A prominent Honolulu drug rehab underpaid dozens of counselors, shorting them by hundreds of thousands of dollars, a federal labor department investigation found.
Many of the counselors at Sand Island Treatment Center had struggled with addiction and went through the two-year treatment program themselves after being sent there by Hawaii courts.
The nonprofit drug rehab underpaid 34 of these workers about $452,000 over two and a half years, according to a settlement agreement signed Feb. 22 with the U.S. Department of Labor.
Almost four years ago, a Civil Beat investigation found that Mason Henderson, the chief executive officer of Sand Island Treatment Center, got a salary of almost $500,000, far beyond what similar operations in Hawaii paid their top administrators.
Not only that, Sand Island was paying several of its counselors well into the six figures – again, head and shoulders above the average pay for that position elsewhere in the state or the U.S.
But the generous pay did not make it to the lower echelons of Sand Island workers, the federal investigation showed.
“It’s really absolutely terrible that somebody would take advantage of vulnerable individuals who are trying to address their addiction issues … and treat them with utter disrespect,” said Joey Faris, a former Sand Island counselor whose complaint triggered the two-and-a-half year U.S. Department of Labor investigation.
Faris, who left in 2020, said that he and another counselor would be left in charge of...
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