The interim superintendent of a Kansas mental hospital has been replaced and a lower-level employee with a record of sexual misconduct is on administrative leave after just three months on the job. State officials are saying little about why Clayton Bledsoe is no longer acting as interim superintendent and Quincey Holloway is no longer risk manager at Osawatomie State Hospital. Angela de Rocha, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, said the agency can’t comment on personnel issues. But Holloway was hired in April despite losing his certificate to be a school social worker in New Jersey in 2013 after five female co-workers accused him of sexual harassment. Bledsoe was hired in May 2017 to be the hospital’s director of nursing and was appointed interim superintendent when the hospital’s previous leader, John Worley, left on April 13, 2018, according to a news release from KDADS. Bledsoe didn’t respond to a phone message left on Monday. He’s been replaced as interim superintendent by Wes Cole, a former longtime Osawatomie staffer who also took the helm temporarily during a turbulent time for the hospital in 2011, following the firing of Greg Valentine. Reached by phone Monday, Cole said KDADS officials asked him to take over for about a month until they can hire a permanent replacement. “I started on Wednesday,” Cole said.
He said he had no information about what happened to Bledsoe. Cole also said he didn’t know Holloway, who de Rocha said started at Osawatomie on April 23, 2018. As risk manager, Holloway’s job was to prevent errors in medical care and protect the hospital from legal liability. But he was only on the job for three months. Reached by phone Monday, Holloway said he had been placed on administrative leave. He wouldn’t say why. “I don’t have any comment,” Holloway said. “I’m going to let this play out.” Holloway lost his New Jersey school social worker certificate after five female coworkers testified to a state licensing board that he had sexually harassed them. Holloway denied all of the allegations at the time and appealed the decision to the state commissioner of education and later to the New Jersey court system. But the courts ultimately upheld the revocation, saying it was “well-supported by the evidence.” According to court documents, four women testified under oath and subject to cross-examination that Holloway had made inappropriate comments to them in the workplace, including one who said “he told her he was aroused when he saw her wearing boots with heels and commented about the size of her breasts.” Another teacher testified that Holloway’s inappropriate comments escalated to physical assault, as he forced her into a faculty bathroom and exposed his penis. “(The teacher) told him to ‘put it away’ and to stop,” court records say. “Holloway shut the lights again and left the room.” Holloway declined to comment on whether he had notified Kansas officials about the licensing case in New Jersey when he applied to work at Osawatomie. Osawatomie State Hospital is one of two state-run facilities for people in Kansas with severe mental illness. It serves the entire eastern part of the state; a facility in Larned serves the west. Osawatomie recently emerged from a difficult period of operations. The 158-bed facility regained full federal certification in December, two years after inspectors cited it for a raft of safety concerns following the rape
