LIKE ANY 14-YEAR-OLD, David G.
really knew how to irritate adults. As a juvenile in the custody
of the state, he was obnoxiously defiant.
When a youth services worker
demanded he come out of his cell, David laughed, bent over and
passed gas at the man.
The boy, judged delinquent for
third-degree battery, was also distressingly troubled. He had
been treated at five psychiatric centers. When he was
frustrated, he would repeatedly bang his head against the
concrete wall of his cell at the Central Arkansas Observation
and Assessment Center in North Little Rock. The center is
operated by the Division of Youth Services, a part of the state
Department of Human Services.
On March 16, 1997, David was
taken upstairs to a Quiet Room, a "timeout" cell for
troublemakers. His brown jumpsuit was taken away. He wore only
underwear. Two older, bigger boys in green jumpsuits were
already in the 11-by-11-foot cell.
"Beat him up and do him good.
Don't leave any marks," the staff member ordered, according to
the two older boys.
During the next 30 minutes,
numerous staff members and other teen-agers heard David
repeatedly screaming and crying for help. He was beaten, spat
on, slapped and taunted. He said the older boys twisted a sheet
into knots and beat him with it, according to a state police
report.
Then, he said, he was held down
while one of the boys stuck a broom handle into his rectum.
He was removed from the area
for a few hours. And then, despite his desperate pleas to be
left alone, the sobbing boy was taken back to the Quiet Cell
where two other boys slapped him, threw water on him and hit him
in the head with combs and brushes while cursing him.
When David reported the alleged
beatings and rape to a teacher, Arkansas State Police
investigator Dorothy Plumb was assigned to the case. She
declined to be interviewed for this story. But transcripts of
her interviews with the boy show she was skeptical at first.
"David, this is kinda hard to
believe," she said.
"I am telling the truth," the
boy insisted.
Over the next few weeks, Plumb
would change her mind. The four boys involved confirmed the
beatings but denied the rape.
David's name surfaced in
another abuse allegation. This time, a staff member hogtied him
and placed the screaming boy face down on the concrete floor in
his underwear. Hogtying children is forbidden in state
institutions. It is considered cruel and unusual punishment and
is an offense reportable to the state Child Abuse Hot Line.
The nightmarish treatment of
David G. is not an isolated case. It is one of dozens of abusive
incidents buried in state files or in the memories of staff
members and children too frightened or too discouraged to report
them.
A year-long investigation by
the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has uncovered a state juvenile
delinquency system in which:
- Children have been
routinely degraded; verbally, physically and sexually
abused; hogtied; forced to sleep outside in freezing
weather; and threatened with punishment and even death by
staff members if the children report the abuse.
- Staff members have slugged
children in the face and then refused to allow them to be
treated by a nurse. They have locked children naked in cells
overnight after turning the air conditioning on high.
- Troubled youths as young
as 11 have been taken away from their parents and placed in
the state's custody only to be subjected to the whims of
untrained staff members, some with criminal backgrounds.
The allegations of abuse have been
verified. They involve employees at the O&A, the Alexander Youth
Services Center and sporadic incidents at the two
serious-offender camps operated by Associated Marine Institutes,
a Florida corporation.
The Arkansas juvenile justice
system will face worldwide scrutiny when Mitchell Johnson, 13,
and Andrew Golden, 11, appear before Craighead County
Circuit-Chancery Judge Ralph Wilson Jr. for a hearing in
juvenile court. That hearing was scheduled for this week but has
been postponed and has not been rescheduled.
The boys have been at a
detention center since the March 24 shooting deaths of four
students and a teacher at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro.
Ten other people were wounded in that attack. Under Arkansas
law, children under 14 cannot be tried as adults.
If the judge declares the boys
delinquent, they probably will be sent to the O&A for evaluation
and then to the lockdown unit of the Alexander Youth Services
Center.
The story of David G. is eerily
similar to an April 1998 allegation of sexual assault and abuse
that a Democrat-Gazette reporter presented to DHS Chief Counsel
Jonann Coniglio in an attempt to protect children from further
abuse.
Gov. Mike Huckabee called a
press conference April 24, vowing that all children in state
custody would be protected.
"Kids are going to be given a
level of protection that apparently they may not have been,"
Huckabee said. "And every effort is being made to not jeopardize
their safety."
But children in DYS facilities
are in danger.
Officials cannot guarantee that
their staffs will be able to protect the Jonesboro area boys
from attacks by teen-agers angry about the shootings. Some
teen-agers have boasted they will hurt the boys.
