units, same school the kids walk to every morning. On August 11, 2026, four former residents, who were between 11 and 16 at the time, sued the companies behind it in Pulaski County Circuit Court. Their petition says five different staff members abused children there between 2016 and 2024, in bedrooms and in the corners the cameras didn't reach. If you were a resident there under either name, or your child was, this is about you.

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6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.

This applies to you no matter what

A judge sent you, or the Children's Division did, or your parents were told it was Waynesville or somewhere worse. Who signed the placement paper does not change who was supposed to keep you safe once the door locked behind you.
It happened in your room, or in some hallway or bathroom the cameras didn't cover. That is exactly what the four plaintiffs say: rooms, and areas of the facility without surveillance. No video is not a hole in your account. It is the account.
It never went past a phone, or pictures, or talk. The one criminal case on file about this facility is a former staff coordinator who pleaded guilty to furnishing pornographic material to a minor, a Class A misdemeanor. If that is the shape of what happened to you, it still counts, and a lawyer decides what it is, legally. Not you, tonight.
You told a staff member, or a therapist, and nothing changed. The petition says inadequate supervision, monitoring and employee oversight are how this went on from 2016 to 2024. One more account of that is not noise.
It was another resident. A locked unit for kids exists so the kids on it are safe from each other. When that fails, the question isn't about the other kid. It is about who was on the floor.
You are a parent, and your child came home from Waynesville quieter and never said why. Use the "asking for my child" button. The questions rewrite themselves for you, and the call is the same call.

The Piney Ridge / Perimeter Behavioral lawsuit and the public record: what is on file, and when

None of what follows is ours. A trade press item, an Attorney General's settlement, a police probable-cause statement, a court docket and a petition wrote it, and every line below links to where it came from. Where it says "alleges," that is the word: the four residents' claims are allegations, Woodridge of Missouri, Inc., REP Perimeter Holdings LLC and Perimeter Healthcare have admitted nothing in court, and no judge or jury has decided anything in that case yet. Where it says "pleaded guilty," it means exactly the charge named, and no more.

September 15, 2016

Perimeter Healthcare, a behavioral health company backed by the private-equity firm Ridgemont Equity Partners, bought WoodRidge Behavioral Care: five psychiatric residential treatment facilities and three acute hospital programs in Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri. The Waynesville campus was the Missouri one. Its licensee, Woodridge of Missouri, Inc., kept its corporate name and now does business as Perimeter Behavioral of Missouri. The conduct in the 2026 petition starts the same year. PE Hub, September 15, 2016.

December 21, 2021

Piney Ridge Center entered a civil settlement with Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt's office for $504,250.46. The Attorney General described the center as "a residential treatment facility for children suffering from sexual behavior disorders and mental health illnesses." In the settlement, as KFVS reported it, the facility admitted that between September 2019 and August 2020 it billed MO HealthNet, Missouri's Medicaid program, for therapy sessions for 13 children that it did not provide: two sessions a week, at least an hour each, the minimum state rules require. This is a billing case, not an abuse case. We put it here because it is the one time a state agency has said, in writing, what the children on that campus were not getting. KFVS12, February 2, 2022.

May 23, 2025

KRCG in Jefferson City reported that Dakotah Michael Widel of St. Robert, a Mental Health Technician Coordinator at Perimeter Behavioral of Missouri, had been charged in Pulaski County with furnishing pornographic material or attempting to furnish it to a minor, and with providing explicit sexual material to a student. Waynesville police wrote that in February 2025 a juvenile resident reported Widel had confiscated a note, told the child its content aroused him, shown the child sexually explicit pictures of himself on his phone, and offered to share a sexual video if the child's schoolwork improved. A search of the phone under warrant found the images and videos the child described; officers wrote that two of the explicit images "appeared to be taken in Perimeter Behavioral bathrooms." The facility did not comment. KRCG, May 23, 2025.

