After the Hacienda Healthcare rape, Arizona built a group home watchdog. Now it’s being defunded.

An independent oversight program created in response to a horrific rape, meant to protect some of Arizona’s most vulnerable people, will cease at the end of this year unless it finds a new funding source, a casualty of Arizona’s newest bipartisan state budget. 

In 2018, a 29-year-old woman who had developmental disabilities and could not walk or talk gave birth in her bed at Hacienda Healthcare, a residential care facility in Phoenix. Her caregivers had no idea she was pregnant. 

The woman was raped by nurse Nathan Sutherland, who later pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a disabled person and abusing a vulnerable adult, after investigators found that his DNA matched the baby’s. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In response to outrage over the crime, then-Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, created a task force to recommend ways to increase protections for people served by the state’s Division of Developmental Disabilities who live in facilities and group homes.

One of the task force’s recommendations was the creation of the Compliance, Oversight, Monitoring, and Investigations Team, operated by the advocacy organization Disability Rights Arizona. 

Created as a pilot program in 2022, COMIT provides independent oversight of group homes that care for people who have both developmental disabilities and mental illnesses. 

The Republicans who control the Arizona Legislature and Arizona’s Democratic governor chose last year to make COMIT a permanent program. This year, without explanation, they all agreed to completely defund it. 

Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, Arizona House of Representative Speaker Steve Montenegro and Gov. Katie Hobbs all declined to speak to the Arizona Mirror about why COMIT was put on the chopping block. 

COMIT’s $1.2 million annual budget is a tiny fraction of the $18.3 billion state budget passed in June, which included cuts to many state departments and programs to pay for the $1.4 billion in Trump tax cuts that both Republicans and Hobbs celebrated. 

During a June 10 Joint Appropriations Committee hearing, Amber Brown, whose 22-year-old son has severe autism, warned lawmakers of the consequences of decreased oversight. 

She said that her son became aggressive after being assaulted by school paraprofessionals when he was 12 years old. He endured more neglect and abuse in state-run group homes after that, Brown said. 

“Here’s what nobody in this building wants to say out loud: Vulnerable people attract predators,” she said. “And when you strip away oversight, you’re not cutting a line item. You’re leaving the door open.”

Brown called the decision “penny-wise and pound-foolish” and said it would end with the state spending much more on crisis control when another crime like the one at Hacienda Healthcare happens again. 

In 2025, COMIT looked into the daily living environments, diets and person-centered care plans of 154 group home residents living in homes run by 63 vendors. 

The program’s 10 employees interview the residents of the group home, as well as the person’s guardians and the group home staff, to ensure they are safe and not experiencing abuse or neglect. They also do a walkthrough of the group home. 

J.J. Rico, CEO of Disability Rights Arizona, told the Mirror that the program is dedicated to taking an in-depth look at the daily lives of the people who live in group homes and to ensure they’re receiving the care they’re entitled to. 

“It’s a very extensive monitoring tool that we do, much more than I believe the state does,” Rico said. 

Rico and the rest of the COMIT team only found out that funding for the program was definitely off the table hours before the budget passed, he said. 

COMIT is completely state-funded and will cease operations at the end of 2026 if it doesn’t secure another funding source. 

Rico said that COMIT had worked over the three-year pilot program to show that it was necessary, and that the team was excited when Hobbs and lawmakers made it permanent last year. 

“Then, less than one year later, getting notice that we weren’t funded — it’s disappointing,” he said. 

In 2025, COMIT identified numerous issues at the group homes it monitors, including that 81% of clients were not receiving all of the services they were supposed to receive, problems with record-keeping and staff that lacked necessary skills to do their jobs. 

“Direct care staff often could not demonstrate the knowledge and skills required to meet the needs of clients with complex needs to ensure their health and safety,” COMIT wrote in its 2025 report. 

It attributed workers’ inability to answer questions about a resident’s care plan or goals and behaviors to high rates of staff turnover and lack of training.

