Jacques LeSueurs’ phone calls to his family stopped a year ago when Clark County sent him to Western State Hospital, a psychiatric facility 130 miles away. Now, he is a missing person.
The 62-year-old man with schizoaffective and bipolar disorders was likely committed civilly, meaning he was court-ordered to receive hospital treatment for mental illness. But it is almost impossible for his family to know.
LeSueur faced criminal charges that were dropped after a judge found him incompetent to stand trial and ordered him evaluated for civil commitment.
Civil commitment cases are sealed and some of the most difficult records to discover in Washington. Even police looking for LeSueur can’t access court records that can show he was in a facility and for how long.
Washington’s law sealing civil commitment records is not unusual. It’s meant to protect people’s privacy and their sensitive information, such as medical diagnoses or details of unusual behaviors that could be evidence of compromise. However, this also means that unless the defendant explicitly allows someone to know their whereabouts, people like LeSueur can get lost in the mental health system as they would not in the prison system.
It is a corner of the law where people’s right to privacy and the public’s right to access information from public institutions collide.
The LeSueurs’ family members believe their access to their potential civil commitment records is a matter of transparency, and sealing them limits liability and creates opportunities for misconduct in the civil commitment process.
He would rather he go to jail, said his mother, Bettie LeSueur, with whom Jacques lived in Vancouver.
It’s been 15 months since 85-year-old Bettie LeSueur heard her children’s voices. If he was civilly committed and released somewhere without the support of his family, she fears he will die. But if not, if he was and still is civilly engaged, all he wants is to know he’s alive and to send the message that his little brother died while he was gone, he said.
I can’t stop stressing, she said. I lost my baby. And this one? I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.
Like a different person
Jacques LeSueurs’ family knew how serious his mental illness could be. Throughout his life, he was in and out of mental hospitals and often in trouble with the law, especially in Portland, where he faced more than 30 counts of criminal trespass. But when he was with his mother in Vancouver and took his medication, he was like a different person, friends and family said. So he often lived with her.
Bettie LeSueur took classes on how to care for people with schizophrenia and gave him his medication every night, watching him swallow the pills. But one night in September 2022, he didn’t come home. A few days after returning to their mothers, an officer arrested Jacques LeSueur.
The media soon reported that Jacques LeSueur had offered children at a bus stop near Vancouver’s Hearthwood Elementary School to come to the house where he lived with his mother down the street.
A boy told police that Jacques LeSueur put his mouth in his ear and said something like, I’m going to eat you. A neighbor then reported that Jacques LeSueur was playing with himself while children were being dropped off at Hearthwood. Police noted he had prior convictions for indecent exposure and third-degree sexual abuse of a minor, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Their mother acknowledges that her sons’ behavior that day was inappropriate, but believes that their mental illness contributed. While in prison, Jacques LeSueur, nicknamed Jimmy by his family, called his mother frequently, she said. In their last phone call, she told him she hoped he would come home for Christmas.
One time he said to me, ‘Mommy, come here and get me,'” Bettie LeSueur said. I said, I can’t, Jimmy. I don’t think I could understand anything.
Jacques LeSueur faced charges of sexual attraction, stalking and fourth-degree assault. However, a judge found that he was not mentally competent to participate in his defense based on an evaluation he underwent at the Western State Hospitals campus. (Judges often send mentally ill defendants to competency restoration programs before the case proceeds.) The court ordered Jacques LeSueur to undergo a 72-hour civil commitment evaluation at Western State Hospital . This is the last proof his family has of his location.
No statement has been signed
Three women surrounded Bettie LeSueur at her dining room table. She wiped away tears with a handkerchief as she pored over Jacques LeSueurs’ available court documents. A loud clock reciting scriptures occasionally interrupted their conversation.
Joyce Smith is pastor of Jacques LeSueurs. Bettie LeSueurs’ church friend Balinda Olive-Beltran spent nine months at Western State Hospital in 1987. Cindi Fisher lost track of her son when she went to Western State Hospital. The three have been helping Bettie LeSueur try to find her son. But this is the first time they’ve seen his competency evaluation, which is a public record even though it contains sensitive information similar to a civilian commitment evaluation.
