Ex-patients, families say decades of abuse, fraud at Colorado facility ignored:

Just another huge case of a governmental agencies incompetency. In order to minimize their culpability the state likes to call it “falling through the cracks”, I call it gross negligence.

Denver (CNN) — How did an unlicensed professional, who led people to believe he was a medical doctor, run a facility for adolescents with mental illness and drug abuse problems for decades, despite complaint after complaint to state regulators alleging abuse?

Keep in mind that these were not one or two complainants registered with the Rocky Mountain authorities. These were complainants that were spread over a period of 30 years.

The president and founder of this treatment center Alexander Panio Jr., was not a licensed psychiatrist or psychologist in the state of Colorado, yet he was allegedly treating patients, and participating in and enabling the abuse at his facility.

Some of the allegations against this fraud were covered up for 30 years included, verbal and sexual abuse, unauthorized discontinuance of psychotropic medication and fraud.

Common sense should dictate that the very first thing any governmental agency should do when someone is going to open a business where people’s lives are an issue is to check their background before they issue the shingle. Maybe I am being too fussy.

AFIC founder and president Alexander Panio Jr. listed  himself as “Dr.” or “M.D.” even before he got his Ph.D. in psychology in 1979 from a distance-learning school, its accreditation at the time not government approved, according to Chicago Tribune articles dating as far back as 1970 and officials at Northwestern University officials, where Panio worked as an associate in psychology.

The list of people adversely effected by this bogus MD (mad dog) are endless. Someone on the over-site committee had to be getting enormous kick-backs. Thirty years????