Being punched, slammed into concrete walls, stomped on and beaten so badly as to result in a miscarriage should not be business as usual, employees of an Iowa state-run mental health facility say.
Eight current or former employees are suing the state over abuse they say they endured at Independence Mental Health Institute, one of Iowa’s two state inpatient mental hospitals. The case, filed Tuesday, Aug. 11, in Buchanan County, where the northeast Iowa facility is located, alleges senior leaders knew about and failed to address a years-long trend of worsening violence by patients that left some workers with serious physical injuries and mental trauma.
Plaintiffs include Lora Smith, a nurse who lost her unborn child after a patient assaulted her; Angie Timmermann, who sustained neck injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder after being thrown to the floor and stomped on by a patient; and Brenda Marrero, who was fired after sustaining severe knee and foot injuries in a patient attack, according to court filings.
The complaint comes more than a year after several nurses filed tort claims against the state, a prerequisite to bring a lawsuit. Their attorney, Bobby Rehkemper, said further investigation found more and more employees who had been harmed at Independence, expanding the case.
“It’s unfortunately one of those situations where we want them to be the caregivers, not the gladiators,” Rehkemper said. “We’re going to try to fix things, so these gals and guys are ready to effectuate a change.”
The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services declined to answer questions about safety and policies at the Inedependence facility. Spokeswoman Danielle Sample said in an email that “while we cannot comment on pending litigation, the safety of the patients we serve and the employees at our facilities are our top priority.”
The lawsuit documents at least 45 staff assaults from July 2023 to April 2025, not all of which were against the employees named as plaintiffs, and alleges that from January 2023 to June 2026, police were called to the facility 479 times for assaults, disorderly conduct and other problems.
Throughout the period, the plaintiffs say, senior leaders were well aware of the problems at the facility, and in fact had been cited by the Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 2019, 2024 and 2025 for failing to adequately address the risk of patient assaults. Neither those citations nor repeated complaints from employees prompted Independence leaders to take corrective action, the petition claims.
Rehkemper said the state never responded to the preliminary tort claims and that there is no indication ― other than secondhand reports the facility began installing security cameras last year ― to suggest it is any safer now than it was when the plaintiffs were assaulted from 2023 to 2025.
The complaint notes Independence was “critically understaffed” during the relevant period, resulting in employees being forced to work while injured and ordered to provide one-on-one supervision to multiple high-need patients at a time. The plaintiffs also previously raised concerns about the safety of the building itself, including inadequate locks and drop-panel ceilings that allow patients access to heating, air conditioning and electrical systems.
The lawsuit claims gross negligence by 10 Department of Health and Human Services officials and seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Attorney Darin Luneckas, also representing the plaintiffs, said the unchecked abuse not only exacted a toll on individual nurses and providers, but forced many out of their jobs or the profession entirely. Iowa ranks last in the country for state psychiatric hospital beds per capita. Luneckas said taking expert providers out of the workforce will only worsen the state’s mental health woes.
“I don’t think any of us want to see what that looks like to get to be worse than the worst, but that’s what we’re on pace to do until the state takes these things seriously and starts to protect these heroic mental health care workers by actually investing in these facilities and security measures,” he said. “They know that it’s not if the next (assault) is going to happen, it’s when, and how bad is the injury going to be?”
This article has been updated with comment from the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services.
(This story was edited to add information.)
William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com or 715-573-8166.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Nurses sue Iowa DHHS after violent attacks at mental health facility
Reporting by William Morris, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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By William Morris, Des Moines Register | USA TODAY Network
