A mental health worker is accusing the company that handles health care in Vermont’s prisons of subjecting her to harassment, bullying and discrimination, then firing her.
Samantha Agricola, 45, filed the wrongful-termination legal action last week in federal court in Vermont, seeking unspecified damages from Kansas-based VitalCore Health Strategies for her alleged wrongful termination.
“She went through a nightmare at the hands of these people,” Agricola’s attorney Norman Watts said Friday. He said his client had received assurances from higher-ups in the company that everything would work out, only to be fired by a lower-level supervisor.
“It’s very disheartening to her and surprising to me,” he said.
VitalCore CEO Viola Riggin said this week that the company does not discuss litigation and declined comment. Rachel Feldman, a corrections department spokesperson, declined to comment for the same reason.
The state government contracted with VitalCore Health Strategies last summer to provide health care services in the prison system, replacing Centurion Managed Care, which had held that contract for the previous five years.
The contract with VitalCore, which spans three years, is for about $20 million a year, according to the corrections department.
“[Agricola’s] older age was defendant’s motivation for its adverse employment action against her,” the lawsuit filed this week alleged. “In other words, but for her older age, defendant would not have discriminated against the plaintiff in dismissing her.”
According to the lawsuit, Centurion hired Agricola as a mental health clinician in May 2020, when the company still held the prison contract.
She was then hired for the same job by VitalCore after that company became the contracted health care provider for the prison system on July 1, 2020. She was terminated in October 2020.
During the transition of health care providers, the lawsuit stated, Agricola’s training was interrupted, which disrupted her assignment to a specific facility. For several months, VitalCore transferred her between the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans, the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport and the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, the state’s only women’s prison.
According to the lawsuit, VitalCore employed two younger women in the same role as Agricola.
Soon after Agricola was hired by VitalCore, the lawsuit alleges, the company’s site supervisor in St. Albans showed “favoritism” toward the other two clinicians, telling Agricola she “didn’t matter” as much as the others and excluding her from meetings.
“As a result of [the site supervisor’s] exclusionary practice, [Agricola] was often unaware and uninformed about important patient and staff developments,” the lawsuit stated. “The site supervisor’s exclusionary practice prevented [Agricola] from fully accomplishing her job responsibilities and duties.”
The site supervisor also “hurled” criticisms at Agricola but not at the two other clinicians for similar actions, the lawsuit stated.
In one instance, according to the lawsuit, the site supervisor demanded that Agricola remain in her “poorly ventilated office with all halogen lighting fully electrified,” creating “extreme heat” in the office, while the other two clinicians were permitted to turn their office lights off.
“[The site supervisor’s] disparate treatment of [Agricola] in these and numerous other ways,” the lawsuit stated, “compared to how she treated the two other employees in similar positions, created a hostile working environment for [Agricola].”
In August 2020, in a room that reached 90 degrees, Agriciola took off her sweater, but the site supervisor screamed at her to put it back on, according to the lawsuit.
“[The site supervisor’s] angry intensity made [Agricola] feel blindsided, bewildered and fearful,” the lawsuit stated.
In another instance, the site supervisor went into a “tirade” about Agricola’s clothing.
“The attire that [Agricola] wore was a simple V-neck blouse and cardigan,” according to the lawsuit. “[Agricola’s] attire did not violate dress code policies.” However, “[the site supervisor] suggested that the [Agricola’s] attire was sexual in nature and tempting to the facility’s inmates.”
The site supervisor’s actions in front of other staff left Agricola feeling humiliated, and similar displays had Agricola in tears when she returned home from work, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit stated she complained about the harassment to VitalCore superiors but the situation did not improve. At one point, two managers told Agricola they were investigating an incident in which a female inmate had assaulted a security guard and they wanted her to know because she had been the last employee to meet with that inmate.
Shortly after, on Oct. 28, 2020, the lawsuit stated, the site supervisor barged into Agricola’s office at the St. Albans prison and told her she must resign or she would be dismissed.
“When [Agricola] asked for the reason for [the nurse administrator’s] demand,” according to the lawsuit, “[the site supervisor] gave a vague excuse about [Agricola] being a ‘security risk.’”
Agricola refused to resign, and the site supervisor called security to have Agricola removed from the St. Albans prison.
VitalCore is the only defendant listed in the lawsuit.
VitalCore was the lowest of three bidders, including Centurion, to be the Vermont prison system’s health care provider. Centurion had been criticized for its care of prisoners, most notably in the death in December 2019 of 60-year-old Kenneth Johnson, a Black man from Staten Island, New York, in the Newport prison.
Johnson died of an undiagnosed cancerous tumor in his throat, with investigations showing corrections and medical staff ignored his pleas that he couldn’t breathe.