Jacques LeSueurs’ report detailed the medications doctors prescribed and how they did not improve his condition. According to the report, he was likely experiencing cognitive impairment and would be at risk for future dangerous behavior and recidivism if he stopped taking medication or lived in an uncontrolled environment with access to illicit drugs.
According to the documents, Jacques LeSueur told doctors he had PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) from the service, was a trained defense attorney, had been selling and designing cars for Volvo and Dodge and is famous for producing the album Thriller by Michael Jackson. He said he paid his mother $1 million to be his public defender.
If he has been civilly committed, Bettie LeSueur wonders if his mental state has declined even further, she said. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t called as often as he used to. Patients must sign paperwork at a state psychiatric facility to disclose their location, according to a spokesman for the state Department of Health and Human Services’ Behavioral Health Administration.
Olive-Beltran said her heart breaks for Bettie LeSueur and her son. Her family helped her during her time at Western State Hospital for schizophrenia, but she doesn’t remember whether she signed the paperwork that let people know where she was. She doesn’t think she would have been able to.
I think it should be more transparent. Why not at least let immediate family members know where theirs are? she said People, when they are sick, need to see their family. That was important to me, to be able to see my loved ones when I was locked up.
Smith said it bothers her that a system exists where someone can be removed from their support network and disappear.
They could just get lost there. They die there without anyone knowing, Smith said.
It’s not there anymore
In December, older brother Jacques LeSueurs sent him a card that was returned. His family made several calls to Western State Hospital and learned he was no longer a patient. They feared the worst.
Bettie LeSueur had stayed in touch with Jacques when he was civilly engaged for a year in 2013 at Western State Hospital. One day he got a call from the staff saying they were going to drop him off in downtown Vancouver, but he insisted on dropping him off at home. Jacques LeSueur arrived at her door with a long beard and shoulder-length hair.
He fears that, without his insistence that staff take him home, he could have been left somewhere without help.
In 2023, Western State Hospital dropped a man with schizoaffective disorder in downtown Seattle out of a homeless shelter after a year of treatment, despite his mother’s efforts to dissuade the agency from ho, according to an investigation by the Seattle Times. He died less than a month later.
Tyler Hemstreet, a spokesman for the states’ Behavioral Health Administration, said hospital staff work with patients to create a plan for where they will go after discharge, whether it’s an apartment, a family home of adults, another facility or a family member’s home. (The patient must consent to family participation.)
It is also possible that Jacques LeSueur was transferred elsewhere, like the Fishers’ son.
Fisher said she was never informed when her civilly committed son was moved from Western State Hospital to an adult family home years ago.
Hemstreet said patients can also be transferred to other state psychiatric facilities, so his possible Jacques LeSueur, if committed civilly, was never released only transferred.
Fisher said she understands the importance of medical privacy, but believes the civil commitment system requires more transparency because patients are often referred through the criminal justice system and treatment can be involuntary.
State hospitals are the hidden prison system, Fisher said.
He also points to reports of runaway patients, patient-to-patient assaults and a lack of trained or qualified staff. In 2018, Western State Hospital lost its federal certification and $53 million in federal funds after an unannounced inspection uncovered health and safety violations, according to the Associated Press.
Fisher said the community that allows this to happen should be able to track what happens to members of their community. There should be no legal piece that can hide it and make it disappear.
missing person
Bettie LeSueur finally accepted that she couldn’t find her son on her own and reported him to the Vancouver Police Department as a missing person a month ago. A department spokeswoman said Jacques is now on a national missing persons database.
The police may not be able to help. The law, which not all states have, is strict about who can access civil commitment court records, specifically giving access only to the Washington State Patrol for background checks to prosecute and purchase firearms.
Until Jacques LeSueur is released or found, his likely hell will remain a missing person. But his family does not lose hope.
If he had been free, he would have been home, Bettie LeSueur said. I just want to hear his voice.
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