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Posted on Tue, Dec. 27, 2011 6 fired at Fla detention center where teen died
The Associated Press
Six employees of a South Florida juvenile detention
center where a teenager died will be fired.The Florida
Department of Juvenile Justice announced Tuesday that
the Palm Beach Juvenile Detention Center's
superintendent and assistant superintendent were fired.
Four detention center officers also will be
fired.Officials said a review of the facility's
operations and management revealed that the six violated
policies and procedures.Police and prosecutors are still
investigating the death of 18-year-old Eric Perez in
July. The teen died hours after seeking help for a
severe headache and vomiting. An autopsy is pending.DJJ
Secretary Wansley Walters said the agency could not wait
for the outcome of the criminal investigation to
discipline the employees because "necessary changes" at
the center can't begin until "appropriate personnel
changes" are made.
Brooke Briscoe (Source: Bullitt County Detention Center)
Sunrise Spring Meadows Residential Facility
Det. Scott McGaha
SHEPHERDSVILLE, KY (WAVE) - A
counselor pleaded not guilty to charges of rape and sodomy
on Tuesday after deputies say she had sex with a teen in her
care.
Bullitt County deputies
arrested Brooke Briscoe, 27, Monday morning.
Briscoe worked at Sunrise Spring
Meadows Residential Facility, a group home that helps
troubled teens. Investigators said she had sex with the teen
at the facility.
Deputies launched the investigation
after Child Protective Services discovered Briscoe allegedly
had sexual contact with a 17-year-old male on November 11.
Briscoe is charged with rape in the 3rd degree and sodomy in
the 3rd degree.
"Sixteen is the legal consensual
age in the State of Kentucky. However, even though he's of
consent the problem is it's rape in the 3rd degree because
someone is in a caretaker role with him. She was a counselor
for him," said Det. Scott McGaha, Bullitt County Sheriff's
Office.
"Unfortunately, it does occur. We
see it quite often and she has been charged with that. It's
just unfortunate that it happens," McGaha said.
Sunrise, a faith based non-profit,
is located in Mt. Washington, KY. It's mission is "to care
for Kentucky children who've been abused or neglected."
Sunrise released a statement.
Here's a portion:
"We
are conducting an internal investigation and are reviewing
our policies and procedures to determine if there is
anything we need to change to avoid a situation like this in
the future."
Briscoe was placed on
administrative leave once authorities launched an
investigation. Sunrise terminated her employment Monday.
Freedom Village, a ministry in Yates County
for troubled teens, is trudging toward the
end of a two-decade $21 million
bankruptcy proceeding.
But, in keeping with the history of the
operation and its fundamentalist leader,
the Pastor Fletcher Brothers, the legal
brouhaha is still generating controversy.
In the past few months, the Freedom
Village board of trustees tried to oust
Brothers — the individual central to the
growth of the ministry — and pushed to
prevent him from accessing Freedom
Village funds. Brothers fired back with the
support of the Freedom Village board of
deacons — a separate group from the
trustees — with claims that the attempts to
force him out are based in part "on false
accusations."
Staff members have left the operation in
droves, owed more than $1 million in
unpaid wages, court papers allege. Among
those who left their jobs, citing "certain
behavior (by Brothers) that is deemed
unacceptable," were the chief financial
officer and public relations director,
records show.
Brothers, who has been dogged by past
allegations of financial mismanagement and
misuse, has answered that tough economic
times forced staff cutbacks and that those
challenging his leadership are disgruntled
former employees with no substance to
their allegations.
Meanwhile, the federal trustee for the
bankruptcy case filed papers seeking
almost $170,000 in unpaid fees from
Freedom Village.
"Obviously there's a lot of things going on
out there at Freedom Village that have to
be attended to," U.S. Bankruptcy Judge
John Ninfo said in a recent hearing.
Rochester attorney David MacKnight, who
represents Freedom Village, said the funds
are available to pay creditors and, with an
extension into 2012, the trustee fees.
Disbursing the money to creditors has
grown more difficult as years have passed,
MacKnight said.
"After 21 years, people have died, moved,
you name it," he said.
Attorneys for Freedom Village are
scheduled to appear Thursday before
Ninfo — the last docketed case before
Ninfo, who retires at the end of this year.
There is a certain irony that this case,
which generated thousands of pages and
boxes of filings over its 21 years, would be
Ninfo's last. Bankruptcy files don't detail
the allegations against Brothers, and an
attorney for one of those who tried to
remove him — as well as some others
involved in the attempted ouster —
declined comment.
"After 31 years, especially in light of
present economic conditions and forecasts,
it became painfully obvious cuts were
needed," Brothers said in an email
response to questions. "In truth, a purging
of incompetence, laziness, bad attitudes
and those not here for the right reason (the
children) was needed and long overdue."
The cuts led to the claims of
mismanagement, Brothers said. "When
some found out it was coming a 'smoke
screen' was thrown up," Brothers wrote.
Ninfo ruled recently that the board of
trustees — which records show has rarely
met — existed before the bankruptcy
proceeding, so the question of whether
Brothers should be removed is not to be
decided in bankruptcy court. "Everybody
acknowledges that none of this has
anything to do with the (bankruptcy) plan,"
Ninfo said at the recent hearing.
An attorney for one of the trustees would
not answer whether action may be pursued
in state court. MacKnight said he had heard
no more about the push to remove
Brothers.
Freedom Village was the outgrowth of a
Rochester-based church — Gates
Community Chapel — that Brothers started
in the late 1970s.
Brothers built a following with strident
attacks on pornography, abortion and
homosexuality, and started Freedom
Village in Lakemont as a Christian-based
program.
Through a radio and television program,
Brothers pulled in literally millions of dollars
for the operation. He even initiated a loan
program, borrowing money from
supporters and claiming they could expect
returns as high as 14 percent.
But those who made loans found
themselves unable to get their money
returned, and in the early 1990s Freedom
Village declared bankruptcy.
The amount owed creditors reached nearly
$21 million, and the bankruptcy is
expected to be resolved with them
receiving 15 to 20 cents for each dollar
lost.
Syracuse resident Diane Knowlton, whose
late father was owed almost $150,000 by
Freedom Village, said Friday that she had
heard nothing for three years about the
status of the bankruptcy case.
"He tried to get the money back while he
was alive," she said of her father, Robert
Galster.
Her father did not discuss why he'd
supported Freedom Village, she said.
"I guess he thought he could help people,"
she said.
GCRAIG@DemocratandChronicle.com
Another case of sexual abuse against
children within the Assemblies of God Church. Two youth
ministers with the Assemblies of God church arrested for sex
crimes against children in Polk County. December 14, 2011
POLK COUNTY, Fla.- Two youth pastors have been arrested for
sex-related crimes against children, the Polk County Sheriff's
Office announced Wednesday.
Edward Demoreta, 30, is accused of having sex at least twice
with a 14-year-old student at Mulberry Middle School., while he
was her teacher there.
Ricardo Navarro, 27, was arrested for texting a 14-year-old
member of the church youth group with lewd requests.
Both suspects were youth pastors at the First Assembly of God.
(Webmaster Note: Assemblies of God
operates and oversees the Teen Challenge programs.)
Doctors
Put Foster Children at Risk With
Mind-Altering Drugs
By BRINDA
ADHIKARI, JOAN MARTELLI and
SARAH KOCH
Dec. 1,
2011 —
go.com
Across America, doctors
are putting foster children on powerful,
mind-altering drugs at rates up to 13 times that
of children in the general population. What's
more, doctors are prescribing foster children
drugs at doses beyond what the Food and Drug
Administration has approved, sometimes in
potentially dangerous combinations, according to
a new report by the federal Government
Accountability Office.
"It's just almost beyond
comprehension," said Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del.,
who asked for the GAO investigation. "We want
the doctors and nurses that are prescribing
these medicines to look at their behavior and
think and ask this question. Are we doing
something wrong here?"
In Florida, regulators
have been grappling with that question since a
7-year-old boy, Gabriel Myers, killed himself in
2009 after being prescribed a powerful mix of
psychotropic medication.
His psychiatrist, Dr.
Sohail Punjwani, had, at different times,
prescribed two drugs that carry black box labels
-- warning of the need to carefully monitor
patients because of the increased risk of
suicidal thoughts and behavior in children,
which call for careful monitoring. However, even
though Gabriel visited Punjwani's office seven
times, his foster father said Gabriel usually
only spent about five minutes talking to the
doctor.
Gabriel's death was ruled
an accident, but investigators pointed to the
possibility that the medication may have
contributed to his death. The tragedy triggered
a storm of outrage across the state.
"I don't accept that the
only way to reach a child who is 7 years old is
through psychotropic drugs," said Florida Sen.
Ronda Storm, during hearings over Gabriel's
death. "I do not accept that."
The boy's doctor settled a
lawsuit in 2010 accusing him of prescribing a
toxic cocktail of psychotropic drugs to a
16-year-old patient, who suffered a sudden heart
attack and died. Punjwani settled that case but
admitted no wrongdoing.
READ: A
Resource Guide for Children in Foster Care
Additionally, Punjwani was
arrested for driving under the influence and
cocaine possession. He pleaded not guilty to
those charges but went through a court-ordered
rehabilitation program.
When ABC News caught up
with Dr. Punjwani, he told us, "Sad stories
happen but that does not mean that everything
else the doctor is responsible for it because we
are in the business of taking care of these
children," he said.
Antipsychotic medication,
which can cause a litany of health problems such
as severe weight gain, an increased risk of
diabetes and irreversible movement disorders, is
among the top-selling drugs in America.
LEARN MORE: Antipsychotics
Most Commonly Prescribed to Foster Children
Four drug makers have paid
a total of more than $2 billion to settle claims
they illegally marketed antipsychotics to
children. All deny wrongdoing.
"How do antipsychotics,
drugs supposedly for people who have lost touch
with reality, how do they develop such a wide
market?" said neuropsychiatrist Dr. Stefan
Kruszewski, who won millions of dollars as a key
whistleblower against drug companies.
There have been very
limited long-term studies on antipsychotics in
children. And for drugs already on the market,
the duration of the studies that were used to
get FDA approval for children have been as short
as three to six weeks.
ABC News interviewed a
social worker now working in a state foster care
system, who asked not to be identified.
"Every child that I saw
was basically on some type of psychotropic
medication," the social worker told ABC News.
"It's much easier to medicate a child than it is
to physically restrain them, than it is to pay
$200 an hour to a therapist to talk through
their problems with them."
Dr. Charles Zeanah, a
prominent child psychiatrist who is careful to
use a minimum of psychotropic medication in
children, said that doctors are under pressure
from all corners to do something with these
troubled children and medication is one of their
tools.
"The pressures that I'm
aware of are pressures that come from families
and schools who have kids with troubling
behavior," he said. "They want something done.
They want something done quickly."
Still, he adds, "The
general consensus is that when you're treating
young children, you always try behavioral
intervention before you go to medication."
The problem has not gone
unnoticed by some state officials. In the state
of Washington, doctors and regulators have
implemented a new system to oversee psychotropic
medication and identify red flag cases that
exceed safety limits, by dosage or number of
medications, or arise because of the young age
of the child. In those red flag cases, a second
opinion by a child psychiatrist is needed before
medication can be dispensed.
And some states including
Louisiana, Florida and New York are even going
so far as kicking out high-prescribing doctors
out of Medicaid.
Sen. Carper, who called
for the GAO investigation, said he was shocked
by the findings.
"The idea that these kids
are taking one, two, three times the regular
dose for a child or for an adult -- it's just
the wrong thing to do," he said. "We need to get
to the bottom of this and do the best that we
can to stop it, not just the Congress, not just
the doctors, not just the states. All of us
together."
ABC News'
Mark Abdelmalek contributed to this report.
Watch the
year-long investigation tonight on "World News
with Diane Sawyer" at 6:30 p.m. ET and then see
more on "20/20," Friday at 10 p.m. ET.
Florida’s youth-corrections system is so poorly
administered that children are assaulted by officers,
denied necessary medical care and punished harshly for
minor infractions, a federal report released Friday
concludes.
Conditions are so severe, the U.S. Department of Justice
said, that they violate the Constitution.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division released
a scathing 28-page report Friday on conditions at two
North Florida youth prisons, the Dozier School for Boys
and the Jackson Juvenile Offender Center. Though the two
camps were both shut down by state juvenile-justice
administrators earlier this year, the report said the
state’s “failed system of oversight and accountability”
likely has resulted in dangerous conditions at youth
prisons throughout the state.
“These conditions return youth to the community no
better — and likely less-equipped to succeed than when
they were first incarcerated,” Assistant Attorney
General Thomas E. Perez wrote in a Dec. 1 letter to Gov.
Rick Scott, adding that such practices “erode public
confidence in the juvenile justice system and interfere
with the state’s efforts to reduce crime.”
Though the report is strongly worded, neither Perez nor
the report itself suggested that the Justice Department
intended to take further action.
The investigation, which began in April 2010, concerned
two large youth camps in the Panhandle — Dozier, a
159-acre campus that had been open for 110 years, and
the nearby Jackson Juvenile Offender Center, or JJOC,
which later combined with Dozier to form the North
Florida Youth Development Center. Dozier had been the
subject of intense scrutiny since October 2008, when The
Miami Herald reported on The White House Boys, a group
of now-older adult men who said they had been beaten and
raped at the facility during their youth.
And though investigators confined their research to the
two Panhandle youth prisons, they concluded that the
conditions they found likely permeate the state’s
youth-corrections system as a whole.
“Florida’s oversight system failed to detect and
sufficiently address the problems we found at Dozier and
JJOC,” the report said. “We find that many of the
problems we identified … are the result of a systemic
lack of training, supervision and oversight.”
The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice’s spokesman,
C.J. Drake, said Friday that the U.S. department’s
findings do not apply to other residential programs
throughout the state.
Last August, DJJ Secretary Wansley Walters said that the
use of physical force on youths had dropped by 41.6
percent during the past two years as the state adopted a
set of “best practices” in behavior management. In the
past year alone, Walters said, more than half of the
DJJ’s residential programs either reduced or eliminated
the use of physical force.
“The issues and concerns raised in the investigative
report on allegations of past staff misconduct at the
closed [North Florida youth camp] are, in fact, confined
to the closed facility and are not duplicated elsewhere
in the DJJ system,” Drake said Friday.
“We have taken and will continue to take swift and
appropriate action to address any conduct that violates
laws, policies, or the safety and dignity of the youth
in our care,” he added. Since 2008, in fact, the DJJ has
either closed or substantially reduced 23 residential
programs across the state that performed poorly.Roy
Miller, a children’s advocate who heads the Florida
Children’s Campaign and has been a long-time critic of
the state’s youth-corrections program, said Friday he
remains unconvinced that the state has implemented
meaningful reform.
“I have no confidence that this is not a systemic
problem,” Miller said. “Every time horrifying abuse has
occurred, we get the same story from DJJ, that it is not
systemic.”
Among the problems the U.S. Justice Department found:
• Juveniles sent to the youth camps were subjected to
unnecessary — and often excessive — physical force,
including violent takedowns, choking and restraints that
can lead to asphyxiation.
In the spring of 2006, the Florida Legislature banned a
host of so-called compliance techniques and takedowns in
the wake of a national scandal, the death of 14-year-old
Martin Lee Anderson, who died after guards at a Panama
City boot camp punched, kneed and choked off his air
supply during a long, violent restraint. The Martin Lee
Anderson Act banned the use of stun guns, pepper spray,
pressure points, mechanical restraints and psychological
intimidation unless a child is a threat to himself or
others.
The Justice Department, however, said guards in North
Florida used “dangerous” face-down restraint techniques,
choked youths and used handcuffs on children who were
not resisting.A September 2010 incident that was
captured on video showed a guard who “appeared to strike
and choke” a youth who “was not engaged in violent or
disruptive behavior.” The guard had “slammed” the boy
into furniture and then the ground, shook the boy’s arm,
and then tried to force the youth’s arm behind his back,
though the youth appeared only to “be trying to avoid
further confrontation,” the report said.
• Staff members at the camps also used isolation and
confinement as punishment, the report said, though most
experts discourage the use of isolation for all but
emergency situations. And isolation was used, the report
said, for “minor infractions.”
At Dozier, youths were placed in either a “controlled
observation” area — the written procedure was to confine
the youth for only a two-hour “cool-down” period — or in
a longer-term Behavior Management Unit for up to 21
days. The report describes the two units as
“particularly harsh environments,” where youths were
held in 9.8-by-5.5-foot cells with locked doors, bars
and only a concrete slab for a bed. Administrators would
place a “thin mattress” on the slab at bedtime.
• Guards exercised “deliberate indifference” to the
needs of children in their care, including youths who
were at risk of killing themselves.
“Suicidal youths were sent to isolation, although the
facility rules prohibit confinement of such youths,” the
report said, adding: “This practice is very dangerous.”
• Youths may have been discouraged from seeking medical
care, because they had to request a sick call from the
same employees who may have abused them. And youths who
were in the behavior management unit “did not receive
adequate medical care, assessment of their mental health
… or assistance in determining whether they should be
discharged from confinement.”
Last July, 18-year-old Eric Perez died at the Palm Beach
County detention center after several guards and
administrators ignored his pleas for medical attention.
Perez’s death remains under investigation by both the
DJJ and a West Palm Beach grand jury.
For one hour a week over five weeks, Louis
Savala sized up the two young men visiting his English
classroom, "spitting" spoken-word poetry and offering life
lessons.
He didn't participate;
he didn't share despite their encouragement. And then, on
Christopher Coon and Lorenzo McNeal Jr.'s sixth visit,
17-year-old Savala found his voice.
He opened up about trouble brewing with
another teen. He vented about disrespect. He talked about being
unfairly profiled as a Norteño or a Blood because of his looks.
For the first time in a long time,
Savala felt he'd be heard.
"Getting the chance to talk and have
people listen makes me feel I can say what I need to say," the
Del Paso Heights teen said.
Savala is among dozens of
Sacramento-area youths who have found the power of personal
expression with the help of 22-year-old Coon – who proudly goes
by his last name despite the word's racial connotations – and
23-year-old McNeal, who is known as TroubleSin.
Close friends for eight years, the pair
began working with teens as "poet mentors" for the Sacramento
Area Youth Speaks program. Now branching out, they conduct youth
workshops rooted in the art of spoken-word poetry.
Educators say the young African
American men from tough backgrounds can reach students in a way
many teachers cannot, empowering the students, making poetry
cool and mixing in advice for life.
Dan Chambliss, an English teacher at
Highlands High School, said he has seen many students thrive
since meeting Coon and TroubleSin.
"There's an underlying association," he
said.
And that's important, he stressed, for
any teacher trying to keep students interested in learning.
"(Students) feel there's a place for them at school."
Coon and TroubleSin, who call
themselves the E-Legal Tag Team, forged a bond when their lives
were in an uproar. Poetry, they say, helped save them.
Coon was 15 and recovering from gunshot
wounds in Meadowview. He narrowly escaped paralysis or death.
As for TroubleSin, in a word, he
described himself at the time as "hostile" over a volatile
situation in his south Sacramento County home. He was looking to
lash out – but instead chose to reach out.
He called Coon in the hospital: "It's
time to get to work" – writing, rhyming, making words their
outlet. They shared what Coon calls "war stories," building off
each other's emotions to create art.
Then, as now, it was their therapy.
Their work covers everything from love to abandonment to issues
of race. In "Family Tree," Coon and TroubleSin touch on the
cycle of discord in their families.
In "The Hands That Rock the Cradle,"
they rhyme about their turbulent relationships with their
parents.
Students of English teacher Erin
Klentos at Vista Nueva Career & Technical High School researched
the 1865 poem by William Ross Wallace of nearly the same title,
looking for other cultural references to the poem and its
themes. They found it in everything from hip-hop to blues music.
"I think they started to see the
relevance of learning history and literature and being able to
say, 'That still applies to me now,' " Klentos said.
Despite limited training, Coon and
TroubleSin transition effortlessly from high school seniors to
seventh-graders, gently teasing out participation and encourage
critical thinking. They choose language students understand.
"They say things like 'Who's a rule
breaker?' " said Mark Taylor, who teaches seventh-grade English
at Smythe Academy. "They're just trying to get the kids to think
outside of the box, but they use terms like that to really
access those kids who have a history of having behavior problems
or academic problems."
Coon and TroubleSin say they want teens
to feel safe to speak their minds, no matter how raw the
material.
And it does get raw.
"That's why we don't sugarcoat it:
They're not sugarcoating it out there," Coon said, referring to
the streets.
The Tag Team has contracts with the
Twin Rivers Unified School District and the Boys & Girls Clubs.
Having worked with Sacramento City Unified, too, they dream of
opening a center where youths can work on their art.
Recently at Highlands High, TroubleSin
led a discussion about the phrase "Association breeds
similarity."
Coon spoke of a close family friend who
was a good kid and star athlete but fell in with the wrong
crowd.
"He's now laying in the grave because
of this group. Real talk – this is serious. Please be mindful of
the company you keep."
Throughout their sessions with
students, Coon and TroubleSin stress values such as respect and
patience that apply in and out of the classroom, TroubleSin
said.
He tells youths that patience is what
kept him alive and out of prison.
"I could've acted out … but instead I
remained patient, and it's because I was patient I'm here with
you today."
Klentos has seen her tough
fourth-period class – her "killer bees" – practicing Coon's and
TroubleSin's code since the pair started visiting. She believes
their authority comes in the example they provide.
They have "had a lot of bad things
happen to (them), too, and they're OK. They're really grounded,"
she said. "You can travel through this war zone … and you can
come out OK, but you have to be on your game."
Laronda Johnson, a 16-year-old student
in Klentos' class, described them as "hecka cool."
"They're strong black men who do
something different with their lives instead of being like other
black men in this world … (who live) that gangster life," she
said.
"The stuff they've been through is the
stuff we've all been through," said Savala, who described his
neighborhood, Del Paso Heights, as "crazy as hell."
But he said Coon and TroubleSin have
helped him see that he can rise above that, that "all this
hustling on the street – it's nothing."
On that sixth visit – Coon and
TroubleSin's last to Vista Nueva – Savala embraced them. And
then that night, he sent them a piece of his poetry for review.
He's never felt he's had people to talk
to, Savala said, except for the aging "OGs" – "original
gangsters" – on the street. Finally, he found that at school.
"I know there (are) people out there
that care and … who will listen," he said.
Police investigating possible
sexual assaults at teen group home
Posted:
Nov 23, 2011 12:26 PM PST Updated:
Nov 23, 2011 7:17 PM PST
David Dos Santos
CLEVELAND,
OH (WOIO) -
19 Action News has
learned of an investigation into a series of suspected sex
assaults by a youth worker at a group home for troubled
teens.
Cleveland Sex Crimes
investigators have began filing charges against youth worker
David Dos Santos.
The attacks reportedly
happened at WestHaven. The group home run by Lutheran
Metropolitan Ministry serves girls and boys, with troubled
childhoods, who are leaving foster care or other agencies --
getting ready for life on their own.
The home learned of the
problem last week and called county child welfare workers.
Soon after Dos Santos was fired.
Dos Santos is suspected
of abusing two teen girls, maybe more.
Ex-counselor who is accused of sexually
abusing teens now faces child porn charges
By Melinda Rogers
The Salt Lake Tribune
Published: November 22, 2011 12:36PM
Updated: November 22, 2011 11:36PM
Courtesy image Eric Allen Glosson has been charged in 6th
District Court with eight counts of second-degree felony
forcible sexual abuse for allegedly having sexual relations with
youth at Silverado Academy in Garfield County.