COMIT also investigates quality of care complaints about group homes submitted to the Division of Developmental Disabilities. In 2025 it completed investigations of 21 of those complaints, and found that 12 of them were substantiated. In the process of investigating those complaints, it identified 57 additional quality of care problems that investigators said violated state law or DDD standards. 

That included 13 substantiated cases of abuse or neglect — and two unexpected deaths that were either caused by an aspect of the person’s treatment in a group home, or could have been caused by it. 

Although DDD already investigates all quality of care complaints it receives, COMIT found its processes to be lacking.

“COMIT has identified numerous investigations closed by DDD as unsubstantiated that warrant more comprehensive follow-up to ensure member safety and prevent incidents of abuse, neglect, and death,” the program’s 2025 report reads. 

And COMIT also found that group homes that were out of compliance did not face meaningful accountability.

“The lack of enforcement allows unsafe practices to persist across the system, contributing to ongoing patterns of abuse, neglect, and an observable increase in high-severity incidents, including death,” COMIT wrote in its report.

While Hobbs spokesman Christian Slater didn’t answer specific questions about why COMIT’s funding was eliminated, he told the Mirror in a statement that Hobbs will work with the Department of Economic Security, which oversees DDD, “to ensure that the program has the necessary oversight in the coming years.”

Last year, COMIT investigators identified what they called systemic concerns with DDD’s investigations, calling into question the quality of that oversight. 

“COMIT found that reviews often relied on surface-level determinations and lack the comprehensive fact-gathering needed to fully assess Quality of Care allegations,” COMIT wrote in its report. “DDD does not routinely obtain police reports, witness statements, or other third-party records, limiting the ability to evaluate incidents accurately.”

Zane Garcia Ramadan, assistant director of the Department of Economic Security, agreed with some of COMIT’s findings, and said that DDD would take action to correct those problems, including the creation of a quality assurance team to address documentation and training problems at group homes.

But Ramadan also disagreed with some of the findings and pointed out in his response that DDD’s internal investigation unit oversees 1,400 residential homes, while COMIT monitors a small fraction of those. Ramadan pointed out that some of COMIT’s findings were due to a misalignment in evaluation standards between the two entities and misunderstanding of what state law requires. 

Some of COMIT’s most alarming findings included a current group home employee who was on DDD’s “no contact” list because of past findings of abuse, and another employee who worked with disabled children who had an active arrest warrant. 

“A substantial volume of (quality of care) complaints describe staff sleeping on shift, failing to supervise members, refusing to cook, lacking basic caregiving skills, and demonstrating poor judgment,” COMIT wrote.

Rico said that he reached out to the Governor’s Office multiple times to request a meeting about the future of COMIT and its funding, but he never received a response. Slater did not answer the Mirror’s question about the governor’s failure to respond to Rico’s requests. 

“The governor is proud of the balanced budget agreement she negotiated with bipartisan legislators,” Slater said in his statement. “It includes investments in healthcare, education and water security. No party got everything that they wanted, but it’s a strong deal that will make Arizona stronger, safer and more prosperous.”

Without COMIT’s independent oversight, Rico said he worries that instances of abuse and neglect could increase.

“I hope I’m wrong about that, but that’s a fear,” he said. 

Rico has already informed his employees that they will be out of a job at the end of the year if COMIT is unable to secure another funding source. He said he plans to attempt to convince the governor and legislature to fund the program in next year’s budget, but if COMIT shuts down in the meantime, it will take time to hire new staff and train them. 

“If we put ourselves in any of our staff’s shoes, they probably will have another job, and might not be looking to come back or have moved on,” he said. “So, there are no guarantees that that staff will be available if funding’s secured down the road. And they’re great staff.”

Rico is urging community members who feel that COMIT’s work is valuable to reach out to their legislators and tell them. 

“If there’s anybody out there that would like to contribute or see that the program continue, we’re open to any sources of funding at this point,” he said “We want to maintain this program as long as possible.”