Revisiting: Smoke & Mirrors: How DHS Used the MAARC Hotline to Cover Up Abuse Allegations Amid a $1B Medicaid Lawsuit
Minnesota DHS Faces Lawsuit Over $1 Billion in Withheld Waiver Services Amid Controversial Oversight Hotline
In what’s increasingly seen as a calculated public relations move, former Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) Commissioner Emily Johnson Piper rolled out the Minnesota Adult Abuse Reporting Center (MAARC) in the wake of two devastating legal storms: the Jensen Settlement, and a $1 billion class action lawsuit over denied Medicaid services to disabled Minnesotans.
On paper, MAARC was introduced as a centralized hotline to protect vulnerable adults and improve the reporting process for abuse and neglect. But beneath the surface, the hotline merely rerouted calls into the same closed system that has long buried abuse allegations behind bureaucratic walls.
This is not reform. It’s a state-sponsored silencing campaign—a deliberate strategy to give the public the illusion of progress while preserving the same barriers that disabled people and their families have battled for decades.
The Lawsuit DHS Wanted Buried: The Class Action Allegations
In a lawsuit filed in 2015, plaintiffs alleged that DHS “improperly allow[ed] over $1 billion of funds legislatively appropriated for Waiver Services programs to go unspent” while thousands of Minnesotans with disabilities languished on waiting lists—some for more than a decade—even though county-level reserves remained notably high.
What was being hidden then—and now—was something even more insidious. In addition to the more than 5,000 victims on waiting lists, there were (and still are) victims who were already enrolled in the program and subjected to physical, psychological, financial, social, and emotional abuse. Their conditions and medical needs were deliberately omitted from DHS records in order to control funding. DHS could not fund what was not documented. Services were billed for but never delivered. Physically handicapped victims were maliciously committed to mental health placements for "failing to perform" in community mental health services—such as Independent Living Skills training—that were forcibly imposed to divert attention from more expensive physical disabilities, which were intentionally excluded from the record by DHS staff, vendors, and partners.
Emily Piper Johnson's office received real-time reports of specific criminal conduct, falsified records, fraud, omissions, retaliation, and injuries from county DHS employees administering the Home- and Community-Based Waiver on behalf of the state—that is, on behalf of Emily Piper Johnson—from the moment she took office until the day she left her position as Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Services.
The contributor of this blog is one of those victims, and here is an article showing the type of records Emily Piper Johnson’s office was receiving before and during that class action lawsuit. DHS employed the federal housing authority to stop the victim from escaping the state with injuries and documentation of the fraud that prevented access to medical treatment before, during, and after all class action lawsuits from 2003 to 2020.
The victim made it out, got surgery, and went to work for the first time since 2003—proving it was DHS, in fact, that purposely crippled the victims and then kept them debilitated through criminal measures in order to count them as another body for the purpose of funding a program that even the Commissioner(s) knew was not dispensing the funding it was receiving for medical care the entire time as reported for sixteen years before fleeing the state. Ignored on the principles of race and family support (lack-their of).
The victim filed fourteen Vulnerable Adult complaints, made two police calls, and submitted multiple criminal complaints through the Minnesota Department of Human Services’ Appeals and Regulations website—because reports submitted through MAARC were never investigated.
Ultimately, the victim was forced to flee the state. Yet even then, the housing authority refused to provide the federally required Request for Tenancy Approval (RFTA) and signed Housing Choice Voucher necessary to secure housing in another state—they were attempting to keep the victim in the state, in their county, without any medical treatment until the victim was permanently forced into a state facility due to permeant physical injury.
They refused to answer phone calls, ignored formal complaints, and refused to respond to request for informal hearings for several months. When they finally responded, they claimed the victim’s nineteen-year, good-standing voucher—which they had attempted and failed to terminate five times in the span of one year between 2018-2019, after notice was submitted to transfer it which they were totally ignoring since 2017— so now they stated the HCV had “timed out.” Notably, in the 18 years prior, no such termination efforts were made.
No federally documented written notification of anything has ever been supplied. The victim was simply erased from the system repeatedly from 2019-2023.
In a further act of obstruction, the night before the scheduled voucher signing meeting in the new state, police forcibly removed the victim from their hotel room by threat of violence if the victim didn't open the door so police could see her and which point she was forceful led out of hotel room for a so-called “wellness check”—something she never received in her life; in a state where she knew no one, had no insurance and had never had any medical encounter. It was a government organized "assaults."
Without any explanation or consent, the victim was injected with drugs in an ambulance waiting in the hotel parking lot and held overnight in a hospital. They were released the next morning only after the housing meeting had already started with no explanation as to why they were removed, injected or hospitalized in the first place—and the port-in housing agency refused to allow them to attend late that day or reschedule the meeting. This denial was issued despite the victim’s eligibility for what would clearly constitute a Reasonable Accommodation under federal law. The agency stated they're billing Minnesota for the first year and must follow Minnesota's directions for that reason—Minnesota refuses a reasonable Accommodation despite never allowing the federally required 60 day window or releasing the federally required documentation and not issuing the port agency the file until more than 30 days elapsed from the victims move out.