A former
counselor at a Panguitch-based boarding school for troubled teens
who is charged with sexually abusing several students is now accused
in U.S. District Court of producing and possessing child
pornography.
A two-count
indictment handed down to 29-year-old Eric Allen Glosson by a
federal grand jury earlier this month alleges he kept sexual images
of children on his computer from March to June and coerced a minor
into making pornography. Court documents do not disclose if any of
the victims were students at the Silverado Academy where Glosson was
employed.
Glosson made his
first appearance in federal court on the porn charges Tuesday before
U.S. Magistrate Robert Braithwaite. He is next scheduled to appear
in a St. George courtroom on Dec. 12.
The federal charges
follow state charges filed against Glosson, and a civil lawsuit
filed in federal court by families of children who Glosson allegedly
abused.
Prosecutors in June
charged Glosson in 6th District Court with eight counts of
second-degree felony forcible sexual abuse for allegedly having
sexual relations with youth at Silverado Academy in Garfield County
between April 20 and June 18.
He is also charged
with one count of second-degree felony custodial sexual relations
with a youth receiving state services and one count of third-degree
felony dealing in materials harmful to a minor.
Following state
charges against Glosson, three families from Nevada, Georgia and
Michigan filed a federal lawsuit, alleging Silverado Academy should
have done more to keep tabs on Glosson’s interactions with students.
Their complaint alleges the school failed to protect their children
from Glosson, who had been previously fired over concerns he was
“too close to the teenagers in the program.”
In late 2010, Glosson
was rehired as a coach and athletic coordinator and allowed to
supervise 13 to 18 year olds, according to the complaint. He then
sexually abused numerous teens in locations including their living
quarters, the complaint states.
Glosson discouraged
students from reporting the abuse by threatening to not recommend
the students for an advanced program, the complaint states. He used
“bribery, physical force, intimidation and deceit” to cover up his
relationships with the students, the complaint states.
The plaintiffs in the
federal lawsuit, who are not being identified by The Salt Lake
Tribune to protect the identity of the alleged victims, are seeking
at least $75,000 in damages.
In a statement
released in June following Glosson’s arrest, Silverado Academy
officials said one student reported the alleged conduct during a
Father’s Day call to his parents.
“We reported these
events to the appropriate state authorities on the same day,”
academy officials said in a statement. “We are cooperating fully
with the ongoing investigation.”
Glosson had called
authorities on his own in May, telling law enforcement that a youth
in Arizona was contacting him via Facebook and “threatening to
publicize alleged sexual abuse that Glosson had perpetrated,”
according to the complaint. Law enforcement came to Silverado
Academy to investigate, but the school allowed him to continue
working with youth after no immediate arrest took place, the
complaint states.
The school offered to
provide counseling services to teenagers affected by Glosson’s
behavior, according to the complaint.
Glosson is next
scheduled to appear in state court on Dec. 8 before Judge Wallace
Lee.
If convicted on
federal charges, Glosson faces a 15-year mandatory minimum prison
sentence for the production of pornography charge and up to 10 years
in prison for possession of pornography.
David Protess, President, Chicago
Innocence Project When Juveniles Confess to Murders They Didn't Commit
Posted: 11/18/11 11:15 AM ET
It was Chicago's feel-good story of the week. A Cook
County judge on Wednesday overturned the convictions of
four men who, as teenagers in 1995, falsely confessed to
the rape and murder of a 30-year-old woman. The men were
cleared by DNA evidence that linked a career criminal to
the crime.
Vincent Thames and Terrill Swift were beaming as they
exited the revolving doors of the criminal courts
building at 26th and Cal. The other two, Harold
Richardson and Michael Saunders, will soon be free on
bond. Now the Englewood Four, as they have been dubbed,
await a decision by prosecutors whether to re-try them.
Meanwhile, troubling questions linger. How did the four
confess to crimes they did not commit? Why did it take
so long to conduct DNA testing? And, underlying it all,
why has Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez
persistently fought justice for the four?
***
On November 7, 1994, a sanitation worker found the badly
beaten body of an African American woman in a dumpster
behind a liquor store in the Englewood neighborhood on
Chicago's South Side. The woman was identified as Nina
Glover, a prostitute.
Police interviewed a resident of the neighborhood,
Johnny Douglas, at the scene. But they let him go when
he denied knowing Glover.
Four months later, acting on a tip, police picked up
four African American teenagers for questioning.
According to Det. James Cassidy, the teenagers
voluntarily confessed, saying they took turns raping
Glover before murdering her.
Primitive DNA tests excluded the teenagers as the source
of semen recovered from Glover, and all four claimed
their confessions had been coerced. But they were
convicted based on detailed signed statements about
their involvement, and dispatched to prison for terms
ranging from 30 to 40 years.
In 2010, two of the prisoners requested advanced "STR"
DNA testing along with a database search of the genetic
profiles of criminals. Cook County prosecutors opposed
the tests, contending that the trial court judgments
were final. But a judge ordered them, and the stunning
results were revealed last May.
Not only were the four teenagers ruled out, but the DNA
matched a person that cops had interviewed at the crime
scene -- Johnny Douglas. A man with a history of preying
on prostitutes, Douglas' rap sheet was impressive: 38
convictions, including for murder and sexual assault. He
was shot to death in 2008.
Exoneration was at hand for the Englewood Four -- or so
it seemed.
***
As family members of the prisoners readied to welcome
them home, State's Attorney Anita Alvarez set in motion
a distinctly different course. She announced that she
would vigorously fight their release.
Alvarez's novel theory of the crime: Douglas had
unprotected sex with Glover, left her unharmed, and she
was later raped and murdered by the four teenagers. "He
[Douglas] didn't kill every other prostitute he was
with," Alvarez told the New York Times. "DNA evidence in
and of itself is not always the 'silver bullet' that it
is sometimes perceived to be," she declared.
The county's chief law enforcement officer believed Det.
Cassidy's version of the confessions. Otherwise, how
could the teenagers have provided so many details about
the crime?
Turns out Det. Cassidy has a rap sheet of his own. In
1994, the year before the Englewood Four case, the
detective took a detailed confession from an 11-year-old
African American male who purportedly murdered an
elderly Caucasian woman on Chicago's Southwest Side. A
federal judge concluded the confession had been coerced,
tossed out the conviction, and ordered the child's
record expunged.
In 1998, Cassidy was back, this time with another
high-profile confession. Two African-American males --
ages seven and eight -- admitted killing 11-year-old
Ryan Harris and dumping her body in a backyard, Cassidy
claimed. The elaborate confessions created a national
furor over pre-adolescent crime -- until the authorities
found semen in Harris' panties. They sheepishly dropped
the charges and eventually secured a confession from an
adult male (though his actual guilt has been disputed.)
Cassidy reportedly is no longer active on the force,
having been reassigned to the Medical Examiner's office.
(One wonders if his new job description includes
obtaining confessions from the recently departed.)
Point is, false confessions happen all the time. Out of
the 76 wrongful convictions in Cook County since the
advent of DNA testing, 25 were based on suspects
admitting to crimes they did not commit, according tothe
Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern
University.
False confessions are particularly common in cases
involving juveniles. Just two weeks ago, the convictions
of five suburban Chicago youths were upended in a case
involving the 1991 rape and murder of a 14-year-old
girl. They, too, had confessed to the crime and were
exonerated by DNA. And, in the infamous Central Park
jogger case in 1989, four of the five teenagers who
confessed to the rape were later exonerated when DNA
evidence confirmed another man's involvement.
What is distinctive about the Englewood Four case, and
deeply troubling, is that State's Attorney Alvarez will
not acknowledge the mistake. She is an exception. In a
study of 194 DNA exonerations, prosecutors refused to
join defense lawyers in dismissing convictions in only
four percent of cases where DNA evidence implicated an
alternative suspect.
Why is Alvarez a four-percenter? As a career prosecutor,
perhaps she is blindly loyal to her troops, realizing
that the blame for false confessions (unlike mistaken
eyewitness testimony) falls entirely on law enforcement.
Perhaps she is concerned about the large civil rights
judgments that will inevitably follow if she throws
Cassidy and his fellow cops under the bus.
But even if we take Alvarez at her word on this subject
-- "As a prosecutor, I have a duty to the victims in
this case" -- then what is her duty to the Englewood
Four? Haven't they been victimized for seventeen years?
Re-trying these young men, an option Alvarez is
considering, would compound the injustice and waste
taxpayer's dollars.
The system made a tragic mistake. It's time for Alvarez
to confess it.
Omaha, NE – After 60 years
serving troubled teens in Omaha, the Uta Halee Girls
Village announced it will be forced to close its
doors next month.
Listen Now
Nestled in the hills of
north Omaha, the Uta Halee Girls Village has
provided a serene setting for troubled young kids
since 1950. The center provides counseling and
residential psychiatric treatment for girls with
severe emotional and behavioral problems.
Uta Halee Girls Village
has served troubled teens in the area since
1950. The center also closed nearby Cooper
Village last year, which it managed for the
Omaha Home for Boys.
Leslie Byers brought her
daughter to the facility several years ago because
she said she had no other option. “When your child
is cutting herself, when she’s throwing dishes all
over the place, simply because you said to go to
bed, when you’re afraid for your safety, and your
other kids’ safety,” she said.
Byers said when her
daughter was in psychiatric crisis, the only option
was to call 911, because the family had run out of
lifetime in-patient insurance benefits. “… have them
manhandle her, handcuff her, take her to the
emergency room, give her a tranquilizer, and a
couple of hours later, bring her home, all in the
name of treatment. That’s not treatment.”
The center blamed the
closing, which is slated for Dec. 16, squarely on
the state of Nebraska, saying the Department of
Health and Human Services stopped referring kids for
treatment at the facility in an effort to save
money. Gary Kaplan, immediate past board chair, said
DHHS has narrowly interpreted Medicaid rules that
deny the center’s intensive level of treatment. “If
the Governor and his team weren’t so effective at
denying help to kids with traumas and mental illness
and abuse, we would be staying open,” he said.
“But instead they’ve chosen
to leave hundreds of our young people with serious
needs in shelters and juvenile detention centers,
inappropriate foster homes and out on the street.”
Gov. Dave Heineman was
asked about the closing at a press conference
Tuesday, and said he’s not ready to comment because
he doesn’t have the details.
Kaplan said in the past,
the center has stayed open, with the help of private
funds, when state support dwindled. But the
facility, which has 60 beds in total, is currently
serving just 14 girls in its residential program.
Uta Halee also runs several community-based programs
serving girls and boys that will also close. But
Kaplan said the all-girl program will be the
greatest loss.
“A place where a girl who
had been repeatedly forced to have sex with her
coach, or her mom’s boyfriend, or her cousin, who is
reacting to that with clinical depression, with
taking drugs, with acting out, with joining gangs,
could come here to an all-girl environment,” Kaplan
said. “A place of healing with only girls around.”
Board members said the
center is working with its current residents to find
alternative treatment. Ninety employees at the
center will also be laid off.
The closing comes amid
state reforms to the child welfare system that have
led to three providers canceling their contracts
with the state, and an audit that cited DHHS for
mishandling state contracts.
A spokeswoman for the Department, Kathie Osterman,
said the changes in Medicaid rules were not about
saving money, but about coming into compliance with
federal regulations. She added providers were told
several months ago the changes were coming.
But for parents like Leslie
Byers, no matter the details, the closing simply
means fewer choices for parents in crisis. Her voice
cracking, Byers said, “I wanted my daughter to be
safe, I wanted her to have a chance to graduate. I
didn’t want her to have to be here, but I wanted all
those things bad enough.”
“So don’t take that option
away because I don’t know where she would be. I
don’t know where our family would be.
Prescott House,
the last group home for juvenile offenders of its kind in Lancaster
County, closed in July following negative state inspections.
Its future is uncertain.
The group home's owner, Sylvester "Casey" Jones, closed the facility
voluntarily, but if he reopens it, the state would closely monitor
its operations.
For more than four decades, Prescott House has served as many as 12
male delinquents at a time in a substantial brick building at South
Shippen and Green streets.
The group home's reopening depends largely on whether Lancaster and
other counties decide to resume sending juveniles to a facility that
has suffered operational and financial difficulties for several
years.
"I'm sad that Prescott House has fallen on some hard times and hope
it can be resurrected and be stronger than ever," says David
Mueller, director of the county's Office of Juvenile Probation.
Prescott House has worked closely with his office to meet the needs
of residents over the years and has changed young people's lives,
Mueller notes.
On the other hand, he explains, "We're just not totally secure ...
they can stay open for the long haul."
Prescott House's teenage residents came from several central
Pennsylvania counties. They were sentenced by the courts to stay at
the group home for several months to a year for offenses ranging
from theft and vandalism to drug use and firearms charges.
Juveniles at Prescott House, a former residence, were not "locked
down" as they are at the county's Youth Intervention Center, a
facility that holds juveniles for a short time until their final
disposition is determined.
Group home residents attended classes at McCaskey High School and
received job training. The primary goal was to develop skills and
find jobs.
With closure of the group home, local officials have been sending
juvenile offenders to a facility outside the county.
Factoring in the cost of travel for juveniles and probation
officers, that can cost more than the $146.89 a day paid to house
teenagers at Prescott House.
Over the past five years, the county has paid Prescott House nearly
$1 million to house and treat dozens of juveniles. Annual amounts
have varied from $323,000 spent in fiscal year 2006-07 to just over
half that amount spent in fiscal 2010-11.
Mueller says county officials would like to keep payments for
institutional juvenile treatment in the county. They also would
prefer, for rehabilitative purposes, to keep children close to their
families in their own communities.
But whether that happens is largely dependent on whether Jones
decides to reopen Prescott House.
On Oct. 26, the state's Office of Children, Youth and Families
issued Prescott House a provisional license to operate through next
August.
Roseann Perry, director of that office, notes that reopening the
group home "would be the same as starting up any program from
scratch," including hiring new employees.
Mueller says Jones has told him he will be able to hire a full
staff. Based on that claim, the county is in the process of
establishing a new contract with Prescott House.
Jones refuses to discuss his plans with a reporter.
A former McCaskey High School administrator and interim member of
the city school board, Jones has directed Prescott House since the
1980s.
In 2005, Jones and Kenneth Dupree purchased the group home for
$135,000 from the Lancaster County Council of Churches, which had
opened it in 1970. Dupree later left the operation.
Jones runs the group home as a business corporation under the name
Jondu Inc. Although it is a for-profit business, Prescott House
solicits charitable contributions of food, clothing and other items.
Jones, 65, also is a bail bondsman who owes the county nearly
$500,000 in forfeited bail. He is repaying that bill at $9,000 a
month.
The state's provisional license for Prescott House is a "warning to
consumers and family members to know there are some issues going on
at the facility," according to state Department of Public Welfare
spokeswoman Anne Bale.
The state has not yet accepted Jones' plan of action, she says, and
is waiting to see what happens. The operation would be reassessed
six months after it reopens.
Annual and unannounced inspections conducted by the Office of
Children, Youth and Families have found multiple deficiencies at
Prescott House since at least the summer of 2009. (That office is in
the Department of Public Welfare.)
On July 28, 2009, state inspectors documented deficient staff
training and inadequate treatment of clients in 18 categories. They
also found holes in walls and a rusted bathroom vent.
On June 1, 2010, inspectors again found multiple violations of state
regulations, including inadequate staff training, incomplete client
records, exposed wiring and a missing outlet cover.
"At this point in time they struggle with keeping their residential
census up and maintaining full-time employment for the staff," the
inspectors noted. "Their attention to details could be improved."
On Nov. 5, 2010, a routine inspection found multiple violations of
state regulations, all related to tardy completion of health
examinations of incoming residents.
On April 5, inspectors, responding to a complaint, made an
unannounced visit and found dirt and trash on residents' floors and
water damage to several ceilings.
Inspectors also found exposed wiring, a urine-stained toilet seat
and a dirty, rusted exhaust fan.
"While there was food in the facility, it did not appear to be
enough for six clients," the report noted. "The staff on duty did
not have a key to the freezer to access food."
On June 30, inspectors conducting the annual licensing review found
20 violations of state regulations regarding employees and
residents, as well as a missing basement heater cover.
Jones then closed the building and dismissed the last three members
of the professional staff.
When the group home sheltered 12 residents, it employed seven
full-time professionals and several other workers, including a cook,
according to a former employee who does not wish to be named.
But in March, when several employees sent an unsigned letter
protesting conditions at the group home to the state Office of
Children, Youth and Families and the Lancaster County Children and
Youth Agency, only five full-time professionals were still working
at Prescott House, the former employee says.
The employees complained that they always were paid late.
They said residents were not receiving well-balanced meals or
sufficient food, and that the food was prepared by a cook under
"unsanitary conditions."
Further, they said the program increasingly was producing "negative
outcomes" for residents.
The employees said the group home's program had been successful in
previous years, but more recently, under Jones' ownership, was
"doomed for failure."
Perry, the state official, says the number of state citations that
Jones has received is high but not unique.
"Certainly we have seen documentation of training missing or
unacceptable conditions within the actual physical site in other
places," she says.
But she adds that there also are group homes "where there are no
irregular items noted."
Gary Horning, chief housing inspector for Lancaster city, says his
bureau over the past several years has required Prescott House to
upgrade electrical receptacles and clean up excessive amounts of
trash.
But the number of complaints for that type of facility, he adds, are
"less than average. It's probably better than a fraternity house."
While both the city and state assess the physical plant, and the
state monitors employee and resident records, neither considers the
solvency of the business.
As the number of residents at the home has declined, so have
revenues.
"The need for out-of-home placement in Pennsylvania has decreased
over the past few years," Perry says. "That certainly is a
contributing factor."
It's a challenge to operate any business these days, she notes.
Operating a business with fewer "customers" is an additional burden.
Lancaster County Children and Youth has not sent any clients to
Prescott House for at least five years, according to James Laughman,
the county's human service director.
The county's Office of Juvenile Probation, the primary county agency
that has referred clients to Prescott House, had three teenagers
there until last spring.
They completed their correction programs before the facility closed,
according to Mueller.
Juvenile Probation stopped sending new teens to Prescott House "when
we started receiving complaints that staff members had made to the
Office of Children, Youth and Families," Mueller explains.
But concerns about the group home have been long-standing, he adds.
"We haven't this past 10 years been completely enamored of the
program," he says. "But every time we met with Prescott House we got
a positive response, and changes were made."
While he hopes the group home can reopen and Lancaster can send
clients there, Mueller observes, "it's expensive to run a program
like this. Unless you have a certain number of kids in it, you won't
break even."
Lancaster was sending two or three boys at a time, so Prescott House
had to depend on surrounding counties to help fill other beds.
The former Prescott House employee says that only Lancaster and
Chester counties were sending children in the months before the
facility closed. He says York, Berks and Dauphin counties had
stopped using the program.
For teen program's chief, tough love may
have turned criminal
The operator of a Pasadena 'boot camp'
aimed at turning around troubled lives with military-type discipline
faces trial on charges of kidnapping and extortion for his treatment
of a girl and her family.
By Ricardo Lopez, Los Angeles Times
November 13, 2011
The surprise visit to Alberto Ruiz's house
was swift.
Dress quickly, he was told. You're going
to boot camp.
His parents, worried about his drug use and habit of skipping
school, had followed a friend's advice and called Kelvin
McFarland.
Ruiz's behavior had earned him a spot in McFarland's Family
First Growth Camp in Pasadena, a place with a reputation for
breaking gang-bangers and drug addicts and turning them into
law-abiding teens.
A former Marine who likes to be called "Sgt. Mac," McFarland
founded the camp two years ago and boasted that his tough-love
tactics and military-strict discipline were the perfect formula
for reforming gang members, taming runaways and getting through
to troublemakers.
Ruiz, who is now 18, credits McFarland's intervention for
helping him finish school and quit drugs.
But authorities say McFarland's scared-straight approach crossed
the line and veered into criminal behavior earlier this year
when he crossed paths with another Pasadena teen.
Investigators allege that in May, McFarland was driving in
Pasadena when he spotted a girl walking along the street during
school hours. He stopped to question her, then handcuffed her,
placed her in his car and told her to direct him to a relative's
home. At the relative's home, he demanded money from her father
to enroll the 14-year-old in his program. The girl's father
mistook McFarland for a truancy officer when he flashed a badge,
Pasadena police said.
McFarland is facing trial on felony charges of kidnapping,
extortion, false imprisonment and child abuse, and unlawful use
of a badge, a misdemeanor.
Now Pasadena police are investigating possible abuses that
allegedly occurred at a rival Pasadena boot camp where McFarland
once worked. The Pasadena Star-News recently published videos
allegedly filmed in 2009 in which McFarland can be seen yelling
at teens, forcing them to gulp down water even as they retch and
vomit. In one scene, McFarland and other drill instructors
appear to scream at a youngster, inches from his face, as he
collapses in tears under the weight of a car tire on his
shoulders.
The publicity has had a chilling effect on McFarland's Family
First boot camp. Parents have pulled their kids out in droves.
Where several dozen cadets once attended, only a handful remain.
"I'm not going to lie… we don't have 75 cadets, but we're still
continuing," said Elpidio Estolas, one of Family First's
directors.
McFarland is quick to defend his work in the community, as is
Keith Gibbs, the director of the rival boot camp. Both say they
offer a last resort for exasperated parents who have nowhere
else to turn.
In interviews with McFarland, his cadets, their families and
those who have worked with him, a complex portrait emerges.
Critics describe him as a fast talker, easily seducing
working-class Latino families with his authority-laden persona.
Supporters say McFarland is a man filled with good intentions,
who has overcome his flaws such as convictions for DUI and a
misdemeanor assault.
McFarland says his criminal history allows him to dissuade
cadets from a life of incarceration. He talks openly about the
months he was homeless and his continuing struggle with
alcoholism. These attributes, he says, make him a relatable
figure.
McFarland is set to stand trial Wednesday, though the case has
been delayed several times — once after his boot camp could no
longer afford to pay his attorney, a former Pasadena mayor. He
is now represented by a public defender.
But McFarland continues to operate his program throughout
Pasadena, in local parks and occasionally a small strip-mall
church.
In fact, it didn't take long for the boot camp to resume after
McFarland got out of jail
In mid-June, from the stage of Faithworks Ministries church,
McFarland — freshly released on bail — thanked his cadets and
their families, quoting the Bible as he spoke. For days, they
had rallied on his behalf outside a Pasadena courthouse, hoping
a judge would reduce his bail.
McFarland, a deeply religious man raised by an aunt in rural
Georgia, looked on quietly. Dressed in his signature military
fatigues, he occasionally barked commands as the cadets stood in
formation.
"I don't know of a boot camp that praises the Lord as much as we
do," said McFarland, who granted The Times access to his boot
camp last summer but has since refused to speak with the paper.
After the morning drills, the group moved inside the church. The
teens marched single file into a side room for a self-esteem
workshop. Their families, meanwhile, sat in the pews, listening
to a nutritionist. Involving parents in the program is a key
component of success, McFarland says.
"The program has benefited the children tremendously," said
Mirza Balvaneda, who enrolled her son when he was only 8. "The
other parents said I was brave to bring him in because he's so
young, but he needed to learn some discipline."
In addition to the instilling of discipline, parents — most of
whom don't speak English — said they hope their children will
take more initiative in their studies.
When news of McFarland's arrest broke, some thought Gibbs, who
operates Sarge's Community Base, was the one who had been
arrested.
