|
Omega Leach
Age 17
Restraint death
Chad Youth Enhancement Center
October 11, 2007 -
City stays course at
Tenn. child center
July 9, 2007 -
Report Details Youth Center Patient's Death
June 24, 2007 -
Philadelphia teen
dies at Tennessee facility for troubled youth
June 24, 2007 -
Another life lost on DHS's watch
June 11, 2007 - Former
Chad Youth Center Employee Speaks Out
June 7, 2007 - Teen dies
at local youth treatment center over weekend
June 7, 2007 - Civil
Rights Group to Investigate Deaths at Montgomery County Youth Center
June 7, 2007 -
Parents pull children out of center under investigation
June 5, 2007 -
Police
Investigate Death At Child Treatment Center
City stays course at Tenn. child
center
Though a teen's death there was ruled a homicide, DHS said the rest
of its youths couldn't be removed any faster
October 11, 2007
By John Sullivan and Craig R. McCoy
City officials said yesterday that
they would not immediately remove children from a Tennessee juvenile
facility despite a ruling this week that the death of a Philadelphia
teen in June was a homicide. The autopsy report says Omega Leach,
17, died of strangulation after a struggle with staff at the Chad
Youth Enhancement Center outside Nashville.
Officials with the city's
Department of Human Services said they had already removed more than
30 children from Chad since the death, and visited the residential
center for emotionally troubled children weekly.
The transfers of the seven who
remain there are expected to be completed next month, although three
have asked to stay, DHS officials said. No parent has asked that a
child be moved.
"The goal remains to find suitable
accommodations to meet the very complex emotional and psychological
needs of these children," acting DHS Commissioner Arthur C. Evans
Jr. said.
Neither employee in the Leach case
is there now, DHS noted.
DHS and the city's Family Court
judges send children in their custody to Chad. Last month,
Administrative Court Judge Kevin Dougherty ordered eight children
removed and has since transferred others. Dougherty could not be
reached for comment yesterday.
Chad still has a valid license but
may not accept new admissions, Tennessee child-welfare officials
said.
"The suspension of admissions that
we put in place in June remains in effect indefinitely," said Jill
Hudson, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Mental Health
and Developmental Disabilities. Her office is awaiting the results
of a state investigation, she said.
Experts agreed that placing
difficult children could be tricky.
"Although it seems outrageous and
inconceivable that the city would not have acted sooner to move the
children, moving them has its own consequences," said Richard Gelles,
dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University
of Pennsylvania.
Unless the children are in
immediate danger, he said, the city wouldn't move them without
making sure they could be placed in a suitable facility.
Marc Cherna, who directs the
child-welfare agency in the Pittsburgh area, said the medical
examiner's report underscored the need for Philadelphia officials
"to try to change their practice to keep their kids close to home."
Meanwhile, Edith Pearce, an
attorney for the Leach family, said yesterday that the District
Attorney's Office in Tennessee had told her that it was "seeking to
make sure justice was done."
The district attorney there, John
Carney, was not available for comment.
Tennessee child-welfare officials
cited Chad staff for needlessly provoking Leach into a fight. He was
calming down in his room when a worker ordered him to leave. The two
struggled, and a second staffer joined in. The two told
investigators that they had followed Chad policy by placing Leach in
a prone restraint as outlined by the Handle With Care program.
Bruce Chapman, 55, the president of
the company that trained the workers, said his restraint technique
should never result in a death when properly applied.
"There is nothing in Handle With
Care that would account for that," he said of the strangulation
finding.
Chapman advocates the use of
restraints at a time when states such as Pennsylvania are reducing
reliance on them.
He runs a Web site called
"Compassionate Neanderthal," which he said illustrated that even
Neanderthals had enough sense to intervene physically when children
were a threat to themselves or others.
The problem of abuse at residential
facilities is not isolated, according to a report released yesterday
by the Government Accountability Office. The GAO found thousands of
allegations of abuse, including some deaths, at residential
treatment centers across the country between 1990 and 2007.
Allegations included 1,619
incidents of abuse in 33 states. In a review of just 10 deaths, the
office found ineffective management and reckless and negligent
operating practices. The findings relate to boot camps, academies,
and wilderness therapy programs, among others.