And DYS also cannot be sure
that Mitchell and Andrew -- who will undoubtedly be locked up
until they turn 18 -- will not be abused by the staff.
Arkansas' juvenile justice
system has been reformed twice in the past decade.
In 1987, the Arkansas Supreme
Court declared the system unconstitutional. Two years later,
children had their own court system, complete with judges,
prosecutors and defense attorneys.
In 1991, the state was sued in
federal court for abusive conditions at the Pine Bluff Youth
Services Center. That facility warehoused more than 200
children. The dormlike facilities were overcrowded and
understaffed. Allegations of abuse were not being investigated.
Kids were attacking other kids.
"The major complaint was that
there was simply no security from violence," said Rogers
attorney James Luffman, who filed the suit. "Kids were running
the show themselves, and in some instances, there were
indications the guards were using bigger, tougher juveniles as
enforcers."
The state settled the case
quickly and agreed to federal monitoring of the institution.
In 1993, the Pine Bluff campus
was closed and replaced with a system of smaller facilities
considered more conducive to rehabilitation and incarceration.
Reform was in the air. A
special 1993 legislative session called by then-Gov. Jim Guy
Tucker on children's issues seemed to herald new proposals.
The new system received a lot
of publicity but only a fraction of the money needed to prevent
escalating juvenile crime and to effectively treat the children
it had in custody.
The DYS had existed years
before but had been folded back into another division of the
DHS. It was revived again in 1993 and charged with supervising
juvenile delinquents and the Families In Need of Services (FINS)
programs.
Ruth Whitney was DYS director
in March 1997 when the David G. incident occurred. She faced a
dilemma.
State police investigator Plumb
had complained to her state police supervisor that O&A Director
Gary Rogers was impeding the investigation.
A security guard alerting Plumb
to other abuse claims was admonished by Rogers, who wanted all
abuse complaints funneled through him.
Furthermore, Rogers insisted
Plumb limit her investigation to the David G. case. Plumb had
broadened her scope. Staff members and youths at the facility
had provided an array of allegations to Plumb that they said had
never been investigated.
Rogers asked employees about
Plumb's interviews and faxed the information to DYS Director of
Operations Larance Johnson at the central office in downtown
Little Rock.
Johnson supported Rogers'
actions. "The state police didn't stay focused on the incident.
They went way off to the left field," she told the
Democrat-Gazette.
She said Plumb was upsetting
the facility by not following procedure. If anything else were
uncovered, the allegation was to be called into the Child Abuse
Hot Line. Hot-line workers would determine if an outside
investigation were needed.
If the hot line did not bring
investigators in, DYS would do its own investigation to
determine if policies had been followed.
"What we needed her [Plumb] to
do is to focus on the particular incident. Tell us what else she
found in a follow-up memo," Johnson said. "Right then, we were
trying to deal with this young man. It seems like we could never
get to the end of the assault for her moving to other things."
Johnson said Rogers had heard
complaints from the staff members about how they were being
treated during their interviews with the state police. The staff
put their statements in writing.
Rogers felt that Plumb's
investigation was biased against black employees. At that time,
97 percent of the approximately 105 staff members who dealt
directly with the children were black. Johnson and Rogers are
black. Plumb is white.
There were only three white
workers dealing directly with the kids, and they were reporting
most of the kids' abuse allegations.
The entire O&A staff was 80
percent black. Among the children, 70 percent were black and 30
percent were white. Abuse allegations involved black children
and white children.
"Plumb's investigation smelled
funny, but I don't want to use the race card," Johnson said.
Whitney was surprised by the
controversy. In November, four months before Plumb began the
David G. inquiry, several white staff members at the O&A center
had complained to the DHS Special Investigations Unit that abuse
allegations were not being investigated at O&A. They also
insisted that there was serious tension between black and white
staff members.
Concerned, Whitney set up a DYS
committee to look at several issues, including racial tension
and abuse reporting. Its findings, released April 8, 1997 --
just days after Plumb arrived -- stated that neither abuse nor
racial tension appeared to be problems at O&A.
On April 24, 1997, Whitney
reassigned Johnson and Rogers. She ordered Lloyd Warford to find
out what, if anything, was going on at the O&A.
Warford, a former deputy
prosecuting attorney in Pulaski County, had been with the
division a year, evaluating contracts and community-based
services.
"Abuse was not going to be
tolerated while I was in charge," Whitney said. "I directed him
to physically relocate to O&A because of the conflicting
information I was receiving."