The men have similar authoritative demeanors and dress — usually
camouflage pants with dark polo shirts. They even have similar
nicknames. McFarland is "Sgt. Mac," Gibbs is simply "Sarge."
"People were calling me because they thought I was the one who
had been arrested," Gibbs said.
Gibbs said that he hired McFarland in early 2009 and that his
new employee became his right-hand man. But now the two compete
for recruits and offer differing views of how their relationship
fell apart.
Gibbs said he fired McFarland when he discovered his criminal
history and heard complaints from staff that he was using
excessive force when disciplining cadets. McFarland said he only
followed Gibbs' orders.
Gibbs has also faced allegations of child abuse. In a 2010
letter from Edwin Diaz, superintendent of the Pasadena Unified
School District, Gibbs was told his permit to use school
district facilities for his camp had been revoked.
School officials had received reports from parents that Gibbs'
boot camp tactics amounted to corporal punishment. Another
parent charged that he had engaged in "an inappropriate sexual
relationship" with a minor. Pasadena police investigated but
never filed charges because the teen recanted her claims, Diaz
wrote.
Gibbs calls the allegations lies spread by disgruntled cadets
who wanted out of his program.
As his court date approaches, McFarland has kept a low profile,
quietly running his boot camp and dismissing his critics, who he
said are trying to destroy his business with baseless
accusations.
He says that at the end of the day, "it's all about the kids."
Lawsuit against boarding school to be
tried in Prineville
By Sheila G. Miller / The Bulletin
Last modified: November
10. 2011 2:57PM PST
A lawsuit against a now-shuttered school
for troubled teens that operated for more than 20 years in Crook
County will be tried in Prineville.
Mount Bachelor Academy, located 26 miles
east of Prineville, closed in 2009 after a state investigation
revealed students were subjected to sexual harassment and emotional
abuse. The complaint seeks $25.5 million.
The original complaint, brought by nine
former students, was filed in July in Multnomah County Circuit
Court. In August, eight more former students were added to the
lawsuit, which alleges that students were subjected to systematic
physical and psychological abuse while in the school's care.
“We were trying to keep the case in
Portland for convenience,” said Kelly Clark, the attorney
representing the former students. “But the judge said this is a
Central Oregon case, and it needs to be litigated there. And we're
glad to to do that.”
The lawsuit targets Mount Bachelor
Educational Center as well as Aspen Education Group, a defunct
company that owned the academy, and CRC Health Group and CRC Health
Oregon, which served as controlling entities of the school and still
operate several schools around the country.
It contends counselors often had only high
school educations and subjected students to physical punishments and
emotional abuse like sexual role-playing and forced isolation. Many
of the abuses allegedly took place during a therapeutic workshop
called Lifesteps, which was designed to help students go through
stages they may have missed due to trauma. One step featured
role-play, and some students allegedly were required to do exotic
dances and called “whore” and “slut.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Clark brought a
second lawsuit against the school, this time representing an
additional 14 former students and seeking $23 million in damages.
Many of the details in the two lawsuits are similar.
Among the new allegations: Staff forced a
female student to clean up after her roommate's miscarriage; a
student who inhaled a tack was denied medical care; and students
were routinely strip-searched.
“They're very similar allegations,” Clark
said. “I think the significance of it is, if you think back to when
we first filed ... the reaction of the Mount Bachelor Academy people
was ‘None of this happened, it just didn't happen.' And I think it's
harder to argue that 31 people, many of whom don't know each other
because they went to the school years or decades apart, are somehow
conspiring to come forward with the same fictitious story.”
Clark said he brought the second lawsuit
because he worried the judge would frown on adding more people to a
suit that was filed five months ago. He expects that motions will be
filed in the next few months.
EDITORIAL Open courts for kids
An L.A. judge's proposal to let the public observe dependency court
proceedings is a much-needed move toward both access and
accountability.
November 10, 2011
Michael Nash, the presiding judge of Los Angeles Juvenile Court, has
long lobbied for legislation that would allow the public greater
access to the work of California's dependency courts, where the
fates of children in foster care are decided. Twice, bills have been
introduced in Sacramento to achieve that important objective, only
to be stymied by well-meaning but misguided objections from child
welfare advocates and self-interested protests from public employee
groups whose members would face greater scrutiny. Now, Nash is
taking matters into his own hands, for which he is to be applauded.
This week Nash circulated a proposed order that would accomplish
what legislators have been unwilling or unable to do: open the
courts, at least here in Los Angeles. Drawing on rulings of the U.S.
Supreme Court and others, it notes that such access allows the
public to monitor the effectiveness of the courts and those
responsible for administering foster care — essential requirements
of sound and open government. "Public awareness and understanding of
the juvenile court system … would promote public involvement in the
governmental processes and might deter inappropriate actions on the
part of some participants," the order says, quoting an earlier
appellate court ruling.
Importantly, Nash's proposed order would not open every proceeding,
any more than the presumption of openness in adult court means that
every hearing there is open to the public. Rather, Nash is changing
the current presumption in favor of secrecy to one that favors
openness, while at the same time allowing parties to object if they
believe secrecy is necessary in a particular case. If anyone does
object, the only issue that a judge could consider in weighing that
objection is whether openness would likely be harmful to the child's
best interests. Judges could not close a hearing to spare the
feelings of witnesses or shield foster care workers from public
accountability.
It's a shame that the Legislature could not bring itself to pass a
bill by Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) that would have done
what Nash is setting out to do. But until the state's elected
leaders can find the courage to do what's right on this issue,
Nash's move will allow L.A. to serve as a laboratory for gauging the
benefits of openness. Moreover, the judge's willingness to tackle
this question even though it may expose him and his colleagues to
greater scrutiny should help confront the insidious and destructive
assumption that secrecy is necessarily in the interests of children.
In fact, secrecy often allows them to be harmed without consequence.
In Los Angeles, where too many children suffer at the hands of a
sometimes indifferent child welfare system, Nash's order is urgently
needed and long overdue.
Woman recalls experience in Bassett-based youth boot camp
By Frank C. Girardot, Staff Writer
Posted: 11/06/2011 06:03:03 AM PST
BUYA boot
camp office room 304 at Bassett High School in La Puente,
Calif., Friday, Nov. 4, 2011. (SGVN/Staff Photo by Keith
Birmingham)
ne Velazquez's youth boot camp experience she would
consider uplifting or positive.
Taken
from a warm bed in her father's Redondo Beach home
at 5 a.m. one morning, Velazquez said she was
handcuffed, screamed at and videotaped by
representatives of the Building Unique Youth
Alternatives - a program run from an office on the
campus of Bassett High School in La Puente.
Things quickly got worse.
"They
first took me to Bassett High School for intake,"
Velazquez recalled. "They strip searched us and
forced us on a bus where we had to put our heads
down so we wouldn't see where we were going."
Velazquez said she and a group of teens - many from
foster homes or families new to the country - were
taken to Camp Pendleton and forced to endure similar
indignities for a week. Now, 20, Velazquez said she
will never forget the experience - or the
humiliation.
"We
would wake up at 5 a.m. and do vigorous exercise all
day. If you fell, you were kicked and pushed and
yelled at. We were called fat, whores, stupid,
bitches, maggots, etcetera," she said. "I was on the
ground doing exercises and had dirt kicked into my
face, eyes, and mouth. They tried to force me to eat
my vomit."
Bassett Unified Superintendent Martin Galindo
acknowledged the BUYA program has been operating at
Bassett since at least 2005. He said the district
has received no complaints.
Sheriff's Lt. Victor Sotelo said deputies in Industry have had no
complaints about the BUYA camp.
"It
pretty much runs independently. We don't give them a
lot of oversight," Galindo said. "We don't have
people there every Saturday looking at what they are
doing.
"It's
similar to any outside entity who uses our facility
whether it be soccer or baseball, we count on them
to run it properly," Galindo said. "But we can't
monitor it."
Calls
to the program's office on the Bassett campus went
unreturned Thursday and Friday. Brian Der Vartanian,
a Glendale accountant who did BUYA's books until
about 2007, said several police officers and
deputies associated with the program left about
three years ago.
On
its website, BUYA describes its program as "an
intense, ten-week youth intervention program
designed to change the destructive behavior of
strong-willed, out of control or at-risk youth ...
Our program begins with the eight-day camp
component, focusing on discipline, responsibility,
respect, and behavioral issues."
And,
BUYA promises results.
"We
have maintained a long-term, 85 percent success rate
over our six-year history," the website notes. "The
program is delivered by retired, active and reserve
police officers, members of the armed forces and
volunteers."
A
community college student near San Diego, Velazquez
said she came forward to recount her experience with
BUYA after seeing videos on this newspaper's
website. One of those videos, shot at a boot camp
run out of Pasadena, depicted children forced to
drink water until they vomited.
Another video centered on a young boy being forced
to wear a tire around his body while a group of
instructors - dressed in military garb - yelled and
jostled him until he broke down in tears.
Dr.
Harlan Bixby, an expert on the effect of fluids in
the body, said bingeing on water can be deadly.
"Tap
water is free of electrolytes, allowing it to
penetrate cell walls without obstruction, he said.
The
swelling of cells does little damage in muscle
cells, but can induce stroke-like symptoms in the
brain, Bixby said.
"That
video of them forcing the children to drink water
... we had that three times a day. That was the only
time to drink. After, you would have to hold the
canteen above your head and if any water dripped,
you would have to refill the canteen and do it
again. Most of the time, we just threw it up, and
didn't get any water in our systems.
As
Velazquez recalls, the methods used by boot camp
instructors were nothing short of horrific.
"They
gave one teen laxatives, and made him put a
(sanitary napkin) in his (rear end) and hike like
that," she said. "One teen was overweight and they
would taunt her telling her `imagine there's a
burger up that hill."'
Velazquez, who had been in and out of foster homes,
said she attended a few more sessions and was
promised a leadership role.
"They
would tell me to hit kids." she recalled. "I
wouldn't do it, so they would hit me."
Joyce
Burrell, director of the Juvenile Justice Program in
Human and Social Development for American Institute
for Research, believes boot camps are ineffective in
dealing with troubled teens, many of whom, like
Velazquez, have been exposed to trauma in their
personal lives.
"We
have to approach dealing with these children from a
more trauma based approach," Joyce Burrell said
about the effectiveness of boot camps. "There's a
real split in terms of those who believe yelling and
screaming at boot camps has it's place in
treatment."
Burrell sides with child development experts who
believe that boot camps do more harm than good.
Unable to deal with the experience, Velazquez said
she overdosed on Ibuprofen and Tylenol which forced
the Los Angeles County Department of Children and
Family Services to take action. Ultimately she was
pulled from the program.
Since
leaving, Velazquez has maintained contact with other
teens forced to attend the camp and has become an
advocate of sorts for teens forced into youth boot
camps.
Velazquez, who describes herself as a "good kid"
can't understand why adults would subject children
to the extreme sort of punishment she endured.
"They
tried to break me down, but they couldn't," she
said. "I'm going to do what I can to keep the focus
on this issue."
Staff
writer Brian Charles contributed to this story.
For James Michael Taylor, an evening bath
became a death sentence.
Mr. Taylor, who was 41 and a
quadriplegic, had little more ability than a newborn baby to
lift his head. Bathing him required the constant attention of a
staff member at the group home for the developmentally disabled
where he lived, near Schenectady, N.Y.
One summer night in 2005, a worker
lowered Mr. Taylor into the tub, turned on the water and left
the room. Over the next 15 minutes, the water slowly rose over
his head. He drowned before anyone returned.
Joan Taylor, his mother, remembers the
words her husband said as dirt was shoveled onto their son’s
grave.
“This is the last time they’re going to
dump on you,” he told his dead son.
James Taylor’s death was no aberration.
In New York, it is unusually common for
developmentally disabled people in state care to die for reasons
other than natural causes.
One in six of all
deaths in state and privately run homes,
or more than 1,200 in the past decade, have been attributed to
either unnatural or unknown causes, according to data obtained
by The New York Times that has never been released.
The figure is more like one in 25 in
Connecticut and Massachusetts, which are among the few states
that release such data.
What’s more, New York has made little
effort to track or thoroughly investigate the deaths to look for
troubling trends, resulting in the same kinds of errors and
preventable deaths, over and over.
The state does not even collect
statistics on specific causes of death, leaving many designated
as “unknown,” sometimes even after a medical examiner has made a
ruling.
The Times undertook its own analysis of
death records and found disturbing patterns: some residents who
were not supposed to be left alone with food choked in bathrooms
and kitchens. Others who needed help on stairs tumbled alone to
their deaths. Still others ran away again and again until they
were found dead.
Mr. Taylor was hardly the only resident
to drown in a bathtub. Another developmentally disabled man at a
house run by the same nonprofit organization drowned in a tub
four months earlier.
The data from the agency, which is
responsible for overseeing treatment for the developmentally
disabled, included only the broad “manner” in which people died
— by homicide or suicide, accidents or natural causes.
By far the biggest category, other than
natural causes, was “unknown,” accounting for 10 percent of all
deaths in the system.
The records suggested problems in care
may be contributing to those unexplained deaths. The average age
of those who died of unknown causes was 40, while the average
age of residents dying of natural causes was 54.
The Times reviewed the case files of
all the deaths not resulting from natural causes that the
commission investigated over the past decade and found there had
been concerns about the quality of care in nearly half of the
222 cases.
The records also showed that problems
leading to deaths rarely resulted in systemwide steps, like
alerts to all operators of homes, to prevent mistakes from
recurring. Responses were typically limited to the group home
where a resident died.
At homes operated by nonprofit
organizations, low-level employees were often fired or
disciplined, but repercussions for executives were rare. At
state-run homes, it is also difficult to take action against
caregivers, who are represented by unions that contest
disciplinary measures.
New York relies heavily on the
operators of the homes to investigate and determine how a person
in their care died and, in a vast majority of cases, accepts
that determination. And the state has no uniform training for
the nearly 100,000 workers at thousands of state and privately
run homes and institutions.
The value of analyzing death records
for problems in care that could be prevented through alerts or
training has been well established, and is encouraged by the
federal Government Accountability Office.
Officials in Connecticut, for example, noticed four
choking
deaths in 2006, the first year the state published such data.
They developed a statewide program — two days of initial
training and a refresher course every two years thereafter. The
state has had just one choking death since 2007. New York has
had at least 21 during that same period.
“It’s incredibly important,” said
Terrence W. Macy, commissioner of the Department of
Developmental Services in Connecticut. “If everybody knows you
study it this hard and you have this level of detail, it’s going
to have an impact.”
There is no question that it can be
extremely challenging to care for the developmentally disabled,
a population that includes some people who are fragile and
immobile and others who are unruly and inclined toward violence.
But the problems in the New York system appear especially
troubling given that the state spends $10 billion a year caring
for the developmentally disabled — more than California, Texas,
Florida and Illinois combined — while providing services to
fewer than half as many people as those states do.
Lawsuits are relatively rare after the
deaths of developmentally disabled people in New York, in part
because economic damages are difficult to prove, given that the
victims are seldom employed. And sometimes families are simply
grateful to the group home for years of care for their relative.
In interviews, the officials who
replaced them acknowledged problems with how the state tracks
and seeks to prevent untimely deaths.
Courtney Burke, the commissioner of the
Office for People With Developmental
Disabilities, which operates
and oversees thousands of group homes, acknowledged that her
agency suffered from a lack of transparency and what she called
“a culture of nonreporting.”
“One of the things I’m seeking to do,”
she said last month, “is have better data on those deaths.”
A Recurring Problem
One evening last year, a large piece of
London broil was left marinating in the refrigerator of a
state-run group home in the hamlet of Golden’s Bridge, in
Westchester County.
The kitchen was supposed to be locked
overnight. As in many homes for the developmentally disabled,
residents known to be at risk for choking were not allowed to be
left alone with food. But the kitchen was open during the early
morning of June 5, 2010. No one noticed as Cynthia Dupas left
her bedroom, opened the refrigerator and bit off a chunk of raw
beef. She collapsed outside her bedroom and died. She was 51.
Hers was hardly an isolated case. A
quarter of the 222 death files reviewed by The Times involved a
person choking to death. And given the state’s poor
recordkeeping, the actual number of choking deaths is likely
larger. The deaths often occur when residents try to eat food
too quickly; physical limitations also play a role. Some of the
fatalities came in quick succession:
At a home near the Finger Lakes in
2001, a resident died after stuffing down a steak that was left
on the kitchen counter after dinner, in violation of safety
guidelines for several residents.
Four months later, Maxwell Chanels died
at a Schenectady-area group home after being left alone to eat a
steak. A nonprofit group that cared for Mr. Chanels during the
day had determined he was a choking risk who required mealtime
supervision, but a second nonprofit agency that ran the group
home where he lived had no such protections in place. He was 66.
Less than two weeks later, Virgil Macro
was served a breakfast that had not been prepared according to a
meal plan devised to keep him from choking. Staff members at his
Dutchess County group home also failed to supervise him while he
ate. He was 39.
In each case, the response suggested by
the Commission on Quality of Care was mostly limited to the
place where the death occurred. Workers who made mistakes were
disciplined. Some employees in the home, or the local area, were
retrained.
But other states take broader action.
In 2006, Ohio officials recognized an
increase in choking deaths and issued a statewide alert.
A year later, California officials
noticed a similar rise in one part of the state and began an
educational program that reduced deaths.
A lack of standards and accepted
definitions of basic terms also leads to deadly confusion.
Terms like “bite-size” and “chopped,”
which are key to defining what is safe for a person to eat, can
be left open to interpretation by the staff at a given
institution or group home.
The Commission on Quality of Care
regularly asks individual homes to revisit those definitions,
but the state has not resolved varying interpretations.
In contrast, Connecticut’s training
materials, which the state credits with sharply reducing choking
deaths, precisely define such terms with photographs and
dimensions.
State officials in New York cannot even
agree on how many people are dying. The Office for People With
Developmental Disabilities says 933 people in state care died in
2009. The Commission on Quality of Care says 757 did. Neither
agency could explain the discrepancy.
Outside experts said they were
particularly puzzled that records maintained by the state would
list the cause as “unknown” in more than 700 deaths over the
past decade, and wondered how hard state officials had tried to
determine what happened.
Bruce Simmons was one of the many
people the state had listed as dead of unknown causes. But a
review of the records from the state’s own investigation reveals
what occurred. He lived in a group home in Cortland, N.Y., which
kept him under tight supervision around food because of his
history of stealing food and choking. But the nonprofit group
that took care of him during the day decided that was not
necessary, and he choked to death in November 2008. He was 52.
Lapses in Fire Safety
All that is left of the house at 1534
State Route 30 in the Adirondack town of Wells is a grassy field
and an empty driveway.
More than two and a half years ago, the
house, home to nine developmentally disabled residents, burned
to the ground, killing four of them.
The fire revealed shortcomings in staff
training and safety standards. And the home’s evacuation plans
were based on unrealistic expectations that developmentally
disabled residents would be able to flee in an emergency.
Large institutions for the
developmentally disabled are built much like hospitals, with
extensive
fire safety
measures. The group home had some safety features, like
sprinklers in parts of the house, but was permitted to meet
building codes akin to those of homes with able-bodied residents
who know they should flee from a fire.
Yet though the Wells fire took place in
March 2009, the state has not undertaken a broad review of
whether group homes, which now care for a vast majority of the
state’s developmentally disabled, have appropriate safety
modifications to protect residents who often do not understand
that they are in danger.
The fire at the house, known as
Riverview, occurred in the early morning, starting in a trash
can on a screen porch and spreading rapidly up vinyl siding into
the attic of the L-shaped, one-story residence.
An automatic alarm call was made at
5:25 a.m. to a monitoring company. The protocol established by
the Office for People With Developmental Disabilities required
that the company call the group home before notifying the Fire
Department, which wasted minutes and violated state fire
standards. By 5:30, the local fire company was dispatched,
alerting Ken Hoffman, a firefighter who lived across the street
and rushed over to help.
When Mr. Hoffman arrived, all nine
residents were still inside, but he and two staff members helped
most of them evacuate. Then one resident fell, distracting the
two staff members as three residents wandered back into the
burning house, according to state records.
There were further complications. The
state had not informed local fire officials about the presence
of the group home, leaving them ill prepared.
“There was no contact,” said Peter
Byrne, a Rockland County fire safety official who was on the
panel of experts convened by the state after the fire. “If I
roll into a single-family dwelling at 2 or 3 in the morning, I’m
expecting mom, dad and 2.3 kids, whatever the average is, not 11
challenged individuals.”
Credible investigations were performed
— one by a local grand jury, one by the State Office of Fire
Prevention and Control, and another by the panel that included
Mr. Byrne.
But a follow-up review undertaken by
the two agencies most responsible for the developmentally
disabled — the Office for People With Developmental Disabilities
and the Commission on Quality of Care — included questions like
whether residents’ day-to-day medical care needs were being met.
The questions “were not germane to the
fundamental questions posed by the Wells fire — what was the
cause of the fire and what can we do in the future to prevent
such fires from occurring in such a tragic manner,” Roger
Bearden, the new head of the commission, said in an interview.
Like most group homes in New York, the
Riverview house was required to meet residential building codes,
which are less than stringent.
There were no sprinklers in the attic
at the house, or on the screen porch where the fire started.
Records showed that the building’s original plans required fire
retardant materials on the porch ceiling and that a planned
barrier wall in the attic was abandoned during construction.
While the house was required to meet
standards from the National Fire Protection Association, an
interview with a top association official suggests that while
the standards are open to interpretation, the house could have
been more robustly protected.
“There’s been an unresolved question
about why a sprinkler wasn’t provided on that porch area,” said
Robert E. Solomon, a fire safety expert at the association who
served on the state panel.
“Our standards would have probably put
a sprinkler on that porch area where that fire occurred,” he
said, which could have prevented the fire from spreading.
The Riverview case also underscores
widespread problems in how fire drills at group homes have been
conducted. The Times reported in March that a whistle-blower
warned a senior state official in 2008 that drill records were
being routinely faked or implausibly speedy evacuation times
were being claimed. State investigators found that was the case
at the Riverview house.
The staff also seemed unprepared; time
was spent battling the fire with an extinguisher instead of
evacuating residents. The grand jury convened by the district
attorney of Hamilton County noted that fires were common in
group homes, adding, “It would be a grave mistake to view
Riverview’s tragedy as an isolated incident.”
Some steps have been taken since the
fire: tighter rules guiding new construction, bringing in
outside supervisors for fire drills and outside experts for
inspections. But Ms. Burke’s agency did not say when it would
review whether other homes in the system might also be lacking
fire safety features sufficient enough for developmentally
disabled residents.
After several weeks of inquiries from
The Times, Ms. Burke said she would reconvene the state panel
that investigated the fire. Mr. Hoffman said he could not shake
the memory of the fire.
“It’s still something that comes back
to my mind on a weekly basis,” he said. “We lost four neighbors
that night.”
A System’s Failure
No one told Joan Taylor, after her son
James died in August 2005, that there had been a similar bathtub
drowning four months earlier.
Or that the other drowning, like her
son’s, took place at a group home operated by a local chapter of
the New York State ARC, the nation’s largest nonprofit
organization serving the developmentally disabled.
In both cases, there had been concerns
that ARC had too few staff members to supervise the
developmentally disabled residents.
Dalton Lacomb died at the ARC home in
Malone, N.Y., in April 2005, after being left alone in a bath
for up to 20 minutes. The house had 11 residents and one
overnight staff member on duty. The state recommended hiring
more employees, but backed off after discussions with ARC
management.
