There is no single class action or headline lawsuit against Holly Hill Hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina. Legal exposure for the 296-bed psychiatric facility is instead building along several tracks at once: a plaintiffs’ firm is publicly soliciting former patients for sexual abuse claims, state and federal regulators have repeatedly sanctioned the hospital, families of discharged patients have gone public with harm allegations, and the hospital’s parent company, Universal Health Services, has recently paid or been hit with hundreds of millions of dollars in verdicts and settlements over abuse and neglect at its behavioral health facilities elsewhere. If you are a former patient or family member weighing a Holly Hill Hospital lawsuit, that is the landscape you are stepping into.
Sexual Abuse Claims and Active Legal Solicitation
The law firm Levy Konigsberg has publicly solicited clients for potential sexual abuse lawsuits related to Holly Hill, framing the effort as individual case reviews for former patients who may have been harmed at the facility.
The underlying incident data is substantial. Between January 1, 2019, and May 6, 2025, the Raleigh Police Department received 147 calls for service at Holly Hill regarding sexual offenses and 24 calls related to rape or to collect a rape kit. The department also logged 262 calls for assault during the same period, according to records obtained by North Carolina Health News.
Criminal accountability has not tracked the volume of those calls. Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said her office “did not find a pattern of cases being referred to our office for charging.” Holly Hill CEO Leigh Holston, responding to questions about the police activity, said patients have the right to make and receive phone calls and that “all allegations are investigated as appropriate.” Raleigh Police Lieutenant David Davis declined to comment on specific incidents, saying only that the department’s partnership with the hospital “will continue moving forward.”
The gap between the number of reported incidents and the number of charged cases is part of what plaintiffs’ firms typically point to when building civil claims: civil suits use a lower burden of proof than criminal prosecutions and do not depend on a district attorney’s decision to charge.
Unsafe Discharge Cases Families Have Made Public
WRAL reported in March 2025 on allegations that Holly Hill discharged vulnerable psychiatric patients onto the streets without notifying their families or arranging safe transport.
Robert Herring told reporters that his sister, who has schizophrenia and a traumatic brain injury, was involuntarily committed and transferred to Holly Hill in December 2024. She was discharged on January 3, 2025, without the family’s knowledge. She spent more than a month homeless, was incarcerated at one point, and was not reunited with her family until mid-February 2025 after being located by an EMS worker.
In a separate case, Betty Keith said she had confirmed with Holly Hill staff that a deputy would transport her son Brian home after his release in January 2025. When he did not arrive, the hospital could not locate him. He eventually called his mother to say he was “freezing” and that the hospital had dropped him off at a “homeless place in downtown Raleigh.”
Holston did not address these cases directly. The hospital issued a statement saying it “generally works with family members to arrange and ensure safe transport of patients back to their homes or community residence as appropriate.”
Regulatory Sanctions Running Parallel to Civil Exposure
State and federal regulators have conducted at least a dozen on-site investigations at Holly Hill over the past five years. Findings from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services form a documentary record that plaintiffs can draw on: patient escapes, medication errors, missing or outdated treatment plans, unsanitary conditions, unsafe discharge practices, and failures to prevent patient-on-patient sexual abuse.
In June 2021, state regulators documented that mental health technicians falsified 15-minute patient observation logs; surveillance footage showed patients were not where staff had recorded them to be. Inspections in 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2025 identified medication administration errors, including instances where patients received the wrong medication without any subsequent investigation or reporting. Patients repeatedly gained access to locked medication carts and rooms that staff had left unsecured or propped open.
A January 2025 CMS survey confirmed noncompliance that “posed immediate jeopardy to patients’ health and safety” following a December 2024 incident in which teenage patients broke into the nurse’s station and medication room. It was the third immediate jeopardy designation for Holly Hill in five years. A March 2025 follow-up removed the immediate jeopardy status but identified condition-level noncompliance across four policies. By April 2025, two policies remained out of compliance, and CMS set a June 14, 2025 deadline for the hospital to achieve substantial compliance or face termination of its Medicare provider agreement.