On May 18, 1997, a shocked
Warford wrote a memo to Whitney outlining his impressions of the
North Little Rock center. "Within 72 hours of assuming control
of the facility, I was convinced that the monitoring reports you
were receiving were grossly inaccurate," he wrote. Warford
reported:
- Staff members were openly
hostile and uncooperative.
- The handful of staff
members who did write up abuse allegations felt threatened
by co-workers.
- Abuse reports had been
destroyed or removed from the facility.
- The assessment staff --
the reason the facility existed -- had little or no contact
with the youths they were assessing. The assessments were
essential in deciding whether to place children in the few
slots allocated for drug or sex-offender treatment or to
send them to one of the state's serious-offender programs.
"Generally order was being
maintained by threats and intimidation," he concluded. "This
facility is in crisis." [Warford's emphasis]
The problems were just
beginning.
It would soon be clear that the
much-needed Department of Youth Services reform had been
undermined by politics, racial infighting and employees intent
on protecting co-workers at any cost.
The Central Arkansas
Observation and Assessment Center, the former North Little Rock
jail, was an unlikely place to evaluate the mental and emotional
condition of juvenile delinquents.
"That would never have been a
spot that we would have selected," said R.B. Friedlander,
then-director of the DYS. "It happened within a blink of an
eye.''
She said she was called to a
meeting at the jail with then-Gov. Tucker.
"It was clear to me that the
decision had been made, and it would be our facility," said
Friedlander. "Then, we just worked to make it the best we could
make it. It was never totally appropriate. It was a jail."
The DYS master plan called for
five O&A centers across the state.
Instead, DYS was saddled with
one O&A center that required major renovations and wouldn't be
ready for months.
North Little Rock officials
transferred the jail to Pulaski County. The state agreed to rent
the jail for $230,000 annually from the county. The bulk of the
money was used to retire bonds for the new Pulaski County jail.
The center, designed to house
84 children, officially opened Aug. 7, 1995. Within two months,
it averaged more than 100 juveniles daily and has held as many
as 135 children. Staffing was never adequately increased. And
high staff turnover added to the problems.
"It's like the Field of
Dreams," explained Tom Dalton, former DHS director. "If you
build it, the kids will come. We got jammed. We were the point
of intake. But we didn't control the point of intake. The
juvenile judges did."
On Nov. 14, 1995, DHS
administrator Jerry Evans wrote a memo to Whitney pointing out
problems with the building.
"The facility environment
requires that juveniles and staff be constantly on top of each
other due to the close, cramped quarters," he stated. "The
facility does not really fit our needs for an O&A center, that
seems clear to me."
Worse yet, the serious-offender
wilderness programs were behind schedule. The Alexander Youth
Services Center, the state's only lockdown facility, was
bulging. There were few places to send the children after they
were evaluated.
So, they lingered at the O&A.
Originally, the more violent
offenders were to be kept upstairs. With overcrowding, that
became a lost luxury. Murderers began rooming with shoplifters,
and rapists roomed with credit-card abusers and children who
hunted deer out of season.
There appeared to be no end to
the children entering DYS custody. Commitments to DYS rose from
690 in calendar year 1991 to 1,005 in fiscal 1996 -- a 46
percent increase.
It originally was expected that
the boys and the handful of girls in state custody would move on
in 30-45 days. The average length of stay at the O&A center
eventually rose to 83 days. One boy was kept nine months. Girls
were sleeping in showers with pillows and blankets. When Warford
descended upon O&A in April 1997, the frustration level was at
an all-time high.
The physical environment
exacerbated the problem. The youths were occasionally taken to
the rooftop to play basketball. Otherwise, they could go weeks
without seeing daylight in the windowless facility. The
air-conditioning and the heating systems broke frequently. The
boys' jumpsuits, underwear and socks were cleaned at two-week
intervals. Raw sewage spewed up through drains in the showers
when toilets were flushed. Poor ventilation intensified the
odor.
To add to the tension,
sentences were not reduced for the time teens spent at the
cramped facility. They were anxious to serve their time and get
home. Verbal and physical attacks against other teens and the
staff occurred daily. In turn, an aggravated staff lashed out.
Some employees ordered rougher teen-agers to scare those who
were discipline problems, which usually resulted in some kind of
physical attack.
In addition, a thinly veiled
underground sprang up among the boys. The more vulnerable
children were forced to barter food to ward off beatings or
attacks by sexual predators in the crowded cells. Toothbrushes
and pencils were sharpened into lethal weapons to be used on
staff members or opposing gang members. The mentally retarded
and emotionally disturbed teen-agers kept the facility in an
uproar, provoking an already-unstable atmosphere.
It was Pine Bluff again. Only
worse.