The death “wasn’t related to staffing
levels,” Lester G. Parker, executive director of the Adirondack
ARC, which oversees the Malone house, said in an interview. “It
was related to a staff person clearly and significantly
neglecting their duties.”
Mrs. Taylor had pushed for an increase
in staffing at her son’s group home near Schenectady, where
three workers looked after eight severely developmentally
disabled residents.
ARC officials in Schenectady declined
to comment. After Mr. Taylor drowned, the organization’s only
significant response was to fire his caregiver.
“The guy who left James unattended is
the scapegoat, and the agency really took no responsibility from
the top,” Mr. Taylor’s sister, Patricia Taylor, said.
Marc Brandt, ARC’s statewide leader,
acknowledged that no broad changes were enacted after the
drownings, but said it was up to the state, not his
organization, to take action.
“If they see anything that is wrong,
they’ve always let us know,” he said.
Mr. Taylor’s mother has been a fierce
advocate for people with developmental disabilities for decades.
Mrs. Taylor, 86, started a parent
group, lobbied in Albany and was appointed to the capital-area
Board of Visitors of the Office for People With Developmental
Disabilities. She is most proud of helping get legislation
passed in 2002 that gave parents control over end-of-life
decisions for the developmentally disabled. “I was insulted I
couldn’t make that decision for my son, who I wanted to die with
dignity,” she said.
On a recent day, as Mrs. Taylor sat on
the back porch of her apartment at a retirement home in Saratoga
Springs, wearing tennis shoes and shorts, she leafed through the
guestbook from her son’s funeral, filled with 300 signatures,
including those of local elected officials.
“I don’t know if my kid died with
dignity or not,” she said.
She grew up on Long Island and trained
as a nurse; her late husband, Robert, was an engineer with
General Electric. She knew something was wrong with James, their
youngest child, when he was still a baby. Suspecting he could
not hear, she slammed cupboard doors near their infant son, and
he did not flinch.
She got a much greater shock after a
doctor told her, “Your son is mentally retarded.”
Doctors recommended that he be
institutionalized. Mrs. Taylor resisted, but she had five other
children. Dealing with James, her sixth child — quadriplegic,
sleepless and with the intellectual capacity of a 3-month-old —
filled her days and nights.
Eventually, she felt she had no choice.
“I will never forget that day,” Mrs.
Taylor once wrote in an essay. “My husband and I woke up that
morning both fighting back the tears. I dressed James in his
very best suit and we drove the 30 miles back to the institution
and left him there.”
“We both cried all the way home,” she
said. “I thought it was the worst day of my life.”
She has done advocacy work with ARC and
Mr. Brandt over the years, and calls him “a saint,” but she is
angry about what happened to her son.
Her daughter said it was because of her
mother’s advocacy work that Mr. Taylor’s death received
attention.
She worries about the developmentally
disabled who die and have no family around to push for answers
for them.
“These deaths are marginalized because
these sort of people are not valued by society,” Patricia Taylor
said.
When she was in the fourth grade, she
dreamed of taking her brother and running away with him,
protecting him. She finds it hard to accept that no one was able
to protect him after he grew up.
“I believe that God put these people
here for a purpose, because if we didn’t have them to look
after, we would lose our humanity,” she said. “How would we know
compassion? It says in the Bible,
do ye so unto the least of my brothers.
I think that’s what it’s all about.”
Pasadena
women step forward with more boot camp allegations
By Brian Charles, Staff Writer
Pasadena Star-News
Posted:10/31/2011 06:05:02 PM PDT
PASADENA - At least three Pasadena
women say they witnessed what they considered abuse by drill
instructors from Family First Growth Camp while the boot
camp operated on Pasadena city property.
Pasadena residents Susan Lafferty
and Nancy Rose and Sierra Madre resident Julie Unamuno said
they forwarded their claims of abuse to the city by email in
2009, but nothing was done.
"I saw (someone) getting in their
faces and screaming while the children were sobbing. Some of
the (children) were as young as 8 years old," Lafferty said.
"And I could not see how any of this could help a child."
"I would never even yell at an
animal like that," Rose said.
There was "no formal investigation
related to the tactics" but officials will review the 2009
emails, Pasadena spokeswoman Ann Erdman said in a statement
Monday.
Erdman acknowledged that city
officials were aware that Family First Growth Camp, operated
by Kelvin "Sgt. Mac" McFarland, used the Arroyo and
Hahamongna Watershed Park, both city properties, to train
children. The camp was routinely ushered off city land for
failing to have a permit, Erdman said.
"Anytime park safety officers
encountered the operation on city-owned property, they
ordered them to vacate the premises immediately," Erdman
said.
Neither McFarland nor his attorney,
Evan Dicker of the Los Angeles County Alternate Public
Defender's Office, returned calls seeking comment.
McFarland was arrested on May 27 on
suspicion of of child abuse, child endangerment, kidnapping,
extortion and unlawful use of a badge stemming from his
encounter with a young girl in Pasadena.
His case is still pending.
In July, Judge Stan Blumenfeld
decided to hold McFarland over for trial. McFarland remains
free on $185,000 bail. He is due back in court Nov. 16.
McFarland's criminal record
includes arrests and convictions for driving under the
influence in 1991 and 2005, as well as a 2000 conviction for
misdemeanor battery and a 2009 conviction for driving with a
suspended license.
McFarland can be seen in two videos
that provide an inside look at juvenile boot camps.
In one video, McFarland can be seen
coaxing children to drink water to the point that several
children began vomiting. In the second, he and several other
adults can be seen taunting a child who has been forced to
wear a tire around his neck.
Those videos were released by this
newspaper last week.
The voice of boot camp instructor
Keith "Sarge" Gibbs, who operates Sarge's Community
Base/Commit II Achieve, can be heard on one of the videos.
Both men deny being present for the
videotaping. Gibbs has not been charged with a criminal
offense.
Lafferty, Unamuno and Rose all ride
horses in the Arroyo and Hahamongna Watershed Park. They
said the tactics employed by the Family First Growth Camp
during their run-ins with the camp in 2009 bore striking
resemblance to the scenes depicted in those videos.
Unamuno, who is a riding instructor
in the Arroyo, said she first encountered McFarland in
November 2009.
"I saw what appeared to be a drill
sergeant was pointing his finger in a young girl's face
while she was covered in dirt," Unamuno said. "She had been
reduced to tears."
Lafferty, Rose and Unamuno came
forward after seeing the videos. Rose, Lafferty and Unamuno
said they didn't see any children being forced to drink
large volumes of water, but they did see children being
forced to carry truck tires around their neck.
During their horse rides, the women
said they also saw children forced to scale steep hills
during a heat wave in 2010 and also witnessed instructors
regularly give obscenity-laced tongue lashings to the
children.
"Do you think breaking them down to
be nothing and using obscenities is going to make them any
better? Rose asked. "They are not adults, they are kids and
their minds are not even developed."
After a handful of run-ins with the
camp, the women said they decided to report the acts to
Pasadena City officials.
"We knew this was at the very least
inappropriate behavior if not out-and-out abuse," Lafferty
said.
Lafferty contacted the Pasadena
Department of Public Works, directing many of her emails to
Martin Pastucha, the department's former director, Lafferty
said.
The women said they thought to call
the Pasadena police, but were unable to make out a license
plate on a car and were too afraid to approach the boot camp
to ask for names, Rose said.
It remains unclear what happened to
the email sent by Lafferty, but Pasadena Police Department
officials said they had no knowledge of any of the
activities in the Arroyo or Hahamongna Watershed Park.
"We do not have any prior
complaints of child abuse against Mr. McFarland and Mr.
Gibbs regarding boot camps," Pasadena police Lt. Tracey
Ibarra said. Ibarra runs the Police Department's youth
outreach program.
Despite not having a permit, the
camps returned in 2010 and were spotted in the Arroyo as
recently as last summer, Rose said.
The riding group began to alter its
route to avoid the group, since Unamuno often takes her own
children on the path.
"It's unnerving to see that type of
drill going on in that setting and trying to explain that to
young children," Unamuno said.
Meanwhile, no arrests have been
made in the case, as investigators said they are still
unsure a crime has even occurred, Ibarra said.
"The Pasadena Police Department has
had discussions with the District Attorney's Office, but
there has not been any cases opened," Ibarra said. "We are
still trying to determine whether there has been criminal
act with identifiable suspects."
The department has not contacted
the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family
Service since it's unclear whether any laws were broken,
Ibarra said.
The video contains episodes
recorded during McFarland's time with Gibbs, according to
multiple sources familiar with the camps.
Gibbs has not operated free of
controversy.
In 2009, he was removed from
Pasadena Unified School District campuses when accusations
surfaced that his tactics were "too rough," according to
district officials.
CDC
Director Arrested for Child Molestation and Bestiality
By Dr. Mercola
Dr. Kimberly Quinlan Lindsey, a top official with the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been arrested and charged
with two counts of child molestation and one count of bestiality.
Dr. Lindsey, who joined the CDC in 1999, is currently the deputy
director for the Laboratory Science Policy and Practice Program
Office. She's second in command of the program office.
Prior to that role, she was the senior health scientist in the
Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, an office that
oversees the allocation process for $1.5 billion in terrorism
preparedness.
According to CNN:
"Authorities also charged Lindsey's live-in boyfriend, Thomas Joseph
Westerman, 42, with two counts of child molestation.
The two are accused of 'immoral and indecent' sexual acts involving
a 6-year-old ...
The bestiality charge says Lindsey 'did unlawfully perform or submit
to any sexual act with an animal.'"
Between January and August last year, Dr. Lindsey and her boyfriend
allegedly involved the child during sex, and DeKalb County police
claim they discovered photographs of Lindsey performing sex acts on
a couple of her pets.
Some of you may wonder why I've chosen to discuss this story. Some
may think it's in poor taste and doesn't belong in a newsletter
about health. However, I believe it's relevant to be aware that
someone in charge of your child's health is allegedly engaged in
child abuse. Her actions raise serious questions in my mind about
her level of concern for the health and well-being of children in
general.
Dr. Lindsey Played Primary Role in Bogus Swine Flu Propaganda
Campaign
As you may recall, the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic turned out to be
a complete sham, with a fast-tracked and particularly dangerous
vaccine being pushed as the sole remedy. Children and pregnant women
were the primary targets of this dangerous vaccine. The H1N1 flu was
a perfect example of how the CDC can brazenly distort reality, and
often ignore and deny the dangerous and life-threatening side
effects of their solution. As a result of this bogus propaganda
campaign, thousands of people were harmed (and many died) worldwide.
In August, it was revealed that the 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine
increased the risk for narcolepsy-a very rare and devastating
sleeping disorder-in Swedish children and adolescents by 660
percent.
Finland also noticed a dramatic increase in narcolepsy following
vaccination with Pandemrix. There, an interim report issued in
January of this year found that the H1N1 vaccine increased the risk
of narcolepsy by 900 percent in children and adolescents below the
age of 19. In the US, the H1N1 flu vaccine was statistically linked
with abnormally high rates of miscarriage and stillbirths. As
reported by Steven Rubin on the NVIC's blog, the US H1N1 flu vaccine
was SIXTY times more likely to be reported to VAERS to be associated
with miscarriage than previous seasonal flu vaccines.
The only "winners" in this game were the pharmaceutical companies
that received millions of dollars for this never-proven-effective
and highly reactive vaccine, while being sheltered by our government
from liability for any harm it caused.
Dr. Lindsey played an important role in that campaign, which ended
in tragedy for countless many-not from a killer flu (statistically,
the 2009 H1N1 flu was MILDER than usual) but from the dangerous and
expensive "remedy" to this oversold non-threat.
All of that said, I do want to stress that Dr. Lindsey has not yet
been found guilty, and there are still many unanswered questions
relating to this case. But this is not the only shocking story
raising questions about the ethics of those involved in creating the
CDC's health recommendations.
William Edwards and
Helen Edwards have made
additional accusations
against two
Pasadena-based boot
camps, which find
themselves in the midst
of a controversy over
the harsh tactics
employed by instructors.
(SGVN/Staff Photo by
Walt Mancini )
PASADENA - A man who attended
Pasadena-based youth boot camps
run by Kelvin "Sgt. Mac"
McFarland said episodes of harsh
treatment were commonplace. And
the man's adopted mother said
children of immigrants and the
illiterate were targeted for
membership.
William Edwards, 18, of
Pasadena, said in one 2010
instance instructors at the
Family First Growth Camp, which
was run by McFarland, targeted a
young girl for discipline by
handcuffing her to a fence and
kicking dirt on her.
Edwards also recalled camp
attendees having to drink large
volumes of water that caused
vomiting and nausea.
"The drill instructors would
say `we will be here all day
until you finish that water and
if you take too long we will
just make you drink more,"'
Edwards said.
Neither McFarland nor his
attorney Evan Dicker of the Los
Angeles County Alternate Public
Defender's Office, returned
calls seeking comment.
In recent days, questions
have been raised about
McFarland, his former employer
Keith "Sarge" Gibbs and their
respective camps after two
disturbing videos were published
on this newspaper's website.
In one of the videos,
children - some as young as nine
years old - are seen being
forced to drink water to the
point of vomiting. In the other
video, a pre-teen boy is seen
being screamed at by drill
instructors, including
McFarland, while carrying a
truck tire around his neck.
At the time of the taping in
2009, McFarland was employed by
Gibbs.
Gibbs can be heard on
speaking on one of the videos.
Both men have denied being
present during the videotaping.
Police investigating
The videos prompted the
Pasadena Police Department to
launch an investigation and the
acts have been strongly
condemned by politicians from
Pasadena City Hall to the
nation's Capitol.
Experts in the field of child
development and child abuse laws
have questioned both the
efficacy and legality of the
acts in the videos.
For Edwards, the images in
the videos serve as a reminder
of what he said he witnessed
firsthand.
"(The drill instructors)
would make you squat down with
the tire around your neck,"
Edwards said. "It makes your
neck and back hurt."
Edwards is one of four
children adopted by Helen
Edwards, a 74-year-old retired
U.S. Postal Service employee.
Unlike many other parents who
turn to boot camps, she said she
didn't enroll her children to
curb bad their behavior.
"I am raising them all by
myself and I wanted to give them
the experience of what a man's
role in the world is," Helen
Edwards said.
`A great, smooth
talker'
She said she enrolled her two
sons and two daughters in Gibbs'
camp in 2008. After a dustup
over training tactics and
McFarland's failure to pass a
background check, Gibbs and
McFarland parted ways. Wooed by
McFarland's charm, the Edwards
family remained with McFarland
when he branched off in 2009.
"He is a great, smooth
talker," Helen Edwards said.
She said she was so taken by
McFarland that she staked the
operation, writing him a check
for $2,000 to help start his
camp.
McFarland promised to repay,
but hasn't, the retired postal
worker said. Helen Edwards said
she has never filed suit to try
to retrieve her money from
McFarland.
For her investment, Helen
Edwards served on the Family
First Growth Camp's board of
directors. For nearly a year she
kept McFarland's books.
But, the relationship soured
when Helen Edwards began to have
doubts about McFarland's ability
to manage money.
"In November of 2009, he went
up on the monthly dues from $200
to $250 a month," Helen Edwards
said. "And if you were late with
the money it cost you a $25 late
fee."
Immediately, 13 families left
Family First Growth Camp. In
March 2010, McFarland turned to
a new "recruiting tool," Helen
Edwards said.
"The third week of every
month, he would come in with a
child - who was skipping school
- in handcuffs," she recalled.
"And he would call the parents
and make them pay $100 on the
spot. And then $250 at the first
of the month, as part of their
dues."
`Walking-around
money'
McFarland targeted some of
Pasadena's most vulnerable
residents, Helen Edwards said.
"He would go after the
immigrants and the illiterate,"
she said.
Many of the parents who came
in to pay McFarland for
"finding" their children spoke
little or no English and the
boot camp used translators to
help with the transactions,
Helen Edwards said.
Helen Edwards said she would
receive the $250 and deposit the
money into a business account.
The $100 McFarland took from
parents for capturing truant
teens "was his walking-around
money," Helen Edwards said.
On May 16 Pasadena police
arrested McFarland on suspicion
of kidnapping, child abuse,
child endangerment, extortion
and unlawful use of a badge.
McFarland allegedly
handcuffed a truant Pasadena
Unified School District student
and told her parents, who spoke
limited English, to pay him $100
or he would put their daughter
in a juvenile detention center.
McFarland has pleaded not
guilty and is out on bail
awaiting trial.
Because of her financial
dealings with McFarland, Helen
Edwards said previous to seeing
the videos she was reluctant to
come forward with any
information.
She and her family left
McFarland's group after adopted
son Tyrone and one of the drill
instructors got into a fight,
Edwards said.
A portion of McFarland's
training forced children in the
camp to wrestle adult drill
instructors - at least one of
whom as on active duty in the
U.S. Marine Corps, she said.
A match between Tyrone and a
man identified only as "Sgt.
Ronnie," turned into a brawl,
she said.
McFarland intervened and
broke up the fight by reportedly
using a choke hold on Tyrone,
his mother said.
"Tryone, who is a big boy,
almost 6-feet-tall, got free by
flipping (McFarland) over his
back," Helen Edwards said.
"McFarland took Tyrone for a
walk and told him not to come
back to the camp anymore."
A month later Helen Edwards
said she pulled all of her
children from the camp.
Pasadena police probe possible abuses
after troubling youth camp videos surface
By Associated Press,
Published: October 28
PASADENA, Calif. — Police will investigate whether a crime
occurred at a youth boot camp after videos surfaced showing
instructors shouting at a boy wearing a tire around his neck and
children being told to drink water until some vomited.
Investigators will question boot camp operator Kelvin “Sgt.
Mac” McFarland, police Cmdr. Darryl Qualls told the Pasadena
Star-News (http://bit.ly/vtQb7Q ) on Thursday.
“Looking at the video we can only see McFarland, so we will
start the investigation with McFarland,” Qualls said.
McFarland earlier denied to the newspaper that he appeared in
the videos. A call left for him Friday was not immediately
returned.
McFarland was charged earlier this year with child abuse,
extortion and other crimes.
Prosecutors contend that he handcuffed a truant 14-year-old
girl in May and told her family that she would be sent to
juvenile detention unless she was enrolled in his camp. She was
never enrolled.
The Star-News this week released short video clips it said
were made in 2009.
On one, several instructors in military-style fatigues
surround and shout at a boy who is wearing a heavy auto tire. At
one point, the boy falls down crying but is ordered to stand
again.
In the other, several girls and boys are repeatedly ordered
to drink water from colored plastic bottles. Several youngsters
vomit.
“I would certainly not subject my son or daughter or any
child I know to this type of activity,” City Council member
Victor Gordo told the newspaper.
“The short clips that I reviewed appeared to be more of a
situation of intimidation and humiliation appearing to be
employed under the guise of physical activity and discipline,”
Gordo said.
The Star-News said the videos appear to have been made in
Pasadena but did not indicate how it obtained them.
McFarland runs Family First Growth Camp in Pasadena, which
like other boot camps uses military-style discipline and
exercises with a goal of instilling character and keeping
at-risk youngsters away from drugs, alcohol and crime.
The camp “doesn’t believe in corporal punishment, nor will it
be tolerated,” according to a camp website.
“The young men/women who come to us are good kids who have
begun to make some poor choices with friends, school, drugs,
alcohol, attitude with peers and family members,” the website
said, adding that through the camp, “these kids seek out, find,
then learn to love themselves so they can love their families
and start to move in a positive direction.”
The camp is funded through a combination of fees and
charitable donations. Enrollment is through parents, although in
some states juvenile justice systems send some offenders to boot
camps.
However, some studies have shown that juvenile offenders sent
to boot camps were no less likely to commit new crimes than
those who were placed in juvenile detention or given probation.
The Star-News did not specify whether the videos were taken
at a Family First training session and noted that some children
seemed to be wearing T-shirts from another camp.
Keith “Sarge” Gibbs, who runs Sarge’s Community Base/Commit
II Achieve Boot Camp, said that some of the children appear to
be wearing his camp T-shirts.
McFarland worked for him in 2009 but left to form his own
camp after Gibbs learned that he had lied about taking a
required background check, Gibbs said.
“He left and took 28 families and kids with him, with my
shirts and some paperwork,” Gibbs told The Associated Press on
Friday.
Gibbs said he doubted that the video was shot during one of
his camps.
“Those individuals (in the videos) belong to Sgt. McFarland’s
team. Those are his teammates,” he said.
Although Gibbs uses some tire drills for strength training
and does make youngsters drink a lot of water after long hikes,
parents are always involved in the instruction and Gibbs said he
has a policy against certain actions.
“You can’t demean or haze the kid ... your goal is to
motivate these kids, to inspire them, empower them,” he said.
“If that was the entire program, I don’t see where the kids are
learning anything.”
“Do they need to be forced to drink water until they vomit? I
don’t think so,” he said.
A bill introduced earlier this month by Rep. George Miller,
D-Richmond, would require training for boot camp staff. It also
would require boot camp instructors to report child abuse and
create a federal database where parents can check the
credentials of boot camp operators.
“This legislation will help put an end to these horrific
abuses that put the lives of too many children in jeopardy,”
Miller said in a statement.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.
Boy's death in juvenile detention center should jolt
state lawmakers into action
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 25, 20110
Signs of trouble were apparent at a Hood County juvenile
detention facility before the death of a 14-year-old
detainee this month.
Why does it take a tragedy to propel the state to take a
serious look at operations inside the Granbury Regional
Juvenile Justice Center?
Perhaps because too many local and state officials see
the for-profit juvenile centers in Texas as a positive
economic alternative to government-run institutions for
troubled youths.
Jordan Adams, a Cleburne middle school student, died in
a Fort Worth hospital six days after being found
unconscious Oct. 10 in his cell at the Granbury
facility. A bedsheet was wrapped around his neck,
according to police, who have not determined whether the
death was an accident or "criminal incident."
Regardless of the cause of death, when young people are
placed in the custody of the state, there should be a
reasonable expectation that their safety, health and
general welfare will be protected. Sadly, too many
heartbreaking examples point to that not being the case.
State records show more than 250 complaints and serious
incidents have been reported at the center since 2007,
including youth-on-youth assaults, supervisory neglect
and physical and sexual abuse. Perhaps the most
disturbing statistic is the 133 cases of attempted
suicide, an overwhelming amount in a four-year period
for any group.
Star-Telegram writer Dianna Hunt reported Sunday that
the Hood County juvenile center, originally designed as
a public-private partnership that would not cost
taxpayers any money, had problems from the start. A
coalition that included the county and a detention
management corporation built the $6.5 million facility
through the sale of tax-exempt certificates of
participation (bonds). In a convoluted scheme, the
management group was to lease the facility back to the
county, then rent the place to operate a juvenile
detention center that would pay off the bonds. The
county would own it outright after 20 years.
The private corporation floundered almost immediately
when the daily census was far less than the 78 juveniles
it needed to be "profitable." The county took over the
operation for a while and then closed the facility
because it was too costly, resulting in a downgrade of
the county's bond rating by Standard & Poor's.
Hood County in 2007 contracted with 4M Granbury Youth
Services of Rockdale to operate the center, but a
surprise state inspection two years later found
"numerous unsanitary and unhealthy living conditions" at
the facility. Among the violations cited were
supervisory neglect, failure to make routine checks on
detainees and failure to provide proper medical care,
Hunt reported.
In response to previously alleged and actual
mistreatment in state juvenile facilities, major efforts
were made to enhance security, supervision and medical
attention for youths assigned there. The strategy
included committing juveniles to privately run
facilities.
