A night shift employee at Lighthouse Care Center was arrested Tuesday for allegedly taking a 16-year-old female patient to her room at 11 p.m. April 29 and sexually assaulting her.
An arrest warrant says Anthanasio Morris engaged in sexual activity with the juvenile in Room 113 of the children’s mental health facility in Augusta. Morris, 24, of Walden Drive, was charged with sexual assault by persons with supervisory or disciplinary authority. His official title was a Health Service Technician.
Morris was arrested on Tuesday on the felony charge and has already bonded out. A Facebook page indicates he became a father last summer.
Three other former Lighthouse workers at the same facility on Perimeter Parkway are serving prison time for similar sex crimes with patients that all occurred in 2017:
Former Admissions Coordinator Timothy Carroll was sentenced in December to 98 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of molesting a juvenile patient. The crime occurred in 2017 and was not resolved for over four years, leaving the man free on bond.
The victim was 14 at the time and had turned 18 by the time she got to testify about Carroll’s abuse of her while she was at Lighthouse following a suicide attempt. She said Carroll showed her pornographic pictures a woman fondling herself and of a man’s genitalia. Then, he fondled her and took a photo of her with her breasts exposed.
For his crime, former mental health technician Jacey Haskell accepted a plea deal in 2019 and was sentenced to 10 years behind bars followed by eight years of probation.
He allowed a 16-year-old patient to give him oral sex in February 2017. A video camera confirmed the sex crime by the supervisor, which took place while other female patients were sleeping.
Former Lighthouse employee Christopher Calhoun was given 10 years in prison for the sexual abuse of a former patient in 2016. He took a teen girl to his home and had sex with her. Calhoun had met her at Lighthouse.
Lighthouse is currently the subject of a lawsuit for at least one of the incidents, and Calhoun is named personally in the suit.
Greg Rickabaugh is the Jail Report contributor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at greg.rickabaugh@theaugustapress.com