The jury is still out as to whether the victim was forcefully sterilized during this drugging because medical treatment remains inaccessible.
As a result of these compounded actions and systemic failures, the victim has endured 1,775 consecutive days of forced, criminalized homelessness.
As of today, that totals 2,351 days—six years, five months, and nine days—waiting for any investigation into not just the theft of a federal housing voucher, but also the abuse and neglect committed under Minnesota's Department of Human Services’ PMAP and HCBS Waiver medical insurance programs.
All of these violations were reported immediately and repeatedly to the proper authorities—and ignored. That is why you are reading this article—the victim is still a Minnesota Made Internally Displaced Person (IPD otherwise known as American Refuge for whistleblowing the Medicaid fraud you're now seeing partially come to light.
It's internal to The Department of Human Services, not external. They let those companies get away with the fraud on purpose to keep quiet about corrupt interworking's of Minnesota Department of Human Services. As you can see they dump couple billion, to keep the several billion for themselves all the time. The Family Stabilization Services fraud scandal is not a major break.
The 2015 Diversion, Not Protection
The case, Mikkelson v. Piper, alleges that this under-spending violated federal Medicaid law, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and due process requirements, and that DHS failed to inform eligible recipients of the services available to them. The plaintiffs sought court orders for more prompt housing services, person-centered planning, and a shift toward community-based integrated living—promises made in the Jensen Settlement (Olmsted Plan).
The district court denied DHS’s motion to dismiss, allowing the case to proceed.
In 2015, plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit alleging that DHS intentionally withheld over $1 billion in federally funded Medicaid Home- and Community-Based Services (HCBS) Waiver allocations. These funds were supposed to help disabled Minnesotans live independently in their homes and communities, not languish on waitlists for years while counties stockpiled funds in reserves.
Under commissioners Lucinda Jesson's and Emily Piper’s leadership, DHS failed to notify eligible individuals of their right to these services. Thousands were denied care—some forcibly institutionalized, others stranded without basic supports—all while DHS allowed the money to go unspent until it becomes general funding that could serve other purposed beyond healthcare. The federal court allowed the case to proceed, recognizing the state’s possible violation of federal Medicaid law, the ADA, and due process.
The MAARC Hotline: A Trojan Horse
While facing mounting legal pressure, Piper’s DHS introduced the MAARC hotline—touted as a reform for vulnerable adult abuse reporting. But this hotline did not create new protections. It did not bring transparency. It did not empower victims.
MAARC simply funneled abuse reports into the same DHS-controlled system that had already failed Minnesotans.
Under MAARC:
-
Victims are not allowed to file first-hand complaints.
-
Victims are forbidden from viewing what was reported or written about their own abuse.
-
All reports go through DHS—a department implicated in the very abuses being reported.
The process is secretive, unaccountable, and completely internal—mirroring the exact issues exposed by the Jensen Settlement, where the state admitted to physical, psychological, and financial abuse of disabled individuals in its care. Jensen revealed that DHS used its power to trap residents in facilities by withholding paperwork, lying about options, and ignoring abuse.
With MAARC, those same mechanisms of control were expanded—this time into community settings and private homes where people live under the HCBS waiver system.
Diversion, Not Protection
Piper’s launch of MAARC served a political purpose, not a protective one. It diverted public attention from damning legal battles and allowed DHS to claim reform without doing anything to fix its internal culture of secrecy and harm. It gave reporters a headline, lawmakers a talking point, and Minnesotans a false sense of safety—while keeping whistleblowers gagged and victims invisible.
This is institutional gaslighting at scale.
Instead of creating independent oversight or external accountability, MAARC locked the doors tighter. There is no pathway for victims to pursue justice outside of the agency responsible for the abuse. There is no transparency. And there is no voice for those most at risk.
Conclusion: The Reform That Wasn't
The MAARC hotline was never about protection. It was about controlling the narrative, deflecting from a billion-dollar lawsuit, and preserving a system where DHS continues to operate in darkness.
Emily Johnson Piper's DHS promised protection. What it delivered was a cover-up.
The real reform Minnesotans deserve isn’t a new phone number—it’s independent, transparent, victim-led oversight of the state’s most powerful and most dangerous agency.
References (APA Style)
Becker’s Hospital Review. (2016, August 1). Judge OKs class-action suit against Minnesota for $1B in Medicaid services for disabled. https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/legal-regulatory-issues/judge-oks-class-action-suit-against-minnesota-for-1b-in-medicaid-services-for-disabled.html
Casetext. (2018). Mikkelson v. Piper. https://casetext.com/case/mikkelson-v-piper
Minnesota Department of Human Services. (n.d.). Minnesota Adult Abuse Reporting Center (MAARC). https://mn.gov/dhs/people-we-serve/people-with-disabilities/services/adult-protection/
Star Tribune. (2015, August 29). Lawsuit claims Minnesota DHS underspent funds for disabled. https://www.startribune.com/lawsuit-claims-state-of-minnesota-has-underspent-funds-meant-to-serve-the-disabled/323257321/
.gif)
No comments