Regardless of who manages the detention centers, the
responsibility rests with the state, which is charged
with the care of these young people.
The Texas Juvenile Justice Coalition in Austin has
voiced concern about the lack of adequate supervision
and oversight of juvenile justice facilities,
particularly the for-profit centers, according to
Executive Director Ann Correa.
More needs to be done, and one specific corrective
measure would be for the Legislature to fund independent
ombudsmen to investigate complaints and concerns as
recommended by the coalition.
The death of a 14-year-old boy demands that Texans act,
and with deliberate speed.
The first legislation aimed at regulating residential
programs for troubled teens was introduced on Thursday
in the House and the Senate. The bill would crack down
on hundreds of programs housing thousands of teens, many
of which use punishing "tough love" regimes found to
include physical, sexual and emotional abuse.
The Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens
Act of 2011 was sponsored in the House by Rep. George
Miller (D-Calif.) and in the Senate by Sen. Tom Harkin
(D-Iowa). A previous version of the bill passed the
House twice, but was never introduced in the Senate (at
the time, the relevant Senate committee was focused on
President Obama's health care legislation).
The legislation would prohibit sexual, physical and
emotional abuse and would ban the use of deprivation —
of food, sleep, clothing and shelter, for example — as
punishment or for any other reason. The use of physical
restraint would be permitted only for safety, and all
programs would be required to provide residents with
"reasonable" access to a telephone. It would require
staff to be educated about what specifically counts as
child abuse and how to report it, and mandate programs
to disclose staff qualifications to parents.
Investigations by the Government Accountability Office
(GAO) in 2007-08 found dozens of deaths related to abuse
at such residential programs, along with thousands of
further allegations, many confirmed, of abuse. GAO
investigators posing as parents also discovered
widespread use of fraudulent marketing practices.
"The culture of abuse and neglect at some of these
programs is simply unacceptable, as is the inadequate
staff training, regulation and state oversight. Every
day we wait to take action is another day that the
safety of teenagers is in jeopardy," said Miller. "I
hope my Republican colleagues will join me in helping
put an end to these horrific abuses that put the lives
of too many children in danger."
Republicans, however, oppose additional federal
regulations and believe these programs should be
overseen by the states. "Ensuring the safety of the
nation's youth is a priority for Americans on both sides
of the political divide. We have learned a great deal
about the abuse and neglect of troubled youth who live
at residential treatment facilities," said Rep. John
Kline (R-Minn.), chair of the House Education and the
Workforce Committee, adding, "These at-risk youth
deserve strong protections and we must ensure federal
policies do not undermine the central responsibility of
state and local leaders to ensure their safety and hold
abusers accountable."
In 2009, I
reported for TIME on allegations of sexual abuse at
Mount Bachelor Academy, a residential program in Oregon
owned by Aspen Education, the largest national operator
of residential teen centers, which include wilderness
programs and "emotional growth" boarding schools.
A state investigation that followed my article found
that Mount Bachelor's treatment regime was "punitive,
humiliating, degrading and traumatizing" and included
"sexualized role play in front of staff and
students." In March, the state also substantiated claims
that neglect led to the death of a teen in another Aspen
program, Sage Walk. That program had been featured on a
short-lived reality show called "Brat Camp."
But while Oregon has some oversight of these programs,
in many states, there is none at all. Nail salons and
dog grooming outfits are, in fact, more strictly
regulated than troubled teen programs, which routinely
use corporal punishment and isolation in the guise of
treatment.
Cynthia Clark Harvey, whose daughter Erica died of
heatstroke and dehydration after staff members of the
Catherine Freer Wilderness program she attended insisted
that she was faking her problems, testified during the
first Congressional hearings held on the issue. "I
support the legislation because it preserves true
parental rights: the right to free and unmonitored
communication with your child, the right to
family-centered treatment and the right to know there
are national standards that any program must adhere to,"
she said.
The new bill is supported by the American Psychological
Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the
Child Welfare League and the American Association of
Children's Residential Centers. The National Association
of Therapeutic Schools and Programs, an industry group,
has said it supports the "intent" of the legislation but
opposes federal regulation.
Maia Szalavitz is a health writer for
TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at @maiasz. You can also continue the
discussion on TIME Healthland's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland.
Corporate
Media and Larry Summers Team Up to Gut Public Education:
Beyond Education for Illiteracy, Vulgarity and a Culture
of Cruelty
Tuesday 27 September 2011
by: Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | Op-Ed
NOTE: This article is based on the preface
of Henry A. Giroux's latest book, "Education and
the Crisis of Public Values: Challenging the
Assault on Teachers, Students and Public
Education" (Counterpoints: Studies in the
Postmodern Theory of Education), published by
Peter Lang Publishing; First printing edition
(July 30, 2011).
Since the early 1970s, the rich, corporate
power brokers and right-wing cultural
warriors realized that education was central
to creating a viable populist movement that
served their interests. Over the last 40
years, the financial elites and their
wealthy accomplices have not only mobilized
an educational anti-reform movement in the
name of "reform" to dismantle public
education and turn it over to hedge-fund
managers and billionaires; they have also
taken a lesson from the muckrakers, critical
public intellectuals, left-wing journals,
progressive newspapers and educational
institutions of the mid-20th century and
developed their own cultural apparatuses,
talk shows, anti-public intellectuals, think
tanks and grassroots organizations. As the
left slid into organizing around mostly
single-issue movements since the 1980s, the
right moved in a different direction,
mobilizing a range of educational forces and
wider cultural apparatuses as a way of
addressing broader ideas that appealed to a
wider public and issues that resonated with
their everyday lives. Tax reform, the role
of government, the crisis of education,
family values and the economy, to name a few
issues, were wrenched out of their
progressive legacy and inserted into a
context defined by the values of the free
market, an unbridled notion of freedom and
individualism and a growing hatred for the
social contract.
At the heart of this movement was a culture
of cruelty and vulgarity that used education
to produce a new form of political
illiteracy in which there was no difference
between opinions and arguments, reason and
emotion and evidence and false statements.
In this culture of illiteracy, science
became a liability, thinking became an act
of stupidity, anti-intellectualism became a
virtue, social protections were described as
a pathology and the social contract was
dismissed as socialism. While social critic
Michael Kazin does not mention the notions
of education or public pedagogy in a recent
New York Times article, he is right in
stressing the centrality of education to the
current right-wing-Christian-extremists
takeover of almost every aspect of political
and economic life in America - extending
from the Supreme Court to the federal
government to the dominant media-cultural
educational apparatus. He writes: "Like the
left in the early 20th century,
conservatives built an impressive set of
institutions to develop and disseminate
their ideas. Their think tanks, legal
societies, lobbyists, talk radio and best
selling manifestos have trained, educated
and financed two generations of writers and
organizers. Conservative Christian colleges
both Protestant and Catholic, provide
students with a more coherent worldview than
do the more prestigious schools led by
liberals. More recently, conservatives
marshaled media outlets like Fox News and
the editorial pages of The Wall Street
Journal to their cause."(1)
Education has become the political weapon of
choice for conservatives, and they have had
astounding success in using the mainstream
and new media to drown out the voices of
more progressive critics. The evidence is
everywhere. For instance, The New York Times
is currently advertising its Watch Education
Take Center Stage initiative and the keynote
address is being given by the politically
and morally discredited champion of
neoliberal education, Lawrence Summers.
Given his failed presidency at Harvard, his
utterly shameful role in contributing to the
financial crisis of 2008 and the failure of
Obama's economic policies and his crude
instrumental view of education, why would
The New York Times select him as an
educational leader and beacon of hope for
any kind of educational vision designed to
address future generations? Other speakers
include the likes of Chester Finn, whose
views on public education are as politically
reactionary as they are theoretically bogus.
Another example can be found in the ongoing
Education Nation series sponsored on a
number of platforms by NBC. It's endorsement
of market-driven anti-public education
policies are evident in its parading of the
likes of Bill and Melinda Gates and their
utterly anti-public, charter school,
privatized and technocratic vision of
education. Also included are the usual list
of charter school, corporate funded
anti-union, public school cheerleaders for
defunding and privatizing American
education. Of course, missing from these
dog-and-pony shows are progressive public
school reformers such as David Berliner,
Stanley Aronowitz, Jonathan Kozol, Marian
Wright Edelman, Donaldo Macedo, and others
who have been fighting for real educational
reform for the last few decades. Nor is
there any mention of the many local
struggling social movements fighting for
public education and the ever-dissolving
protections of social contract inherited
from the legacy of the New Deal and the
Great Society programs. Education at all
levels is firmly in the hands of the rich,
reactionary and the powerful. Is it any
wonder given how invisible progressive
forces are in this country that young people
are not in the streets as they were in the
sixties, refusing the future being offered
to them by Wall Street and the moralizing
Christian fundamentalists?
Of course, this is not merely a debate about
education; it is really about the emergence
of an anti-reform movement that wants to
create armies of low-skilled workers and
consumers for the privatized, deregulated
and commodified world of the 21st century
where a survival of the fittest ethic has
been elevated to the status of commonsense.
This is a world in which the culture of
cruelty is now so commonplace that audiences
clap when right-wing politicians insist that
people who are terminally ill should die
rather than receive government support; it
is a world in which the legacies and
injustice of slavery and the Jim Crow era
now shape a criminal justice system in which
capital punishment is largely used to kill
black men while, at the same time, used by
crass politicians to provoke political
support and cheers from audiences who could
have once sat in the seats of Roman
coliseums watching people eaten by wild
animals; the culture of cruelty is now
matched by the culture of vulgarity -
reality TV shows mimic the worst values of
American life; celebrity culture is now so
crude that it is worse than illiterate, and
celebrities such as Kim Kardashian become
role models for legitimating a lethal
combination of vulgarity and stupidity. The
combination of vulgarity and illiteracy
permeates American culture, particularly its
political class. What is one to make of the
current crop of Republic presidential
candidates who claim, without irony, that
climate change is not the result of human
behavior; evolution is bad science; and in
the case of the queen of idiocy, Michele
Bachmann, ignore the most obvious scientific
evidence about the HPV vaccine in order to
make false claims about the value of this
particular drug in saving the lives of young
girls. In all of these examples, education
becomes another way of making the larger
public and young people either stupid or
mindless consumers - even worse, both.
The American public needs access to a new
political and educational vocabulary in
order to fashion democratically vibrant
educational institutions; social movements;
community educational centers; bookstores;
and a lively, independent press. Young
people, educators, activists, artists,
parents, and others need alternative media
such as Truthout, AlterNet and CounterPunch
as popular civic outlets to make education
central to building the formative culture
that would create new generations of real
public intellectuals, youth activists,
social movements and a vibrant range of
public spheres. I have taken up this issue
in my newest book, "Education and the Crisis
of Public Values." The book points to how
educators and others can meet the current
attack on education, young people and
democracy itself. It offers a new vocabulary
for better understanding the crisis of
education as a crisis of democracy and
public life, and provides a number of
suggestions for what new beginnings are
necessary, all of which is outlined in more
detail throughout the book. Below is an
excerpt from the preface that forecasts both
the swindle of education offered by
conservatives, the billionaires and
corporate power brokers and why it needs to
be resisted with as much urgency and
collective power as possible.
With all due respect to Charles Dickens, it
appears to be the worst of times for public
and higher education in America; public
schools are increasingly viewed as a
business and are prized above all for
"customer satisfaction," and efficiency
while largely judged through the narrow lens
of empirical accountability measures. When
not functioning as a business or a
potentially lucrative for-profit investment,
public schools are reduced to containment
centers, holding institutions designed to
largely punish young people marginalized by
race and class. No longer merely tracked
into low-achieving classes, poor white,
brown and black youth are now tracked out of
school into what is often called the
school-to-prison pipeline. Schools have now
become stress centers for the privileged and
zones of abandonment for the poor. Public
school teachers are now viewed as the new
"welfare-queens," while academics are
defined less as critical intellectuals and
engaged scholars than as a new class or
professional entrepreneurs. Under strict
policies imposed in a number of states by
right-wing politicians wrapping themselves
in the rhetoric of austerity, higher
education at all levels is being radically
defunded while simultaneously being
transformed into a credentializing factory
restructured according to the values, social
relations and governing practices of large
corporations. In both public and higher
education, ignorance is not merely fostered,
but embraced through the course content
whose value is almost exclusively defined
through a metaphysics in which anything that
can't be quantified is defined as useless.
Corporate pedagogy has no use for critical
thinking, autonomous subjects, the
stretching of the imagination, or developing
a sense of civic responsibility among
students. Teachers who think and act
reflectively, ask uncomfortable questions,
challenge the scripts of official power and
promote a search for the truth while
encouraging pedagogy as the practice of
freedom are now viewed as suspect, if not
un-American.
At the same time, amid all of the despair
and foolishness on the part of right-wing
politicians and conservative and corporate
interests, it is not entirely clear that a
spring of hope is beyond reach. As I wrote
this preface, workers and young people were
marching and demonstrating all over the
globe against the dictates, values and
policies of a market-driven economy that has
corrupted politics, pushed democracy to its
vanishing point and undermined public
values. Unions, public school teachers,
higher education, and all of those public
spheres necessary to keep civic values alive
are being challenged in a way that both
baffles and shocks anyone who believes in
the ideals and promises of a substantive
democracy. In the United States,
union-busting politicians such as Govs.
Scott Walker (Wisconsin) and Chris Christie
(New Jersey) not only want to gut social
services and sell them off to the highest
bidder, they are also symptomatic of a
political fringe movement that wants to
destroy the critical culture, dedicated
public servants and institutions that give
any sense of vitality, substance and hope to
public and higher education in the United
States.
As the meaning of democracy is betrayed by
its transformation into a market society,
corporate power and money appear unchecked
in their ability to privatize, deregulate
and destroy all vestiges of public life.
America's military wars abroad are now
matched by the war at home; that is, the
wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have
found their counterpart in the war against
the poor, immigrants, young people, unions,
public-sector workers, the welfare state and
schoolteachers. The call for shared
sacrifices on the part of conservatives and
Tea Party extremists becomes code for
destroying the social state, preserving and
increasing the power of mega-rich
corporations and securing the wealth of the
top one percent of the population with
massive tax breaks while placing the burden
of the current global economic meltdown on
the shoulders of working people and the
poor. Deficit reductions and austerity
policies that allegedly address the global
economic meltdown caused by the financial
hawks running Wall Street now do the real
work of stripping teachers of their
collective bargaining rights, dismantling
programs long associated with social
services and relegating young people to
mind-deadening schools and a debt-ridden
future. David Harvey's notion of
"accumulation through dispossession" has
become a basic policy of casino capitalism.
How else to interpret the right-wing call to
tax the poor to subsidize tax breaks for
billionaires and mega corporations? Despair,
disposability and unnecessary human
suffering now engulf large swaths of the
American people, often pushing them into
situations that are not merely tragic, but
life threatening. A survival-of-the-fittest
ethic has replaced any reasonable notion of
solidarity, social responsibility and
compassion for the other. Ideology does not
seem to matter any longer as right-wing
Republicans have less interest in argument
and persuasion than in bullying their
alleged enemies with the use of heavy-handed
legislation and, when necessary, dire
threats, as when Wisconsin's Republican Gov.
Scott Walker threatened to mobilize the
National Guard to prevent teachers' unions
from protesting their possible loss of
bargaining rights and a host of anti-worker
proposals.
Obama has joined the Republican Party,
leaving us with a Republican Party lite and
a Republican Party of extremists. We have
become a culture of forgetting, obliterating
both the legacy of authoritarianism that
characterized the Bush-Cheney years, while
supporting a new group of Republican
politicians who resemble Bush and Cheney on
steroids. We are more than a nation in
decline; we are a nation moving toward the
bittersweet simplisms, policies and values
of a new form of authoritarianism. With any
viable leadership lacking at the national
level, both young people and workers are
watching the movements for democracy that
are taking place all over the globe, but
especially in the volatile Arab nations and
in Western European countries such as
France, England and Germany. Struggles
abroad give Americans a glimpse of what
happens when individual solutions to
collective problems lose their legitimacy as
a central tenet of neoliberal ideology.
Massive demonstrations, pitched street
battles, nonviolent gatherings, the
impressive use of the new media as an
alternative political and educational tool
and an outburst of long-repressed anger
eager for collective action are engulfing
many countries across the globe. In smaller
numbers, such protests are also taking place
in a number of cities around the United
States. Many Americans are, once again,
invoking democracy, rejecting its
association with the empty formality of
voting and its disingenuous use to
legitimate and justify political systems
that produce massive wealth and income
inequality. Democracy's promises are laying
bare the sordid realities that now speak in
its name. Its energy is becoming infectious,
and one can only hope that those who believe
that education is the foundation of critical
agency, politics and democracy itself will
be drawn to the task of fighting America's
move in the last 30 years to a politically
and economically authoritarian system.
At issue here is the need for a new
vocabulary, vision and politics that will
unleash new democratic movements,
institutions and a formative culture capable
of imagining a life and society free of the
dictates of endless military wars, boundless
material waste, extreme inequality,
disposable populations and unfounded human
suffering. Central to "Education and the
Crisis of Public Values" is the belief that
no change will come unless education both
within and outside of formal schooling is
viewed as central to any viable notion of
politics. If real reform is going to happen,
it has to put in place a viable, critical,
formative culture that supports notions of
engaged citizenship, civic courage, public
values, dissent, democratic modes of
governing and a genuine belief in freedom,
equality and justice. Ideas matter as do the
human beings and institutions that make them
count and that includes those intellectuals
both in and out of schools who bear the
responsibility of providing the conditions
for Americans of all ages to be able to
think critically so they can act
imaginatively - so they can embrace a vision
of the good life as a just life, one that
extends the values, practices and vision of
democracy to everyone.
1. Michael Kazin, "Whatever Happened to the
American Left?" New York Times (September
25, 2011), p. SR4.
SUMMERVILLE -- The new 12-foot-high fence
outside Palmetto Behavioral Health has some neighbors
feeling like a prison moved in next door. "All it needs is
some razor wire," is a common refrain.
But all that chain link translates into
peace of mind for folks like Peggy Williams, who lives just
around the corner from the treatment center for troubled
teens. The fence, outfitted with special mesh and a curved
top, is designed to put an end to the highly publicized
escapes that have put this community on edge in recent
months.
"I love it," Williams said of the new
fence. "I just wish they had done it sooner."
Photo by Glenn Smith
Reaction has been
mixed over the new fence outside Palmetto Behavioral
Health in Summerville.
Palmetto officials released a statement
Tuesday saying that previous attempts to install such a
security fence at the Midland Parkway facility had been
denied. They did not say by whom, nor would they reveal how
much they paid for the new fence and other security
upgrades.
John Walker, a former maintenance worker
at the center, said his supervisors pushed for a more secure
fence as far back as 2007, but Palmetto executives didn't
want to spend the money. Another ex-employee provided The
Post and Courier with a copy of a 2007 bid from a company
offering to install a 10-foot fence around the center for
$23,650.
Walker said Palmetto opted for a smaller
wooden privacy fence because it was much cheaper. The result
was that escapes became commonplace, with teens climbing the
6-foot fence without breaking a sweat, he said.
"They went over it like it wasn't even
there," he said. "I kept thinking, 'What happens if one of
those kids gets loose and kills somebody?' How are they
going to justify that?"
Most escapes from the center have been
resolved peacefully. But in 2009, a 15-year-old boy was
accused of attacking and beating a 64-year-old woman after
he slipped away from the center by ducking out a side door,
police said.
Palmetto officials have insisted they
wanted to install a more secure fence years ago, but backed
off after receiving resistance from fire officials and
neighbors. That is why they settled on the wooden fence,
they have said.
Palmetto, which operates three treatment
facilities in South Carolina, has been under scrutiny since
four Washington teens escaped from the Summerville center in
April. Citizens were stunned to learn the teens had violent
histories and that one of the youths had faced an attempted
murder charge in Washington.
Residents and elected officials
questioned why such patients were being housed in a facility
surrounded by residential neighborhoods and protected by
little more than a privacy fence. Those concerns grew when
two more teens escaped from the facility in June, and a
third bolted in August.
Walker and other former workers said
there were far more escapes from the facility that were
never reported to police. Police records list 12
missing-person calls and nine reports of runaways from the
facility since 2006. But Walker said police were seldom
notified if workers could round up the escapees first. He
said he participated in several such round-ups, combing
nearby backyards and woods for teens who had gotten loose.
Palmetto officials did not directly
respond to Walker's statements when asked Tuesday, saying
that the center "does not release information concerning
patients or employees."
Town Councilman Walter Bailey, a former
solicitor, said he was pleased with the new fencing and
hopes it will resolve concerns over escapes. "They have
belatedly done what they should have done a while back and
hopefully this will take care of their security issues."
State Rep. Chip Limehouse, R-Charleston,
has pushed legislation that would bar treatment centers from
accepting out-of-state placements of violent mental health
patients. Limehouse said he too was encouraged by the new
fencing, but state officials still need to keep an eye on
Palmetto.
"I have to compliment them for making
improvements where they can," he said. "But there just seems
to be an unfortunate amount of incidents coming out of this
one facility. My hope is that they will get out of the news
and stay out of the news."
In the neighborhood around the center,
residents responded to the new fence with a mixture of
relief and ambivalence. Some thought it was just right;
others, that it was overkill.
Evelyn Mace, who lives in nearby Oakbrook
Commons, recalled seeing some Palmetto workers chasing an
escapee through the neighborhood a few years back. But she
said she's never had any problems with the teens there.
"They've never bothered me," she said.
"I'm more concerned about teenagers on the loose around here
after dark leaving trash up and down the roadway."
For Palmetto's part, the center seems
ready to put the controversy behind it. "Palmetto Behavioral
Health will continue to provide the utmost professional care
for the emotionally and mentally challenged individuals that
are cared for at our facilities," the company said in a
statement. "We are also committed to continuing our work as
a valued member of the business and health care community."
Polygamist communities
sent teens to work long
hours for low pay
By Sheila
Pratt, Postmedia NewsSeptember
25, 2011
Winston Blackmore,
52, leaves court in
this file photo.
Photograph by:
Brian Lawrence,
PNG Merlin Archive
EDMONTON — Truman Oler was 17
when he made the long drive to
Sundre from his home in
Bountiful, B.C., the base of
Canada’s controversial
polygamous sect, Fundamentalist
Latter Day Saints.
Like dozens of other FLDS
teenage boys, Oler left high
school after Grade 9 and, at 15,
he was working full time for a
company owned by Bountiful’s
bishop, Winston Blackmore.
Blackmore, who eventually had
more than 20 wives, sent Oler to
Alberta to work in his post and
pole mill in Sundre, a small
town southwest of Red Deer near
the foothills. That was the late
1990s. The Sundre site, first
owned by J.R. Blackmore and Sons
and later by Oler Bros.
Contracting, was still operating
in Sundre until the spring of
2009.
Documents obtained by The
Journal show the FLDS company
did business with dozens of
Alberta companies by the time it
folded. Court documents also
raised questions about working
conditions and pay in the FLDS
company.
Oler, like his fellow FLDS
workers, believed if he obeyed
the rules, paid his tithes and
followed the bishop’s teachings,
he might be assigned a wife, a
place to build a home, perhaps
another wife. That was the
promise.
Oler was determined to be
faithful. “I just never looked
for a way out,” he recalled in a
recent interview with The
Journal.
At first, the crew worked day
and night shifts making fence
posts for a large local mill.
Later, Blackmore and Sons got
into logging on contract and
workers cut timber and de-limbed
trees.
