Ex-Greystone Park chaplain claims religious discrimination

[rug]

Peggy Wright, Daily Record 4:26 p.m. EDT September 17, 2014

A former chaplain for Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Parsippany has filed a lawsuit against the state and hospital director of chaplaincy services that alleges she was terminated from a “hostile” work environment and unfairly told she was imposing her religious views on patients.

Rev. Kimberley Baumgartner, whose Linkedin profile states she now is a hospice chaplain for a visiting nurse association, has accused Greystone and Chaplaincy Director Emily Hall of being hostile to her religious beliefs and “to Evangelical Christianity in general.”

The lawsuit was made public Wednesday in Superior Court, Morristown, and seeks unspecified compensation for damages, punitive damages and attorney fees.

“The cancellation of plaintiff’s contract was initiated either in whole or in part by defendant Hall’s animus towards the plaintiff’s brand of Christianity,” the lawsuit charges. It also states that Hall made her sign a document attesting that she had not anointed any patients with oil or “cast out any devils.”

http://www.dailyrecord.com/story/news/local/2014/09/17/ex-greystone-park-chaplain-claims-religious-discrimination/15789539/

If she was in fact using her position to proselytize, this is a serious breach.

Ellen Lovejoy, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Human Services which oversees Greystone, said that Baumgartner was terminated as a chaplain in the fall of 2013 for “performance issues.”

Lovejoy said that chaplains at Greystone are members of patients’ interdisciplinary treatment teams at either the request of the patient or treatment team “in order to support patients’ spiritual and religious needs.”

Baumgartner’s suit says she was accused of prosyletizing, or imposing her religious and spiritual beliefs on patients. The complaint also claimed that Emily Hall limited patient access to chaplains or religious materials like Bibles “when she deemed that the patient was too pre-occupied with religion.”

Lovejoy said she could not comment on active litigation. However, in general she said, Greystone has an obligation to support the rights of patients to practice their chosen religion or faith system.

[AtheistCrusader]

1. Sounds like DHS did the right thing. Barring other facts coming to light

this sounds like a case of 'what do you mean I can't proselytize? You're discriminating against me!'

[rug]

2. To be hospitalized inside a state psychiatric hospital, you have to be quite unstable.

It's no place for mind games, religious or otherwise. It can be extremely detrimental.

The psychiatric chaplains I've met all are thoroughly trained in pastoral counseling in a psychiatric setting as well as trained to listen to and counsel patients who may be in the throes of entrenched illness. It's a very fine line and they were all acutely aware of their role as an adjunct to the treatment team. They knew the patients were there to be treated not saved.