December 4, 2025

One misdemeanor plea. That is the whole of the criminal record connected to this facility that we have found, and it is not a conviction for assault or for touching anyone, and this page will never say it is. Widel pleaded guilty on December 4, 2025, in Pulaski County Circuit Court. The charge was furnishing pornographic material to a minor. Under RSMo 573.040 that's a Class A misdemeanor, and the judge treated it as one: suspended imposition of sentence and two years' supervised probation, nothing more. The docket puts the offense itself on February 3, 2025, so offense to plea took ten months. If you want to read it yourself, the case is State v. Dakotah Michael Widel, No. 25PU-CR00638. Missouri Case.net, 25PU-CR00638 (docket read September 11, 2026).

August 11, 2026

Four former residents, John Doe 1 and three others named only as John or Jane Doe, filed John Doe 1 et al. v. REP Perimeter Holdings LLC et al., Pulaski County Circuit Court No. 26PU-CV01434, against the holding company, Woodridge of Missouri, Inc. d/b/a Perimeter Behavioral of Missouri, Perimeter Healthcare and others. KOMU read the petition on August 20. What it describes, and these are the plaintiffs' allegations, is five employees grooming and then sexually assaulting four kids who were 11 to 16 at the time, across a stretch that runs from 2016 to 2024. For some it went on for months. For others, years. It happened, they say, in their rooms, and in the parts of the building no camera covered. And the line KOMU pulled from the petition: "inadequate supervision, monitoring, staffing, employee oversight, and safeguards led to the reported abuse." OnderLaw of St. Louis represents the plaintiffs. Perimeter Healthcare did not answer KOMU's request for comment. KOMU 8, August 20, 2026.

We checked this on September 13, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from August 11, 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 Piney Ridge Center / Perimeter Behavioral of Missouri lawsuit

The facility, and the companies behind it. On paper the Waynesville campus is Woodridge of Missouri, Inc., doing business as Perimeter Behavioral of Missouri. It is one property of Perimeter Healthcare, which runs behavioral facilities in several states out of an office in Alpharetta, Georgia, and which came to own the campus when it bought the WoodRidge chain in September 2016. Above that sits a holding company, REP Perimeter Holdings LLC, and that is the first name in the caption of the August 2026 petition. The theory is not complicated. A company that decides how many people work a unit, who gets hired to work it and whether anyone checks the rooms answers for what happened in those rooms. That is an allegation. None of the three companies has said a word about the case in public.

The claim is negligence, in ordinary words. Not malpractice, not a wrong medication, not a bad diagnosis. A kid in a locked residential facility cannot leave, cannot pick the adults around her and cannot call home when she wants to. Whoever runs the building took on the watching. The petition, as KOMU read it, lists what the plaintiffs say went wrong: supervision, monitoring, staffing, employee oversight, safeguards. Five words, eight years. Each is something the four plaintiffs still have to prove, and notice what none of them is about. Treatment. They are about the institution.

The person who did it is a defendant too, if you know who it was and there is anyone to answer. Here the public record holds exactly one name. Dakotah Michael Widel, a former technician coordinator, pleaded guilty in December 2025 to a Class A misdemeanor, furnishing pornographic material to a minor. The five employees in the civil petition are not named in anything we can read, and we have found no other criminal charge against any Piney Ridge or Perimeter employee. We say that plainly because a page like this should never make a case sound bigger than it is. What is on file is a civil petition and one misdemeanor plea. What they describe is enough.

Your deadline: the Missouri statute of limitations for sexual abuse at a children's residential treatment facility

Against the facility and the companies that own it, Missouri's clock is the general five-year rule, RSMo 516.120, and for a child it does not start until 21 (RSMo 516.170), so the plain reading runs to your 26th birthday. That is why the quiz asks your birth year. Born in 2001 or later and you are inside on that clock on age alone. Born in 2000 and it comes down to months, your birthday against a filing date, which is a lawyer's arithmetic, not yours. Born between 1995 and 1999, or earlier, and the age-alone reading has passed; the claim then turns on when the harm became, in the statute's words, "capable of ascertainment" (RSMo 516.100), and Missouri courts argue that case by case. A lawyer decides. Not a calendar, not this page, and not you at midnight.