For a while, the young men
drove the six hours back to
Bountiful twice a month to
attend church meetings and see
family, recalled Truman, whose
father had six wives and 47
children. Truman Oler was 13th
of the 15 children by his
mother, Memory Oler.
While the plight of teenage
brides has garnered much
attention in the story of
Bountiful, there is another dark
side to the polygamous sect —
the young men and women used as
cheap labour for FLDS companies
whose futures were totally
dependent on a bishop’s
decisions.
Dozens of these young people
came to the Sundre area to work
for Blackmore and Sons, and
later Oler Bros., businesses
that helped support the
polygamous community back in
British Columbia.
The story of the young people
in Alberta, as Oler’s account
reveals, is one of low pay, long
hours and isolation.
Occasionally, a young man would
be kicked out for breaking the
rules; some would leave on their
own. Known as “lost boys,” they
were left to cope with no family
support, no financial support
and little education.
Experts who gave evidence
last winter in a B.C. court
reference on the legality of
polygamy noted that surplus
young men are often sent away to
work to reduce the competition
for young wives desired by the
older men — as well as provide
cheap labour.
A judgment is expected soon
in the B.C. court reference that
will determine the legality of
polygamy under the Charter of
Rights and Freedoms.
From the highway heading west
of Sundre, the FLDS company site
looked much like any other small
industrial site in the busy
rural county. A large
rectangular Quonset building
used as a repair shop, a few
trucks, an old house, a
double-wide trailer, all crowded
onto the gravel yard.
Oler says he earned $60 every
two weeks at first and that went
up to $100 every two weeks when
he turned 18 — well below
minimum wage. When he worked for
Blackmore and Sons, sometimes he
was issued a cheque which he was
asked to sign and hand back to
his boss. He says he never saw
the cash. When Oler Brothers
took over, his pay went up.
Oler says he was provided
with safety gear, hard hat and
boots, when he made fence posts
at the large nearby sawmill. He
also noted safety checks at the
mill.
Oler also noticed young men
from FLDS communities in Utah
turned up at the site —
rebellious teenagers sent on a
“reform mission.”
A strict regimen of long
hours, hard work, no pay and
teachings from righteous older
men was supposed to put them
back on track, said Oler.
In October 1997, another
unusual new arrival —
14-year-old Teressa Wall, from
Salt Lake City — turned up. When
Utah FLDS leaders told her it
was time for her to marry, she
refused. She was banned from her
family home and sent to
Bountiful until she would
repent.
Shortly after, Bountiful’s
bishop, Winston Blackmore, sent
Wall to work at the Sundre mill,
Wall said in her video testimony
to the B.C. court.
Dressed in her long,
pioneer-style dress, Wall often
worked the night shift. While
the others had warm clothes, she
worked in winter in tennis shoes
and an old coat and worked in
the rain with no raincoat.
Her job was throwing logs
onto the “peeler” machine or
taking the de-barked, cut logs
off the other end of the machine
and stacking them, she said.
She was often told: “You
could end all this if you would
just get married,” she noted.
For nearly two years, she
refused and continued working
along with two of her brothers
from Utah.
Oler recalled seeing her at
the mill, but they never spoke.
One day, with no warning,
Wall was taken back to Creston
where the bishop, Winston
Blackmore, again pressured her
to get married. Dispirited by
then, she agreed to do so. She
was 17.
Wall then returned to Sundre
with her new husband, who worked
at the mill while she took on
the job of crew cook, according
to her testimony.
In the mid-2000s, Blackmore’s
operation was taken over by Oler
Bros, which was owned by Truman
Oler’s elder brothers. They
started logging. In 2006, the
company had a crew of more than
40 workers, according to
government documents. Oler said
the wages went up to $400 to
$500 a month and later $800.
In April 2009, Oler Bros.
declared bankruptcy.
That year, Bountiful was
under growing pressure from the
B.C. government. Truman Oler’s
brother, Jim, bishop at the
time, was charged with polygamy
— but the charges were later
stayed.
Bankruptcy records give a
glimpse into just how far FLDS
business connections had grown
over the years in Alberta. When
the company went under, it had
debts of $4.8 million and assets
of $2.9 million
Dozens of companies were
listed as creditors, in Sundre,
the Rocky Mountain House area
and Edmonton and Calgary, and
into Ontario and B.C.
Documents show Oler Bros.
borrowed more than $2 million
for vehicles, trucks, trailers,
cars, including $1.4 million for
“eight pieces of equipment from
John Deere” based in Burlington,
Ont.
The list of 15 secured
creditors included ATB, (with a
claim of $90,000), Caterpillar
Financial Services, ($280,000
claim), Daimler Chrysler
($900,000 for six trucks and
trailers) a Red Deer company
Haukendal Enterprise (claim of
$364,904 for office furniture)
and Equirex Vehicle leasing (a
claim of $340,000 for three
trucks).
More than 100 companies are
listed as unsecured creditors.
The claimants include banks,
tire companies, lumber
companies, auto repair shops and
United Farmers of Alberta
($15,000 claim).
In his early 20s, Truman Oler
started to push for better wages
after he learned what other
forestry workers in the area
were paid. Eventually, the wage
was raised to $15 an hour —
still lower than the going rate
in the industry. FLDS bosses
justified the low pay, says
Oler, by pointing out that they
provided free room and board,
and promised to buy vehicles for
the workers — which didn’t
always happen.
Jim Oler, of Oler Bros.,
could not be reached for
comment.
Winston Blackmore would say
that low wages allowed everyone
to have a job. In a 2006
documentary he said: “We
compromised on wages — even I
did. But why we compromised on
wages is that everyone was
employed.”
Truman Oler had no thought
about taking his complaint to
provincial labour authorities.
But word of the substandard
working conditions and
undocumented American workers
did finally leak out.
Nancy Mereska lives near Two
Hills east of Edmonton. She left
the mainstream Mormon church in
1985 and went to university for
a degree in psychology and
women’s studies.
In 2003, she saw a television
documentary on polygamy in
Bountiful. Troubled by what she
saw, she started a small
advocacy organization, Stop
Polygamy Canada.
In the spring of 2004,
Mereska learned of working
conditions at the FLDS
operations around Sundre. From
reports she received, it sounded
little better than a slave
labour camp, she said in an
interview — young men working
for little pay, with little
training, on dangerous equipment
in a dangerous industry — and no
way out.
To Mereska, that was
unacceptable in Alberta where
labour standards were in place
to protect workers, especially
young people, from unfair
practices. So she wrote to then
employment minister Clint
Dunford, asking for an
investigation.
The letter she got back in
September 2004 was a big
disappointment, she says. The
department declined to
investigate because she provided
no specific evidence of safety
violations. The letter also
noted Alberta labour law allows
teens at age 15 to work in
logging though it is deemed one
of the more dangerous
occupations.
The letter also appeared to
justify any wages below minimum
wage as if the FLDS company was
a family business.
“Alberta’s employment
standards do not prohibit a
father from paying his sons a
stipend rather than a wage,”
noted the letter from civil
servant Walter Baer, then
director of compliance for
workplace health and safety and
employment standards.
“I phoned Baer’s office, got
his voice mail and said: ‘What
if a man has 50 sons?’
“He did not return my call.”
“I was furious,” said
Mereska. “I knew the terrible
conditions under which these
kids were working and no one
would do anything about it.”
In 2005, a year later, Oler
Bros. Contracting turns up for
the first time in provincial
occupational health and safety
records. The record shows Oler
Bros. had implemented a
government-audited safety
program and it was in place in
2005-07.
“This means someone must have
visited the site,” said Janice
Schroeder, communications
officer for Alberta Employment
and Immigration.
The records also show two
reported injuries, one in 2006
and one in 2008, the year the
work crew officially dropped to
22 people.
Mereska’s 2004 complaint
about low wages was likely not
pursued because it was not
specific, said Schroeder.
Under provincial labour
standards, only family farms are
exempt from minimum wage
requirements. The exemption does
not apply to sawmills, she
added.
In 2009, another concerned
citizen raised a red flag. Sandy
McIntosh, an Edmonton-based
specialist in occupation health
and safety, also raised
questions about possible
violations of labour standards
in the FLDS company. The case of
Teressa Wall, working there at
14, is particularly disturbing,
he said.
She worked with hazardous
machinery in a long dress
without proper weather
protection, according to her
testimony. Yet safety
regulations require workers to
wear hard-toed boots, a hard
hat, gloves and overalls, he
said.
“Young people were there
working for nothing, some were
sent from U.S.,” said McIntosh
in an interview. “How did they
get across the border?”
“Why do we let one group
break the rules so easily?”
For the province to treat
this business as if it was a
family farm is inappropriate, he
added. “It is an industrial
operation.”
It’s pretty clear the money
made in Alberta went to support
polygamous communities in the
B.C. and U.S., McIntosh added.
“Alberta was in the chain and
we don’t want to acknowledge it.
It’s happening in our society,
we should have an open
discussion about it.”
It’s late August and a busy
Tuesday night in the cosy
restaurant in the old Sundre
Hotel. The specials on offer, a
steak sandwich or sweet and sour
pork, are in big demand. The
kitchen serves up a very tasty
bowl of steaming wonton soup.
Seated at the counter, Dennis
Herbert tucks into a plate of
fried chicken and fries, gravy
on the side. Born and raised in
this small town, he’s over 60
and still driving truck.
He remembers when the
Bountiful people started to show
up. A few lived in the trailer
court on the north side of town.
“Some lived behind me in the
trailer park. They didn’t seem
to be any trouble, just
different,” said Herbert.
The women in their long
dresses were noticeable walking
into town from the work site
near McDougall Flats, five
kilometres west of town, he
said. Sometimes they had young
children with them.
The town settled into a “live
and let live” attitude with the
small, hard-working group of
FLDS people. The newcomers were
polite, kept to themselves.
Their small business all seemed
temporary. If anybody had
concerns, it seems, they kept
them to themselves.
Myron Thompson, a town
councillor in Sundre, was a
Reform MP when Bountiful people
moved in. There wasn’t too much
talk about them, he said.
“No one came to me with any
concerns,” Thompson added.
Besides, in his view, any issues
that might arise would be “left
to provincial authorities.”
The FLDS site was located in
the County of Mountain View, but
the county had little to do with
it, says former councillor
Gerald Ingeveld. The company
took an existing business so the
county had no reason to get
involved, he said.
There was no sign the small
group was trying to set up a
bigger community, he said, it
was just a few people living in
old trailers. “It didn’t look
like a long-term operation,” he
added.
Besides, there is freedom of
movement in Canada, he added, so
what could anyone do if the FLDS
workers moved into Alberta to do
business, he added.
“We do have laws about how
young brides can be, but we saw
no evidence of those issues
here,” said Ingeveld.
While the sprawling rural
county is a bit of a Bible belt,
it has also seen its share of
folks with different beliefs, he
said. There is a nudist colony,
and years ago, there were
cross-burning racists in
Caroline, he added.
And the Moonies once made a
brief appearance.
Al Kemmere was reeve of
Mountain View County in 2004. He
lives about 45 kilometres from
Sundre.
The county doesn’t regulate
workers’ wages or health and
safety conditions, so it would
not have thought to investigate
working conditions, he added.
That is a provincial
responsibility.
“I think the community saw
them being there on a temporary
basis and that was the basis of
their passive approach.
“If their beliefs were
breaking the law, then there are
mechanisms of society to look
after that.”
University of Alberta
professor Steve Kent, an expert
in cults, says there’s no easy
way for a community to deal with
a church like FLDS that arrives
on its doorstep, especially if
its members are well behaved.
“It didn’t seem there were
any public issues with the FLDS
people and, absent those issues,
it’s difficult to know what a
local community could do,” said
Kent, who also testified at the
B.C court reference last spring.
It’s not the job of a county
or town council to enforce
criminal laws, said Kent.
The provincial government,
however, should have kept a
closer eye, given the reports of
poor working conditions and low
pay, he said.
“It’s very clear the
government has a responsibility
to monitor labour conditions
including proper payment for a
day’s work.”
“The province let these young
people down,” said Kent.
In some countries,
governments take a more active
role in monitoring cults, says
Kent. But in Canada, it’s left
up to private groups like Stop
Polygamy Canada.
Truman Oler was still working
in Sundre, in his early 20s,
when he started to think about
leaving the church. He was tired
of low pay, of having no place
of his own, no possessions and
no time for anything much but
work — tired of coming up with
$1,000 a month in tithes to then
bishop Warren Jeffs. (His mother
often subsidized his tithes.)
In 2002, he quietly stopped
paying his tithes. His brother
noticed and threatened to fire
him unless he started paying
again. “I just said I didn’t
need the church any more,” said
Oler.
“If you leave, you go with
nothing but the shirt on your
back,” he said. “And you are
told that you’ll never see your
family again.”
Oler rejects the term “lost
boys” — that’s what the FLDS
likes to think of those who
leave the church.
Still, adjusting to life
outside is not easy, says Oler.
That is backed up by evidence
presented by Timothy Dunfield, a
University of Alberta doctoral
student. In his affidavit to the
B.C. court, Dunfield described
the impact of polygamy on young
men.
To reduce the competition for
teenage brides, young men are
forced out. Or they have to
follow a complex rules to
qualify to get a wife, and in
the end, it’s a “political
decision” whether they are
deemed worthy.
After years of
indoctrination, the young men
“are ill-equipped” for life on
the outside, according to his
evidence. They have to learn how
to make decisions, handle money,
make friends or find employment.
Cut off from the emotional and
financial support of their
families, they often end up in
poverty and isolated.
U.S. authorities estimate
about 1,000 young men, some as
young as 13, have been expelled
from FLDS communities south of
the border, according to
Dunfield’s brief.
Oler has moved on, built a
new life, taken training as a
heavy-duty mechanic.
But his battle with the
church goes on.
Winston Blackmore is being
sued for tax evasion. He is
trying to get former employees
like Oler to pay part of the
back taxes. (Oler already paid
back taxes on his earnings.)
Although the Oler mill site
has been sold to another
company, Oler also says he is
sure other FLDS companies are
still operating in Alberta.
Occasionally, Oler goes back
to Bountiful to visit his
mother, but it’s painful.
“If I show up she will come
out of the house to talk to me,
but I am not welcomed into the
house,” Oler wrote in his court
evidence.
“I dream of going down to the
place where I was raised and
made to feel welcome and treated
like a family member and not
some stranger who has been
caught stealing something. Maybe
some day things will change.”
(AP) SCRANTON, Pa. — A former judge who orchestrated a massive
kickback scheme involving for-profit youth detention centers was
sentenced Friday to 17 1/2 years in federal prison, closing a major
chapter on a scandal that prosecutors said shook Pennsylvania's
judicial system "to its very foundation."
Appearing in a federal courtroom in Scranton, former Luzerne County
President Judge Michael Conahan, 59, apologized to the incarcerated
youths, the legal community and the public for his role in the
notorious "kids for cash" case.
"The system is not corrupt," said Conahan. "I was corrupt."
Conahan, a once-powerful man who regularly met for breakfast with
the reputed boss of a northeastern Pennsylvania Mafia family,
offered a direct apology to the children who spent time in a pair of
youth lockups from which he and another former judge derived
millions of dollars.
"My actions undermined your faith in the system and contributed to
the difficulty in your lives," said Conahan, who pleaded guilty to
racketeering conspiracy last year. "I am sorry you were victimized."
Federal prosecutors said Conahan and former Luzerne County Judge
Mark Ciavarella Jr. took more than $2 million in bribes from the
builder of the PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care detention
centers and extorted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the
facilities' co-owner.
Ciavarella took the case to trial and was convicted of some of the
charges. He was sentenced last month to 28 years in prison.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned about 4,000 juvenile
convictions after Ciavarella and Conahan were charged, saying that
Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, routinely trampled on
youths' constitutional rights in his eagerness to send them to the
for-profit jails.
Unlike Ciavarella, who denied jailing youths for money and defiantly
attacked the government's case at his sentencing, Conahan accepted
responsibility, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Houser acknowledged
Friday. But he said Conahan's crimes required a stiff sentence.
"Mr. Conahan abused his power to enrich himself and his friend, Mark
Ciavarella," Houser said. "The justice system in Pennsylvania was
shaken to its very foundation."
Ciavarella and Conahan initially pleaded guilty in February 2009 to
honest services fraud and tax evasion in a deal that would have
required them to spend more than seven years in prison. But their
plea deals were rejected later that year by U.S. District Judge
Edwin M. Kosik, who ruled they had failed to accept responsibility
for their actions.
Conahan's attorney, Philip Gelso, told Kosik on Friday that his
client was a changed man from two years ago.
Conahan got counseling from a psychologist who helped him face his
repressed "lifelong demons," many of them having to do with his
father, a funeral director and former mayor of Hazleton, Pa., who
dominated his son and made him feel insecure, incompetent and
inadequate, Gelso said.
Gelso recounted an episode in which a teenage Conahan was "beaten
mercilessly" when he failed to tend to the funeral home's coal
stove.
"These factors excuse nothing, but they explain a great deal," Gelso
said.
Conahan, who had faced up to 20 years behind bars, had requested a
prison term similar to the seven-plus years Kosik rejected two years
ago. Gelso said outside the court that Conahan was "bitterly
disappointed" by the 17 1/2-year sentence but that it would not be
appealed.
"There's a stark contract between Mark Ciavarella and Mike Conahan.
Mark Ciavarella fought this tooth and nail. Mark Ciavarella
antagonized all of you, antagonized every child, every juvenile,"
Gelso told reporters. "But Mike Conahan didn't do that. Mike Conahan
realized that people need to heal."
In sentencing Conahan, Kosik spoke of the deep-rooted political
culture that produced him, one in which corruption is tacitly
accepted. The federal government's four-year investigation of public
corruption in Luzerne and Lackawanna counties has snared more than
30 people, including state lawmakers, county officials, school board
members and others.
In a letter to Kosik, Conahan's sister recalled their father,
dealing with a long-ago ethics investigation, couldn't understand
why it was wrong to award a contract to a friend. Kosik said Conahan
probably felt the same way about the juvenile-center kickbacks:
"That everyone would benefit and no one would get hurt."
Investigators disclosed earlier this year that they were led to the
judges by reputed mob boss William D'Elia, who became a government
informant after his 2006 arrest on charges of witness tampering and
conspiracy to launder drug money. He and Conahan regularly met for
breakfast.
Kosik recommended that Conahan be placed in a federal prison camp in
Florida so he can be close to his family.
Single-sex education is ineffective, misguided and may
actually increase gender stereotyping, a paper to be published
Friday asserts.
The report, “The Pseudoscience of Single Sex Schooling,” to
be published in Science magazine by eight social scientists who
are founders of the nonprofit
American Council for CoEducational Schooling, is likely to
ignite a new round of debate and legal wrangling about the
effects of single-sex education.
It asserts that “sex-segregated education is deeply misguided
and often justified by weak, cherry-picked or misconstrued
scientific claims rather than by valid scientific evidence.”
But the strongest argument against single-sex education, the
article said, is that it reduces boys’ and girls’ opportunities
to work together, and reinforces sex stereotypes. “Boys who
spend more time with other boys become increasingly aggressive,”
the article said. “Similarly, girls who spend more time with
other girls become more sex-typed.”
The authors are psychologists and neuroscientists from
several universities who have researched and written on sex
differences and sex roles. The Science article is not based on
new research, but rather is a review of existing research and
writing.
The lead author, Diane F. Halpern, is a past president of the
American Psychological Association who holds a
chair in psychology at Claremont McKenna College in
California. She is an expert witness in litigation in which the
American Civil Liberties Union is challenging single-sex classes
— which have been suspended — at a school in Vermilion Parish,
La.
Arguing that no scientific evidence supports the idea that
single-sex schooling results in better academic outcomes, the
article calls on the Education Department to rescind its 2006
regulations weakening the Title IX prohibition against sex
discrimination in education. Under those rules, single-sex
classes may be permitted as long as they are voluntary, students
have a substantially equal coeducational option and the school
reasonably believes separation will produce better academic
outcomes.
Russlynn H. Ali, the assistant secretary for civil rights at
the Education Department, said it was reviewing the research.
“There are case studies that have been done that show some
benefit of single-sex, but like lots of other educational
research, it’s mixed,” she said. “When you’re talking about
separating students, treating them differently, you want to do
it in a way that’s constitutional, and you want to make sure
that there is adequate justification. We certainly want to
safeguard against stereotyping.”
The article comes at a time when single-sex education is on
the rise. There were only two single-sex public schools in the
mid-1990s; today, there are more than 500 public schools in 40
states that offer some single-sex academic classes or, more
rarely, are entirely single sex.
Many of them began separating the sexes because of a belief
that boys and girls should be taught differently that grew out
of popular books, speeches and workshops by Michael Gurian,
Leonard Sax and others.
Dr. Sax, executive director of the
National Association of Single Sex Public Education, was
singled out for criticism in the Science article, for his
teachings that boys respond better to energetic, confrontational
classrooms while girls need a gentler touch.
“A loud, cold classroom where you toss balls around, like Dr.
Sax thinks boys should have, might be great for some boys, and
for some girls, but for some boys, it would be living hell,” Dr.
Halpern said in an interview. She said that while girls are
better readers and get better grades, and boys are more likely
to have reading disabilities, that does not mean that educators
should use the group average to design different classrooms.
“It’s simply not true that boys and girls learn differently,”
she said. “Advocates for single-sex education don’t like the
parallel with racial segregation, but the parallels are there.
We used to believe that the races learned differently, too.”
Dr. Sax criticized the article on many counts, and said it
did not fairly reflect his current views. He vehemently rejected
the comparison to racial segregation, and the use of the term
“sex segregation.” Legally, race is a suspect category, while
sex is not.
“We are not asserting that every child should be in a
single-sex classroom, we are simply saying that there should be
a choice,” Dr. Sax said in an interview.
The authors of the article, though, say that because there is
no good scientific research backing such a choice, the
government cannot lawfully offer single-sex education in public
schools.
The article cites a review commissioned by the Education
Department, comparing single-sex and coed outcomes, concluding
that, “as in previous reviews,” the results are equivocal.
The article also said that research in other countries, and
data from the
Program for International Student Assessment, also found
little overall difference between single-sex and coed academic
outcomes.
While some studies have found better outcomes from single-sex
schools, the article said, the purported advantages disappear
when outcomes are corrected for pre-existing differences. For
example, Chicago’s Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men, a
school whose high college admissions rates were praised this
year by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, was subsequently
criticized by the scholar Diane Ravitch as having test results
that were actually lower than average on basic skills.
“This is very much a live issue, and I think it’s
snowballing,” said Galen Sherwin, a staff lawyer for the Women’s
Rights Project of the A.C.L.U., who is handling the Louisiana
case. “I see news stories every single week about new proposals,
usually based on the idea that boys and girls learn differently.
Often it’s people who have attended training programs by Sax or
Gurian, saying these programs will cater to boys’ and girls’
specific learning styles.”
Much of the impetus for single-sex public schooling came
from popular books like Mary Pipher’s “Reviving Ophelia” and,
especially, a 1992 report by the American Association of
University Women, “How Schools Shortchange Girls.” But by 1998,
when the association issued another report, saying that
single-sex schooling was not the solution to problems of gender
equity, the pendulum had swung, with boys’ difficulties in
school receiving more attention, in part because of books like
Dr. Sax’s “Why Gender Matters” and Mr. Gurian’s “The Wonder of
Boys.”