Holston confirmed that a plan of correction was submitted and accepted by the state. “We take regulatory surveys seriously and we approach them as opportunities for continuous improvement,” she said, adding that the hospital remained fully operational.
An October 2025 state investigation, reported in January 2026, substantiated seven out of 12 allegations against the hospital, including failure to administer prescribed medication, failure to conduct room searches for contraband, and failure to maintain documented treatment plans. The hospital submitted another plan of correction.
State Senator Jim Burgin said publicly: “We can’t keep having these conversations. Seems like we’ll have the conversation and it will kind of settle down, and a couple of years later, we will have this conversation again.”
Escapes as a Documented Pattern
Patient escapes have been persistent, and each is a potential negligence exposure. Raleigh Police Department records show 17 calls related to escapes at the facility between 2019 and May 2025.
- In 2020, a patient walked out the front door after a receptionist opened it at the patient’s request and was not found for 28 hours.
- In 2021, the hospital discharged the wrong patient, who was sent away in a cab and went missing for 10 hours.
- Also in 2021, two teenagers scaled the exterior wall of an outdoor recreation area while a single staffer, looking at a phone, supervised 12 patients. They used a chair to jump the fence and were missing for days, sleeping in the woods. That incident led to an immediate jeopardy designation, and the hospital said it installed additional fencing.
- In March 2024, five young men fled the facility and were recovered after several days.
- In September 2025, seven adolescents escaped by kicking through an exterior door, prompting a K-9 and drone search that lasted nearly three hours.
The Universal Health Services Litigation Context
Holly Hill is owned by Universal Health Services, which operates 181 inpatient behavioral health facilities in the United States, including three in North Carolina. Recent verdicts and settlements against UHS shape what any Holly Hill claimant is walking into.
In July 2020, UHS agreed to pay $122 million to settle False Claims Act allegations brought by the U.S. Department of Justice. The government alleged that between 2006 and 2018, UHS facilities admitted patients who did not require inpatient care, billed for excessive lengths of stay, failed to provide required therapy, and improperly used restraints and seclusion. The settlement resolved 18 whistleblower cases. UHS entered a five-year Corporate Integrity Agreement with the HHS Office of Inspector General, which required an independent monitor and annual reviews of behavioral health claims. That agreement ran through March 2026 and is now closed. During its term, multiple UHS facilities disclosed violations related to employing individuals excluded from federal healthcare programs, resulting in additional penalty payments.
In September 2024, a Richmond, Virginia jury awarded $360 million to three former patients of Cumberland Hospital for Children and Adolescents, a UHS subsidiary, who alleged they were sexually abused by the facility’s former medical director, Dr. Daniel Davidow, under the guise of medical examinations. The verdict included $60 million in compensatory damages, $180 million in trebled damages under Virginia’s Consumer Protection Act, and $120 million in punitive damages. About 40 additional plaintiffs have filed similar claims. UHS has said it intends to challenge the verdict.
At Pavilion Behavioral Health System in Champaign County, Illinois, a jury awarded $535 million after a 13-year-old girl was raped by another patient in 2020. The complaint alleged the facility was understaffed and that the assailant had covered hallway cameras with toothpaste. A judge later reduced the verdict, and UHS has said it plans to appeal.
A June 2024 U.S. Senate Finance Committee report titled “Warehouses of Neglect” investigated UHS and three other behavioral health companies. The committee concluded that systemic abuse and neglect were “endemic to the operating model” of these facilities, driven by understaffing, unqualified workers, and profit motives. UHS “vehemently” disputed the report, calling it “incomplete and misleading.” Holly Hill was not specifically named in the Senate report.
What Former Patients and Families Can Do
Former patients who believe they were sexually abused, injured, or improperly discharged at Holly Hill can seek a case review from a plaintiffs’ firm handling these matters; Levy Konigsberg has publicly solicited such cases. Families with concerns about specific incidents can also file complaints with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and, for facilities that bill federal programs, with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Raleigh Police Department incident records and DHHS inspection reports are documentary sources that have already surfaced much of the underlying pattern.