One honest wrinkle, and we'd rather you hear it from us than from a search result. Missouri has a childhood sexual abuse statute, RSMo 537.046, that runs to ten years past your 21st birthday, so 31, or three years from the day you connected the harm to what happened, whichever is later. People quote it as if it covers everything. It doesn't. The Missouri Supreme Court said so in a case called State ex rel. Heart of America Council v. McKenzie, decided March 15, 2016: 537.046 reaches the person who did the abusing, and only that person. Not the institution that let it happen. So there are two clocks. The one against the person runs to 31. The one against Piney Ridge and its owners runs to 26 on the plain reading, longer only on discovery. Anyone who tells you "until 31" about the facility itself is reading the wrong statute.

Two more things. Since August 28, 2025, Missouri says a nondisclosure agreement in a childhood sexual abuse case is void and cannot be enforced, so if someone had you or your parents sign something on the way out, it does not close this. And if the resident is still under 18 today, none of these clocks has started. Parents, that is why the guardian button exists.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told anyone, or you told a tech and it went into a chart and nowhere else.
You were on so many meds back then that you're not sure, even now, what was real. Plenty of kids on a locked unit were. It's not a reason to stay quiet.
You were there because of something you did, or because a court or the Children's Division sent you, and you figure that counts against you. It doesn't. The four plaintiffs were placed there too.
It was another resident, or it was a staff member who is long gone and you don't know the name. You are not being asked to prosecute anyone. You are being asked who was on the floor.
The name on your paperwork says Piney Ridge and the sign now says Perimeter. Same campus, same licensee, same case.
You live in Kansas or Arkansas or Oklahoma now, or somewhere else entirely. Kids were placed in Waynesville from all over Missouri, and the case is in Pulaski County wherever you sleep tonight.

Locations covered

Piney Ridge Center, now Perimeter Behavioral of Missouri, 1000 Hospital Road, Waynesville, Missouri 65583 · the residential units, the on-campus school and its grounds, and any outing staff took you on. Both names, one campus, one licensee. A different children's psychiatric or residential facility in Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas or Oklahoma? The questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue Piney Ridge Center or Perimeter Behavioral of Missouri?

Four former residents already have, in Pulaski County Circuit Court, case 26PU-CV01434, filed August 11, 2026. Whether you can turns mostly on your age at the time, 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.

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

Two clocks. Against the person who did it, RSMo 537.046 gives you until ten years past your 21st birthday, or three years from the day you connected the harm to it, whichever is later. Against the facility and its owners, the Missouri Supreme Court has said the general five-year rule applies, and for a child that clock does not start until 21, so 26 on the plain reading, longer only if the harm was not yet ascertainable. Two different answers, so a lawyer reads your dates. Don't decide alone.

Is Piney Ridge Center still open? What's it called now?

Yes, it's open. Same address, 1000 Hospital Road in Waynesville, same locked 96-bed residential treatment facility for children and teenagers, just with Perimeter Behavioral of Missouri on the sign now. On paper the licensee is still Woodridge of Missouri, Inc., and that's why the caption on the lawsuit reads the way it does. Perimeter Healthcare, out of Alpharetta, Georgia, owns it.

Was anyone at Piney Ridge Center criminally charged?

One person that we can find. Dakotah Michael Widel, a former Mental Health Technician Coordinator, was charged in May 2025 and pleaded guilty on December 4, 2025 in Pulaski County to furnishing pornographic material to a minor, a Class A misdemeanor, with a suspended imposition of sentence and two years of probation. That is the exact charge. The five staff members described in the civil petition are not publicly named, and we have found no other charge. If a prosecutor files one, this page will say so.

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.