Boot Camp aims to scare children straight--The Toledo
Journal--09/16/2011
Mr. Mahone said that although the camp has
had many success stories and opened a chapter in Chicago, Ill., the
local juvenile court system refuses to work with him and recognize
his program. A couple of judges claim the program doesn’t work, he
said.
And when people call the courts looking for a scared straight
program, the courts don’t recommend his program.
Updated: Monday, 12 Sep 2011, 6:48 PM
EDT
Published : Monday, 12 Sep 2011, 9:50 AM EDT
By Ken Kolker
HASTINGS, Mich. (WOOD) - When Michael Terpening
walked in to a preliminary hearing on Monday, he was
faced with 11 counts of sexual assault. Before he
walked out, he was bound to stand trial for 12
assaults.
News of the 12th assault came after the
judge cleared the courtroom on Monday.
Terpening, 32, was in court to face a preliminary
hearing on charges involving males in their mid- to
late teens while he was operating Earth Services and
The House Next Door -- Barry County programs for
troubled teens. He allegedly assaulted four of his
young male clients.
The courtroom behind Terpening, who is currently
free on bond, was packed with supporters just before
Monday's hearing who insist that the four alleged
victims are lying.
"Anybody would love to have Mike for a son.
Absolutely love Mike," said Liz Smith, Terpening's
great aunt.
One supporter, who says she spoke to the suspect
last night, says she braced herself for the
allegations.
"He said what they have charged is really ugly.
He said it's going to be embarrasing," said Linda
Timmons, a friend of Terpening. "The people who are
persecuting him are people who are of poor
character," she added.
Barry County Prosecutor Tom Evans says he
believes Terpening's supporters had another purpose
-- intimidation.
"The presence of the people here; It's certainly
a case of might beats right, okay. We'll bring in
our three out-of-town attorneys, we'll bring in all
our buddies, and we'll just run right over these
kids, and we'll run right over this little
prosecutor's office," said Evans. "There may be
turnip trucks here, but I didn't just fall off of
one."
Then, Judge Michael Schippers closed the
courtroom to the public, agreeing with prosecutors
and the defense that the testimony was too
embarrasing for the victims.
"This is insulting; this is downright insulting,"
said Smith of the public's ejection from the
courtroom.
The prosecutor told 24 Hour News 8 that police
have placed one victim into protective custody. He
was among those expected to testify on Monday.
A former worker at Terpening's home, Jamie
Moore-Bell, says she has had contact with that
victim:
"He fully admitted that these were lies, that
this did not happen, and he wanted to make this
right," said Moore-Bell. "The state police were
saying that that's coercion; I coerced him into
making these statements."
The father of one of the victims, who says his
son was assaulted by Terpening, spoke with 24 Hour
News 8. The father of the victim was angry that the
courtroom was closed. When asked by 24 Hour News 8
if he wanted to be present in the court to protect
his son, he agreed enthusiastically:
"You're damn straight. Nobody else could protect
my son when they were up here," said the father.
The father of the victim says he drove his
16-year-old son from Indiana to the courthouse on
Monday at the prosecutor's request.
"I don't know if he's in the courtroom right now
or not. As far as I know, he's in there talking to
the prosescutor. They're not going to talk to my son
that way," he said.
He says police recently approached him about
Terpening. That's when his son said the man had
touched him about four or five years ago.
"Touched him in some wrongful places," he said.
The father of the victim says his son was about
12 years old at the time.
Supporters of Terpening insist that witnesses are
lying. But prosecutors say some of the victims were
at the home at different times.
"Some of them have never met before," said Evans.
The father of the victim says his son isn't
making it up: "I want justice for the other
children."
HASTINGS, Mich. (WOOD) - A former youth home
director accused of molesting four clients will get
no more time with his own eight children, despite
his attorney's suggestion that the alleged sex crime
victims -- all troubled teens -- have reasons to
make up the allegations.
Michael Terpening, 32,
had asked a judge to allow him to spend time with
his children at the family's home. That request was
denied on Tuesday.
Now, he can see them only through the Department
of Human Services.
"We have allegations from 17-, 18- or
19-year-olds who have been through the system... who
have a variety of motivations for what they're
testifying to," Terpening's attorney, J. Thomas
Schaeffer, told the judge Tuesday.
The children's attorney, who says he's read
police reports about the alleged sexual assaults,
fought against more visitation time for the father.
"I resent the accusations that these individuals,
just because they're convicted felons... that their
word is no good," attorney James M. Kinney said.
"They can be victims, too."
Terpening, who ran Earth Services and The House
Next Door -- a Barry County program for troubled
teens -- is charged with 11 counts of sexual assault
involving four former clients, all males in their
late teens.
Police say more charges might be on the way
involving a fifth alleged victim.
None of the charges involve Terpening's own
children.
The children's attorney said he believes
Terpening has built himself up as a man who can be
trusted, to make it easier to find victims.
"When I look at this what I see is a man who is
grooming these children. This is a trick; this is
their game. This is their way about being open and
being sneaky and getting more access to your child."
About 10 supporters sat behind Terpening and his
wife, Amanda, in the courtroom. They included
friends, a former youth home worker and a former
youth home volunteer.
The state has filed a neglect petition to
terminate Michael Terpening's parental rights. The
children are staying with his wife, their mother.
A DHS prosecutor and two attorneys for the
children argued against Terpening's request for more
time with his children.
They criticized supporters who have created an
online petition and a YouTube video, showing some of
the children, on the father's behalf.
"We have Mr. Terpening orchestrating a public
display of alleged innocence," Kinney said. "He's
exploiting his children, as is his wife, by allowing
their pictures to be put on YouTube videos and
broadcast to the world."
Former Baptist Church Member Ernest Willis
Sentenced to Prison for Rape of Teen Parishioner
Tina Anderson Was Made to Apologize in Church for
Pregnancy Resulting From Rape
By SUZAN CLARKE and ALICE GOMSTYN
Sept. 6, 2011 —
A New Hampshire judge today sentenced former Baptist church
member
Ernest Willis to 15 to 30 years in prison for the forcible
rape of a teenage girl from his church who got pregnant as a
result.
The case made national headlines because the victim,
Tina Anderson, said she was forced to confess her "sin" --
the pregnancy -- in front of the congregation at Trinity Baptist
Church, an Independent Fundamental Baptist Church (IFB) in
Concord, N.H.
The church's then-pastor, Chuck Phelps, helped arrange for
Anderson to move thousands of miles away from home to live with
an IFB family and give her child up for adoption.
Today, it was Willis' turn to apologize before he was
sentenced.
Victim 'Thrilled' By Sentence
Ernest Willis, 52, of Gilford said he was "sorry and ashamed
for this thoughtless act of sexual misconduct." But in his
lengthy statement he did not admit he forcibly raped the girl.
Listening by telephone from Arizona, Anderson, now 29, said
she was "thrilled" with the sentence.
"It's a huge amount of vindication for me," she told The
Associated Press. "I was never really believed, no matter how
many times I said it was not consensual. Now it's been proven in
a court of law that he's guilty and he's been given a
significant sentence."
Willis was arrested in 2010. A jury convicted him in May of
three counts of forcible rape and a count of felonious sexual
assault. His lawyers say he will appeal those convictions.
Before his trial in May, Willis pleaded guilty to one count
of statutory rape. He maintained they had consensual sex on one
occasion only, but acknowledged the girl was under the legal age
of consent.
Willis remained stoic as the judge sent him to prison for a
minimum of 15 years.
In an April interview with
ABC News'
"20/20," Anderson said that after she was sexually assaulted
by Willis, she was forced to stand before her Baptist
congregation and confess her "sin" -- that she had become
pregnant. She said she wasn't allowed to tell the group that the
pregnancy happened because she was raped by Willis, a man twice
her age.
"I still struggle, because I've been made to feel guilty for
so long," she said.
At the age of 14, Anderson was hired as a babysitter for the
Willis family. She said the first assault occurred in the
backseat of a car during a driving lesson. Anderson said Willis
pulled her into the back of the car and raped her.
According to Anderson, the second assault occurred at her
home when Willis showed up unannounced.
"He locked the door behind him and pushed me over to the
couch. I had a dress on and he pulled it off. I pushed my hands
against his shoulders and said 'No,' but he didn't stop,"
Anderson said.
Anderson told "20/20" that she confided her pregnancy to
Willis. His reaction, she said, was to offer to pay for an
abortion. When she rejected his offer, he presented another
option, she said.
"He asked me if I wanted him to punch me in the stomach as
hard as he could to try to cause a miscarriage," she said. "I
told him, 'No, leave me alone.'"
The teen babysat Willis's children and considered him a
father figure, a prosecutor said.
"Her trust and admiration were repaid with violence and
rape," prosecutor Wayne Coull told Merrimack Superior Court
Judge Larry Smukler.
Coull said the most aggravating factor of all was Willis's
offer to cause a miscarriage.
"For the defendant to be so cruel and selfish as to recommend
such actions upon a child is just outrageous," Coull added.
Anderson gave birth to a baby girl in 1998. The child was
given up for adoption.
Anderson has since married and had three other children.
Phelps, the pastor who arranged for Anderson to move and give
up her baby for adoption, told "20/20" that Anderson voluntarily
stood before the congregation in 1997, that he reported Willis
to the Concord Police and complied with all legal requirements
of him at the time.
During the trial in May, Christine Leaf, Anderson's mother,
testified that she did not support her daughter's allegations,
saying, "I only support the truth, not a lie."
SALT LAKE CITY (CN) - Hundreds
of parents claim a group of boarding schools tortured
their children: locked them in dog cages, forced them to
lie in feces and eat vomit, masturbated them and denied
the troubled teens any religion "except for the Mormon
faith."
The Utah-based World Wide Association Of Specialty
Programs and Schools and its owners - Robert Lichfield,
Brent Facer and Ken Kay - went to great lengths to hide
the "torture," which began in the mid-1990s and
continued for a decade, the 357 plaintiffs claim in Salt
Lake County Court.
The plaintiffs say that 59 schools and owners tied
to the company "jointly promoted, advertised, and
marketed defendants' residential boarding schools as a
place where children with problems could get an
education while receiving instruction and direction in
behavior modification for emotional growth and personal
development."
But they say the children were subjected to
physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the schools
including, Cross Creek Center for Boys, Brightway
Adolescent Hospital and Red Rock Springs. They say the
abuses inflicted upon some children for years "could be
accurately described as torture."
According to the complaint, students were locked in
boxes, cages and basements at the schools, denied
medical and dental care, and forced "to carry heavy bags
of sand around their necks or logs throughout the day
over many days."
They were sexually abused, "which included forced
sexual relations and acts of fondling and masturbation
performed on them," according to the 119-page complaint.
Students were "forced to eat their own vomit ...
bound and tied by hands and/or feet ... chained and
locked in dog cages ... forced to lie in, or wear, urine
and feces ... forced to sleep on cold concrete floors,
boxspring, or plywood," and put to forced labor, the
complaint states.
Children were "kicked, beaten, thrown and slammed
to the ground ... forced to eat raw or rotten food ...
poked and prodded with various objects while being strip
searched ... denied any religious affiliation, except
for the Mormon faith ... [and] threatened [with] severe
punishment, including death, if they told anyone of
their abuses and poor living conditions," according to
the complaint.
Their mail was confiscated, and personal visits and
telephone calls were forbidden or discouraged, the
parents say.
"At all times relevant, defendants did not disclose
to the parents the physical, emotional, mental, and/or
sexual abuse to which their children were subjected at
their facilities and conspired, even to this day, to
prevent them from discovering such abuse," the complaint
states.
The defendant company still operates residential
centers in Utah, South Carolina and Costa Rica, but has
faced school shutdowns in Mexico, Jamaica and Samoa amid
child abuse investigations, according to the complaint.
It says that more than 2,100 students were enrolled in
its schools in 2003.
The plaintiffs filed a similar lawsuit in Federal
Court in 2006, which U.S. District Court Judge Clark
Waddoups dismissed in August for lack of
jurisdiction.The parents seek punitive damages for
fraud, gross negligence, false imprisonment, assault and
battery, and breach of contract, and a protective order
to prevent spoliation of evidence.
They are represented by Windle Turley of Dallas,
Texas and James McConkie II with Parker & McConkie of
Salt Lake.
Troubled teens abused at Utah-based schools, lawsuit claims
By Roxana Orellana
The Salt Lake Tribune
Published: September 2, 2011 10:40PM
Updated: September 2, 2011 11:26PM
After their case was dismissed last
month in federal court, a group of about 500 parents and students
have gone to state court with allegations of abuse by the operators
of a Utah-based school for troubled teens.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in 3rd District
Court, claims that from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s, students
attending schools owned and operated by World Wide Association of
Specialty Programs and Schools Inc., (WWASPS) — founded by La Verkin
entrepreneur Robert Lichfield — were physically, emotionally and
sexually abused at the facilities.
WWASPS is accused of a lengthy list of
abuses, including that students were beaten, chained, locked in dog
cages, forced to eat vomit and made to lie in urine and feces as
punishment. The complaint also alleges students were forced into
sexual acts.
“At all times relevant, defendants did not
disclose to the parents the physical, emotional, mental, and/or
sexual abuse to which their children were subjected at their
facilities and conspired, even to this day, to prevent them from
discovering such abuse,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit lists a total of 59 defendants,
including Cross Creek Center for Boys LLC., Cross Creek Manor LLC.,
Teen Help LLC and Brightway Adolescent Hospital. The facilities
mentioned in the lawsuit — a number of which are now closed — are
located throughout the United States, as well as Mexico, Costa Rica
and the Czech Republic.
The defendants are also accused of
defrauding parents of tuition and other monies paid.
The lawsuit was first filed in U.S.
District Court in 2006, but Judge Clark Waddoups dismissed it in
August, citing a lack of jurisdiction in August.
Windle Turley, a Dallas attorney
representing the plaintiffs, said Waddoups dismissed the case on
jurisdictional grounds because of the way the case was structured,
not on the merits of the case.
“We had hoped we could continue to move
forward in the federal court. But we’re just glad were going to be
able to move forward now,” Turley said.
Asked about criminal charges, Turley had
details only in connection with a case filed in Costa Rica against
school director Narvin Lichfield, who is Robert Lichfield’s brother,
for alleged sexual abuse. Turley said those charges were ultimately
dismissed.
The plaintiffs are seeking an unspecified
amount of damages, including punitive damages, to be determined at
trial. A racketeering claim was dropped from the lawsuit filed
federal court but may be added to the state lawsuit, Turley said.
Attorney Stewart Harman, who represented
Lichfield and Ken Kay, WWASPS’ president, in the federal lawsuit,
said “the reasons for dismissal are clearly and adequately laid out
and set forth in Judge Waddoups’ decision.”
Kay has previously denied the lawsuit’s
allegations as “ludicrous.”
“We don’t condone any type of child abuse
and it’s highly unlikely that any of the incidents ever happened,”
Kay said in 2007, noting that troubled teens often have a record of
fabricating stories.
Hephzibah House, the embattled private faith-based Winona
Lake boarding school for troubled teenage girls, will be
featured on CNN tonight as part of an ongoing series on
child discipline and religion called “Ungodly Discipline.”
The school, which is affiliated with Believer’s Baptist
Church, will be discussed on reporter Anderson Cooper’s
popular news talk show, “Anderson Cooper 360” at 8 p.m.,
according to one woman interviewed for the story. A crew
from the show interviewed former students on their concerns
of unorthodox discipline inside the not-for-profit school.
Hephzibah House founder and pastor Ron Williams was also
interviewed for the story, the Times-Union has learned.
A call to Hephzibah House seeking comment was not returned.
“I am very excited that CNN is taking this issue public and
I believe this is another opportunity to bring awareness to
the horrific abuse that we endured at Hephzibah House,” said
Jennifer Singleton, a former Hephzibah House student now
living in Virginia. “I am hoping this gets us one more step
closer to closing down Hephzibah House once and for all.”
Hephzibah House has long faced allegations from protesters
that accuse the boarding school of abusing their students,
often through excessive and unusual techniques. None have
been proven.
A local task force designed to look into the claims was
launched in 2008 by Warsaw Police Department Victim’s
Advocate Becky Anglin, but it phased out after the group
“couldn’t get anyone with any power to do anything,” she
said. Anglin said the task force received substantial
support from the community, but none from elected officials,
and the force fizzled out as a result.
Hephzibah House and schools like it were also the topic of
state and federal laws drafted to more closely monitor
schools like Hephzibah and have had varying results.
The Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act
of 2009 was passed into legislation, requiring both public
and private programs to meet minimum standards of student
care. State bill HR 6358, drafted in 2008 to call for more
public accountability and place schools like Hephzibah House
under its jurisdiction, died in the State Senate.
Numerous former students of Hephzibah House, who call
themselves “survivors,” have protested on city streets
several times against the school.
BUNKER HILL — Miami County officials are investigating a
therapeutic horse farm after a group found one horse dead and
removed another that later died.
The Miami County Animal Shelter has turned over details to the
sheriff’s department in an investigation of the horses’ home, Full
Quiver Farms Equine Mentoring Ministry in Bunker Hill, said Susan
Kulla, head of the animal shelter. The farm has used horses to
provide therapy to troubled teens.
A group of horse enthusiasts began contacting county agencies after
they found a dead horse, which had been partially eaten by pigs, and
a second in near-death condition Sunday, said Nicole Emigh, one of
the people who helped remove the horses from the farm.
“It was in a stall with urine and manure, very hot ... no hay,
nothing but a concrete floor, manure and that’s it,” she said.
The horse, nicknamed Tuff, was unable to walk after about a day with
its new owners, Emigh said.
The Galveston Fire Department provided equipment to help lift the
horse and veterinarians provided care, but Tuff died Monday, she
said.
Miami County Sheriff’s Deputy Casey Bailey said he is working with
the animal shelter on the investigation, but he offered no further
details.
Full Quiver Farms owner Leanna Sharp said the horses had been having
ongoing health issues.
“I did everything in my capacity to make them well, and it was not
getting anywhere,” she said. “So I called someone for help.”
Sharp said Tuesday she was unaware the second horse had died.
Asked about the horse found dead Sunday, Sharp declined to comment
and would not speak further about the matter.
Emigh said she and the group she was with also searched for two
horses that were supposed to be in the pasture, but no one could
find the animals.
She asked people who notice animals in poor condition to contact
authorities.
“I just want to express how important it is for people to report
this to the humane society,” she said. “If something’s not done the
first time, report it again.”
A jaw-dropping audit of
a privately run but public-funded program for troubled teens
has State Auditor Suzanne M. Bump planning to scrutinize
spending at every one of the 1,200 social service agencies
that together receive $2.3 billion a year in state funds.
“We’re looking at all the human service agencies,” Bump
told the Herald yesterday, hours after releasing a scathing
report accusing the Northeast Center for Youth and Families
Inc. in Easthampton of spending $406,360 in Massachusetts
monies on people from Connecticut. The report also claims
the agency overbilled Massachusetts $651,221 for its two
foster care programs.
“We want to ensure that other organizations aren’t using
state money to support their programs in other states,” Bump
said.
A Northeast Center official said the agency disagrees
with Bump’s report.
HASTINGS — The director of a private
youth home was charged Wednesday with
various sexual crimes involving several of
the troubled teens lodged at the residential
facility.
Michael Terpening, 32, of Bellevue, was
arraigned Wednesday in Barry County District
Court on nine felony counts of criminal
sexual conduct and aggravated indecent
exposure on multiple teen victims, according
to a news release from Michigan State
Police.
He was the director of Earth Services Youth
Home at 15485 Jenkins Road, in southeast
Barry County's Assyria Township.
Judge Michael Schippers set bond at
$250,000, according to the release.
Terpening was not in jail Thursday morning,
according to jail officials.
A Michigan State Police spokesperson who
declined to be identified said the case
unfolded after an older teen at the
residential facility for teens in trouble
complained of being victimized and other
alleged victims were discovered.
The incidents took place over several
months, he said, with all victims residents
of the home.
According to its website, Earth Services:
"is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.
The organization was originally founded
in 1998 as Educated Animal Rescue, E.A.R.
and then grew to become E.A.R.T.H.,
Educated Animal Rescue and Teen Haven.
As of today, it has become Earth
Services. Located in Lower Michigan,
amongst the trees and rolling farmland
of the rural Bellevue/Battle Creek area,
our facility reaches out to our
community and beyond, helping animals
find their perfect place!"
Posted on Sunday, 08.21.11 Activists address deaths of imprisoned Fla. teens
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PLANTATION, Fla. -- South Florida community leaders are
gathering today to discuss the deaths of two children
who died while imprisoned in Florida.
Southern Poverty Law Center and Stop Abusing Our Kids
will gather at a church in Plantation on Sunday and
offer their support for Gov. Rick Scott's vow to reduce
the number of children imprisoned.
Seventeen-year-old Demetrius L. Jordan died at the
Indian River County Correctional Institute earlier this
month Foul play is not suspected, but an autopsy will
determine the cause of death.
Authorities say a grand jury is looking into the July
10th death of Eric Perez at a West Palm Beach juvenile
detention center, hours after unsuccessfully seeking
medical care.
Parents were
told their daughters would sing,
pray, and ride horses. The girls
say what they got was closer to
torture.—Photos by
former residents of New Bethany
School for Girls; text by
Kathryn Joyce and Michael
Mechanic
The New Bethany School for
Girls no longer exists, at
least by that name. But it
was one of an unknown number
of homes for "troubled
teens" that cater to the
Independent Fundamental
Baptist community—a web of
thousands of autonomous
churches linked by doctrine,
overlapping leadership, and
affiliations with Bible
colleges like
Bob Jones University.
IFB churches emphasize
strict obedience and
consider teen rebellion an
invention of worldly
society, so families faced
with teenage drinking,
smoking, or truancy often
entrust their children to
such programs.
These
reform schools trace their
lineages to
Texas radio evangelist
Lester Roloff, who
founded the Rebekah Home for
Girls in Corpus Christi back
in 1967, employing
disciplinary tactics that
were adopted by dozens of
imitators. Roloff's wards
were subjected to days in
locked isolation rooms where
his sermons played in an
endless loop. They also
endured exhaustive corporal
punishment. "Better a pink
bottom than a black soul,"
he famously declared at a
1973 court hearing after he
was prosecuted by the state
of Texas on behalf of 16
Rebekah girls. (The attorney
general responded that he
was more concerned with
bottoms "that were blue,
black, and bloody.")
This slideshow features
snapshots posted on online
"survivor" forums by former
residents of New Bethany,
who confided with Mother
Jones contributor
Kathryn Joyce about
their treatment at the hands
of the home's authorities.
(One of the photos was
titled: "Hell.jpg".)As Joyce
reported in
her must-read magazine piece,
"Escape from Missouri,"
which appears online as "Horror
Stories From Tough-Love Teen
Homes," such stories are
common among former
residents of the Roloff-inspired
homes, which continue to
operate with near impunity
in states like Missouri,
Texas, and Louisiana. Among
other indignities, former
residents describe being
beaten, hazed, locked in
isolation, refused bathroom
privileges, and denied
contact with their loved
ones. The schools are
largely located on remote
rural compounds, which
discourages escape and helps
their operators avoid
scrutiny. "After a while, I
was so brainwashed I didn't
even want to run," one
survivor told Joyce. "I
figured this was God's
plan."
Pa. judge gets 28 years in 'kids for cash' case
August 11, 2011
(AP) PaSCRANTON, Pa. (AP) — A longtime northeastern Pennsylvania
judge was ordered to spend nearly three decades in prison for his
role in a massive juvenile justice bribery scandal that prompted the
state's high court to toss thousands of convictions.
Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. was sentenced
Thursday to 28 years in federal prison for taking $1 million in
bribes from the builder of a pair of juvenile detention centers in a
case that became known as "kids for cash."
Ciaverella, 61, was motionless when the decision was announced and
had no reaction. From behind him, where family members of some of
the children he sentenced sat, someone cried out "Woo hoo!"
In the wake of the scandal, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court tossed
about 4,000 convictions issued by Ciavarella between 2003 and 2008,
saying he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles,
including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently
enter a plea.
Ciavarella was tried and convicted of racketeering charges earlier
this year. His attorneys had asked for a "reasonable" sentence in
court papers, saying, in effect, that he's already been punished
enough.
"The media attention to this matter has exceeded coverage given to
many and almost all capital murders, and despite protestation, he
will forever be unjustly branded as the 'Kids for Cash' judge,"
their sentencing memo said.
Al Fora, Ciaverella's lawyer, called the sentence harsher than
expected. Ciaverella surrendered immediately but it was not
immediately known where he would serve his sentence.
Ciaverella, speaking before the sentence was handed down, apologized
to the community and to those juveniles that appeared before him in
his court.
"I blame no one but myself for what happened," he said, and then
denied he had ever incarcerated any juveniles in exchange for money.
He also criticized U.S. Assistant Attorney Gordon Zubrod for
referring to the case as "kids for cash," and said it sank his
reputation.
"He backdoored me, and I never saw it coming. Those three words made
me the personification of evil," Ciaverella said. "They made me
toxic and caused a public uproar the likes of which this community
has never seen."
Federal prosecutors accused Ciavarella and a second judge, Michael
Conahan, of taking more than $2 million in bribes from the builder
of the PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care detention centers and
extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the facilities'
co-owner.
Ciavarella, known for his harsh and autocratic courtroom demeanor,
filled the beds of the private lockups with children as young as 10,
many of them first-time offenders convicted of petty theft and other
minor crimes.
The judge remained defiant after his arrest, insisting the payments
were legal and denying he incarcerated youths for money.
The jury returned a mixed verdict following a February trial,
convicting him of 12 counts, including racketeering and conspiracy,
and acquitting him of 27 counts, including extortion. The guilty
verdicts related to a payment of $997,600 from the builder.
Conahan pleaded guilty last year and awaits sentencing.
The Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program is
the only program that has been cut during the ongoing
budget workshops.
Judge Mike Pfeiffer said the rest of $1.2 million
being sliced from the budget is coming out of department
budget requests.
County officials are still working on the final
budget, which isn't expected to be completed for a few
weeks, Pfeiffer said.
PORT LAVACA - Calhoun County officials, hoping to make up a
$1.2 million budget shortfall, are closing its juvenile boot
camp.
In the wake of the recession, Calhoun County has had to cut
about $4 million from its budget in the past two years.
This year, finding they once again needed to make significant
budget reductions, County Judge Mike Pfeiffer and the county
commissioners met with Calhoun school district Superintendent
Billy Wiggins two weeks ago to discuss closing the Juvenile
Justice Alternative Education Program. The court officially
decided to close it last week, Wiggins said.
The boot camp opened in January 1999 as a program for
students with recurring discipline problem and those in the
juvenile probation system, Pfeiffer said.
During the years, the juvenile court system has handled more
of these types of problems, Pfeiffer said.
This isn't the first time the boot camp program has wound up
on the chopping block; the camp was temporarily closed by the
Juvenile Probation Board in the summer of 2009 because the
county discussed cutting funding. The county continued funding
that year, reopening the program in October.
The county allotted $128,000 for the boot camp last year, and
only eight students were enrolled by the end of the school year,
Pfeiffer said. The program wasn't being used enough to keep it
open.
"We support the school district and the teachers, but there's
a point in time when it costs so much and you've got to look at
how much it's really being used," Pfeiffer said.
The boot camp is closed as of this week. Pfeiffer said the
county will save $128,000 by cutting the program.
The county is required by mandate to fund many programs.
Since county officials are not required to fund the boot camp,
the program was cut, Pfeiffer said.
With the boot camp closed, two drill sergeants will lose
their their jobs, Pfeiffer said. The teacher assigned to the
boot camp will be moved to either Hope High School or FLEX, the
two alternative programs in the district.
Students who expected to return to boot camp in the fall will
attend the FLEX campus, Wiggins said.
The only problem for the school district will be what to do
with the students who have done things that require mandatory
expulsion by the state. These students used to be sent to boot
camp, but they will now be expelled to the street. Wiggins said
they are looking for a place to send these students, but they
haven't found a solution yet.
Wiggins said he is sorry to see the program go, but noted it
is understandable, considering these economic times.
The school district went through its own cuts recently. The
district closed Point Comfort Elementary as part of its budget
cuts.
"It has been a good thing, but we certainly understand the
difficult economic times that we're all in, and we'll do
everything we can to absorb those kids back into the school
district," Wiggins said.
Ex-judge Ciavarella to be sentenced Aug. 11 in
kids-for-cash conspiracy
BY DAVE JANOSKI (PROJECTS EDITOR)Published: July 22,
2011
SCRANTON - Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., whose hard-nosed
zero-tolerance policy as a Luzerne County Juvenile Court
judge fueled a kids-for-cash conspiracy that generated
millions in kickbacks from a for-profit detention
center, will be on the other side of the bench Aug. 11
when a federal judge sentences him on racketeering and
other charges.
Ciavarella, 61, could get 15 or more years in prison
when he appears before U.S. District Judge Edwin M.
Kosik, who scheduled sentencing in an order issued
Thursday.
While a prison sentence is virtually a foregone
conclusion in Ciavarella's case, it is unclear when he
will actually begin serving his time.
Defendants like Ciavarella who are free on bail pending
sentencing are typically given several weeks before they
are required to report to a facility chosen by the U.S.
Bureau of Prisons.
And the former judge's attorneys will likely ask the
court to allow him to remain free on bail while he
pursues an appeal to the U.S. Third Circuit Court of
Appeals. Some of the groundwork for that appeal was laid
out in a letter written to Kosik by one of Ciavarella's
attorneys Thursday.
Ciavarella was found guilty of 12 counts in a 39-count
indictment by a jury in U.S. District Court in February.
His post-trial appeals were rejected by Kosik two months
ago, clearing the way for a pre-sentence investigation
conducted by federal probation officials to assist Kosik
in calculating a sentence.
Kosik must rule on several defense objections to the
probation officials' report before imposing a sentence.
Neither the report nor the objections have been made
public.
But a letter to Kosik filed Thursday by Ciavarella
attorney William Ruzzo indicates the defense objects to
a recommendation that the court, when fashioning its
sentence, consider misconduct of which Ciavarella was,
the defense maintains, acquitted.
Under current federal law, a judge deciding on a
sentence can consider misconduct by a defendant if it
can be proven by a preponderance of the evidence, even
though the defendant has not been convicted of a crime
for that misconduct.
Ruzzo's letter indicates the defense will argue on
appeal that such misconduct should be proven beyond a
reasonable doubt, a much stricter standard.
"Mark Ciavarella was acquitted of many counts in a
lengthy indictment. It would seem out of simple fairness
that acquitted conduct means acquitted conduct," Ruzzo
wrote. "Essentially, this is the change in the law that
counsel would advocate on appeal."
Efforts to reach Ruzzo were unsuccessful Thursday.
In addition to a prison sentence, Ciavarella faces the
possibility of hundreds of thousands of dollars in
fines, but testimony at his trial indicated much of the
money he received went to pay off heavy credit-card and
other debts. Prosecutors have alleged he may have
diverted some funds to others, including the proceeds
from the sale of his Mountain Top home in 2008 before he
was charged.
In 2009, after Ciavarella entered a guilty plea that was
later withdrawn, probation officials concluded he did
not have the resources to pay a fine. Ciavarella, who
was ordered to forfeit nearly $1 million by the jury
that convicted him, has worked odd jobs as a painter and
flower deliveryman since his arrest.
Prosecutors alleged Ciavarella and another judge,
Michael T. Conahan, conspired to close a county-owned
detention center and direct juveniles to a newly built
for-profit center in Pittston Township. The builder and
co-owner of the center paid the two judges $2.8 million,
according to a grand jury indictment.
The state Supreme Court, which found Ciavarella
wrongfully imprisoned juveniles on minor charges and
failed to fully inform them of their right to counsel,
vacated thousands of juvenile-court orders he issued in
2005-2008.
Hundreds of former defendants in Ciavarella's court have
filed civil-rights actions in U.S. District Court
against the two former judges and other individuals and
entities implicated in the kids-for-cash scandal.
Thanks to the Florida lawmakers' successful bid to legislate
morality in the state's public records law, we may never know how
18-year-old Eric Perez died in the hands of state workers.
Perez died about a week ago at a West Palm Beach juvenile detention
facility, due to either breathing problems, an enlarged heart, maybe
a stroke, or after becoming "ill and psychotic" -- at least those
are the different stories officials have told Perez's mother,
according to the
Miami Herald.
His death was recorded on video, but since
HB 411 was signed into effect by the governor, the media -- and
subsequently, the public -- may never get to see that video.
The rationale for the law may make sense on the surface: Most people
who've seen
Faces
of Death -- a 1980 film that's just a roughly 100-minute
compilation of real and fake footage of deaths -- would think
there's no legitimate reason to watch the death of another human
being.
To anyone who wants to hold people and government accountable,
though, death videos have proved to be important.
Posted on Monday, 07.11.11 Death reported at juvenile detention center
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Officials say a juvenile died
while in custody at a West Palm Beach detention center.
The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice reports that
the inmate died Sunday morning. The department and West
Palm Beach police are investigating the cause of death.
A Department of Juvenile Justice spokeswoman says the
name of a juvenile inmate cannot be released under state
law.
Nine former students
of a Prineville-area
school for troubled
teens are suing the
now-defunct school's
parent company,
saying teachers and
staff humiliated,
isolated and abused
them as part of its
curriculum.
The complaint, which
was filed today in
Multnomah County
Circuit Court,
detailed students'
accusations:
One teen, a girl who
had suffered sexual
abuse as a child,
was forced to
repeatedly engage in
provocative
role-playing with
older males, the
complaint states.
Another student, who
suffered from
asthma, was forced
to sleep outdoors in
below-freezing
temperatures. Staff
members also denied
him food, sleep
and use of a
restroom and
withheld his asthma
inhaler despite
asthma attacks that
were brought on by
their tactics.
The suit seeks
nearly $14.3 million
from
the Mount Bachelor
Academy, its
parent company Aspen
Education Group, and
Aspen's parent
company, CDC Health
Group Inc.
First
published Jun 23 2011 01:16PM
Updated Jun 24, 2011 12:05AM
Three families have filed a federal lawsuit
against a Panguitch-based boarding school for
troubled teens, claiming the institution failed
to supervise a counselor charged with sexually
abusing several students.
Prosecutors on Wednesday charged Eric Allen
Glosson, 28, in 6th District Court with eight
counts of second-degree felony forcible sexual
abuse for allegedly having sexual relations with
youth at Silverado Academy in Garfield County
between April 20 and June 18.
He is also
charged with one count of second-degree felony
custodial sexual relations with a youth
receiving state services and one count of
third-degree felony dealing in materials harmful
to a minor.
Now,
families from Nevada, Georgia and Michigan say
Silverado Academy should have done more to keep
tabs on Glosson’s interactions with students.
Their complaint alleges the school failed to
protect their children from Glosson, who had
been previously fired over concerns he was "too
close to the teenagers in the program."
SALT LAKE
CITY -- A counselor at a
southern Utah residential center for
troubled teens has been charged with
eight counts of forcible sex abuse
for alleged assaults on a female
resident.
Court records show 28-year-old Eric
Allen Glosson, of Tucson, Ariz., is
scheduled for an initial appearance
in 6th district court in Panguitch
on Thursday.
Along with the eight second-degree
felonies, Glosson is charged with
one count each of having sex with a
youth receiving state services and
dealing in materials harmful to
minors. It wasn't immediately clear
whether Glosson had an attorney.
Garfield County Spokeswoman Becky
Bronson told KTVX of Salt Lake City
that Glosson worked at the Silverado
Academy, which is owned by former
Utah U.S. Senate candidate Tim
Bridgewater.
The facility reported allegations of
abuse to authorities on Sunday.
Child, Youth and Family
has removed children from a high profile
programme for troubled youth following
allegations staff physically abused teens.
But Wellington's Te Rakau Trust says it was
just doing what CYF taught it to do.
The trust has helped
troubled teenagers for more than 20 years.
It gives the boys - many from gangs - a home
and uses performing arts to turn them away
from crime and violence.
But ONE News can
tonight reveal that trust staff have now
been accused of using violence themselves.
CYF said "the
allegations involved a range of issues,
including the use of inappropriate
discipline and restraint practices resulting
in physical abuse".
CYF has removed all
three teens from the trust's care and
suspended $800,000 in annual funding.
TRENTON
— The state will close two publicly-run
residential treatment facilities that are
home to 39 children with mental illness or
who come from abusive families, state
Children and Families Commissioner Allison
Blake announced today.
The residential centers, in Ewing and
Vineland, will close July 1. They cost about
$15.2 million in state and federal money to
operate, according to the state budget, but
Blake said finances did not drive her
decision and doubts the closures will net
much savings. Blake said the decision was
based on the ample evidence these children
fare better at home or in home-like
environments than in a large group.
An Orangeburg
community-based
treatment home and
shelter for troubled
boys and girls has
closed its doors.
Orangeburg Attention
Homes Inc.
discontinued its
services because of
a decline in
clientele and budget
cutbacks, OAH
Chairman William
Hamilton said.
The program
relied on a per
diem, per child
payment from the
S.C. Department of
Social Services and
the S.C. Department
of Juvenile Justice.
But with the
reduction in
clientele, the money
diminished.
"If you don't
have the students in
your home, you don't
get the per diem
from the state,"
Hamilton said. "It
kept declining and
declining, and we
kept losing ground
on our financial
stability."
He said
increasing
competition was also
a factor in the
program's demise.
"Our staff were
trained for moderate
management,"
Hamilton said,
noting the clientele
were generally
children with some
troubles but without
any criminal
background. "The
placement homes now
are the boot
camp-style homes,
and their staff is
trained for high
management. They
deal with kids with
more problems and
some with more of a
criminal
background."
Juvenile inmates at California correctional facilities have been
held in isolation nearly 24 hours straight on hundreds of occasions
this year, in violation of state regulations.
An audit by the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation in March found multiple facilities operated by the
Division of Juvenile Justice kept youth prisoners deemed a threat in
their cells for all but 40 minutes a day. Auditors found Ventura
Youth Correctional Facility, about 50 miles northwest of Los
Angeles, to be the worst offender.
The juveniles placed on “temporary detention” or "temporary
intervention plans” can be placed in solitary confinement for 21
hours a day.
Youth facilities exceeded that limit 249 times from January through
April, according to numbers provided to Nancy Campbell, who is
appointed by the state courts to oversee the juvenile facilities.
Campbell confirmed the findings [PDF] in a letter to the Prison Law
Office last month. Campbell wrote:
Documentation shows that the most frequent failure to meet
out-of-room requirements has occurred at Ventura Youth Correctional
Facility. In the 14 weeks documented, there were 173 out of 1,453
incidents during which youth on TD [temporary detention] or TIP
[temporary intervention plans] spent more than 21 of 24 hours
confined to his or her rooms. Other DJJ facilities struggle to meet
mandated services requirements as well: OH Close Youth Correctional
Facility (43 out of 588 incidents); Preston Youth Correctional
Facility (15 of 245 incidents); Southern Youth Correctional
Reception Center and Clinic (10 of 198 incidents); and NA Chaderjian
Youth Correctional Facility (8 of 761 incidents).
The Prison Law Office has responded to the violations with a new
motion in the lawsuit Farrell v. Cate, which the state settled with
an agreement to reform mental health care at youth facilities in
2004. The filing seeks to force the juvenile justice division to
comply with the 21-hour isolation limit.
“Those findings are consistent with what experts have been saying
month after month, year after year, and the problem has not been
solved,” Sara Norman, managing attorney at the Prison Law Office,
told The Bay Citizen. “These are the problems that are hurting the
youth the most, and we are out of patience.”
The problem, according to the audit, is much the same one faced by
many California agencies. Juvenile justice has too few resources and
too little staff.
“Living unit staff consistently reported that priority is given to
providing services to youth participating in the regular program,”
the report states. “Youth on TD are accommodated when time permits.”
California has just more than 1,000 juvenile inmates who have been
convicted of serious crimes, called 707(b) offenses [PDF]. These
crimes include murder, rape, drug sales, witness tampering and many
others.
Putting a youth in prolonged isolation – a 23 and 1 program in
juvenile justice division parlance – can have a “profound” impact on
his or her well-being, the state’s Office of the Inspector General
wrote in a 2000 report [PDF].
That document proves there have been problems with this practice for
more than a decade.
“Twenty-six of the 70 wards (36 percent) said they did not receive
the required one hour out of their room in each 24-hour period,” the
inspector’s office wrote then. “Some wards said that time out of the
room was occasionally cancelled, especially on weekends.”
Supreme Court backs Miranda warning when questioning juveniles
The Supreme Court expands the rights of juveniles in a 5-4 decision
that says police who remove a student from class for questioning
must usually issue a warning of the right to remain silent.
By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau June 16, 2011, 10:19 a.m.
Reporting from Washington— The Supreme Court expanded the rights of
juveniles Thursday, deciding by a 5-4 vote that police officers who
remove a student from a class to question him about a crime usually
must warn him of his right to remain silent.
"It is beyond dispute that children will often feel bound to submit
to police questioning when an adult in the same circumstance would
feel free to leave," wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor for the court.
The decision does not set a strict rule for all cases involving
young people, but instead says their age calls for giving them
special protection.
In a second criminal case, this one from San Diego, the court said
judges may not impose longer prison terms on defendants in hopes of
rehabilitating them.
A third decision reopened the case of a Philadelphia area woman
faced with a federal terrorism charge for having tried to poison a
woman who had an affair with her husband. She argued she should have
been charged with a domestic crime under state law.
The juvenile decision reopens the case of a 13-year old student from
Chapel Hill, N.C., who was taken from his seventh-grade class by a
police officer and questioned about several burglaries in his
neighborhood. The student, identified only as J.D.B., eventually
confessed.
He later contended his confession should not have been used because
he was not warned of his rights. But he lost in a 4-3 decision by
the North Carolina Supreme Court.
The famous 1966 Miranda decision that required warnings to suspects
about their rights applies only to persons who are in the custody of
police and feel forced to answer questions. At issue in the case was
whether a 13-year old at school would think he was required to speak
to the police, or instead would understand he was "free to leave"
and could walk away from the interview.
Sotomayor said age is a crucial factor, and it suggests the student
would feel he is in the control of the police. Officers and judges
"simply need the common sense to know that a 7-year-old is not a
13-year old and neither is an adult," she wrote. "To hold, as the
state requests, that a child's age is never relevant to whether a
suspect has been taken into custody — and thus to ignore the very
real differences between children and adults — would be to deny
children the full scope of the procedural safeguards that Miranda
guarantees to adults."
The decision in J.D.B. vs. North Carolina sends the case back for
the judges to consider again whether the student was in police
control when he was questioned. Joining the majority were Justices
Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Elena
Kagan. The four dissenters said the focus on the age of the
individual will be confusing for police and judges.
Last year, the court in an opinion by Kennedy barred states from
sending juveniles to prison for life for crimes short of murder.
The San Diego case involving rehabilitation resulted in an unanimous
ruling. The justices agreed with a San Diego area woman who disputed
a judge's decision to extend her prison term so she could
participate in a drug rehabilitation program. Alexandra Tapia
appealed her 51-month prison term, noting the federal sentencing law
says that "imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting
correction and rehabilitation."
Citing that phrase, the Supreme Court ruled for her in Tapia vs.
United States and told the judge to reconsider the length of her
sentence.
Carol Bond, the Philadelphia area chemist, won only the right to
challenge her federal conviction on the grounds that it was
unconstitutional to use a federal terrorism law to prosecute a
domestic dispute.
This is a really great article. Please read the entire
article by clicking on the hyperlinked title above or visiting
www.heal-online.org/goodteen061311.pdf.
PASADENA, Calif. (KTLA) -- An instructor at a
youth boot camp is accused of kidnapping, false
imprisonment and extortion in the alleged abduction
of a truant teenager.
According to police, Kelvin "Sarge" McFarland
handcuffed the teen, then took the boy to a family
member's home demanding money before releasing him.
McFarland is also accused of trying to persuade the
family to enroll the 14-year-old in his boot camp,
Family 1st Growth Camp.
SALT LAKE CITY -- A man from
Washington state has become the latest to sue a Utah-based
organization for troubled children, claiming he was physically
and emotionally tormented during its teen boot camp programs in
Mexico.
Attorneys for Carl Brown Austin, 24, of Spokane, filed
the lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City
against World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and
Schools.
Austin spent nearly two years, starting at age 13, at the
organization's Casa by the Sea and High Impact programs. He
alleged he was a "virtual prisoner" in programs that meted out
primitive punishment for hours on end.
The lawsuit said Casa by the Sea in Ensenada, Mexico, was
never licensed by any state regulatory authority as a "treatment
center" and that High Impact in Baja, Mexico, was shut down by
government edict in 2002 after complaints from parents.
Austin claimed he was hogtied, given limited access to
bathrooms and food and endured "The Big Green" - which meant
having his head rubbed into an artificial turf until his face
and mouth were bloody. It also claimed the organization and its
officials conspired to conceal the abuse at its boarding
schools.
Ex-leader at Texas youth prison settles civil suit
Associated Press - May 31, 2011 11:25 AM ET
LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) - The attorney for a former West
Texas youth prison inmate says his client has settled a
civil lawsuit against a former prison school principal
who was acquitted on sexual abuse charges.
Attorney Scott Medlock said Tuesday his 26-year-old
client's settlement for $2,000 doesn't include an
admission of wrongdoing by former West Texas State
School principal John Paul Hernandez.
Medlock says the agreement includes a "vague" letter of
apology from Hernandez.
In February, Hernandez was found not guilty of sexually
abusing five inmates at the prison school in Pyote in
2004 and 2005. Medlock's client was 1 of the five.
A Texas Rangers report implicated Hernandez in a sex
scandal that upended the Texas Youth Commission.
Lawmakers eventually ordered an overhaul of the system.
Carney Hospital fired the staff of its adolescent psychiatry unit Thursday, after an investigation into an employee’s alleged sexual assault of a patient uncovered serious patient safety problems.
Hospital president Bill Walczak said he hired former attorney general Scott Harshbarger and his law firm a month ago to investigate the assault allegation and conditions on the 14-bed locked unit for extremely troubled teens.
When he read Harshbarger’s report Thursday, Walczak said he decided to replace the nurses and other staff on the unit.
The report described “serious concerns about patient safety and quality of care on the unit. It was not functioning properly. It was recommended by them to start over on the unit,’’ Walczak said in an interview. “We will have top- notch employees replace those who left. My goal is to make it the best unit in the state.’’
He would not provide details of the alleged assault or patient safety concerns, or comment on why the entire staff was dismissed, given that the allegation involved one employee and one patient.
The news comes decades
too late for generations of abused young
men. But the state of Florida finally has
stopped defending a culture of horrific
abuse and will shut down a North Florida
school for boys at the end of June after
more than a century of looking the other
way. The courage of former students who
recounted the abuse they endured, renewed
public scrutiny and a state financial crisis
David Dos Santos