While most states license such
facilities, some don't, and there are no federal regulations.
"There is a Russian roulette
quality to these places, because there are no national standards
that these facilities have to meet," Penn's Gelles said.
Report Details
Youth Center Patient's Death
Doctor Says
Teen's Injuries 'Traumatic'
July 9, 2007
By Nancy Amons
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. -- As
time passes, more information is being learned about the second
death at the Chad Youth Development Center.
 Video:
Chad Youth Center Death Detailed In Report
The
identities of two men who were holding down 17-year-old Omega Leach
in the moments before his death were revealed Monday.
Leach died after two staff members
at Chad placed him on the floor because he was unruly, according to
a Montgomery County report.
The report said that the two men,
31-year-old Milton Gerald Francis and 22-year-old Randall Dale Rae
Jr., asked Leach if he was going to stop resisting.
The report said that Leach didn't
answer because he was unconscious. Leach was later pronounced dead.
Francis is listed as a former sergeant
at Fort Campbell.
Children who've been at Chad have
told Channel 4 News that staff members would slam them on the floor
or wall with their arms pinned behind their backs.
Edith Ruland took her 10-year-old out
of Chad after finding him covered in bruises and personally
witnessing staffers pin a child to the lunchroom floor for getting
out of the food line.
"I saw one boy, he was yelling, ‘I
can't breathe,’” she said.
The Tennessee Department of Health
inspected Chad 10 days after Leach's death.
Its report concluded that the
staff's restraint techniques resulted in death.
The doctor who treated Leach at
Vanderbilt Children's Hospital described Leach's injuries as
traumatic.
The doctor said the injuries
included internal injuries and swelling to the brain.
The medical examiner's full report
isn't finished yet.
Employees at Chad are supposed to
be trained for how to properly restrain unruly children.
But Health Department inspectors found
that in some cases, there was "no evidence" staffers took the
training.
Another life lost on DHS's watch
June 24, 2007
By John Sullivan and Craig R.McCoy
Inquirer Staff Writers
 The
agency sent Omega Leach, a troubled 17-year-old, to a Tenn. youth
facility in May. A month later, he was dead.
The City of Philadelphia decided a
trip south was best for Omega Leach, an angry teenager who got in
trouble for stealing a car. In May, the 17-year-old arrived at the
Chad Youth Enhancement Center outside Nashville, a mental-health
facility for troubled teenagers approved by the city's Department of
Human Services.
His stay was brief.
Leach died after a physical
confrontation with staff on June 3. He tried to choke one counselor,
and another staffer pushed Leach facedown to the floor and pulled
his arms behind his back, police said.
Investigators are checking whether
the restraint was applied improperly, preventing Leach from
breathing. He was pronounced dead the next day in a Nashville
hospital, about 15 hours after the confrontation.
"There's no doubt that the kid had
an attitude and probably needed to be locked up somewhere," said
Sgt. Brian Prentice, of the Montgomery County, Tenn., Sheriff's
Office. "It doesn't mean he has to be dead."
Leach's death was one more lost
life on DHS's watch. As with other Philadelphia youths committed to
such centers, his care was DHS's responsibility. The agency was
paying Chad $285 a day for his treatment.
Questions have been raised about
the center before. In 2005, a 14-year-old Long Island girl died
there of heart failure as she was being escorted by a counselor.
Although Chad staff was not blamed
in her death, Tennessee officials quit placing teenagers there. New
York did, too.
But not Philadelphia.
On DHS's recommendation, judges and
social workers continued to send children to Chad, even though the
agency's own reports consistently criticized its performance, an
Inquirer review shows.
After the newspaper began asking
questions about Chad and the two deaths last week, officials in
Philadelphia and Tennessee began to take action:
Tennessee's child-welfare agency banned new placements at Chad and
said it would force the
facility to improve restraint procedures.
Philadelphia's DHS also froze admissions to Chad. The department
said it was putting into place "a
contingency plan" for relocating 45 city children still at Chad,
pending further investigation. Some
of the
children are delinquents. Others had been neglected or abused.
A Philadelphia judge criticized DHS harshly for failing to inform
the courts of the 2005 death and
said he
would insist on better communication.
"It's disturbing to the point that
it's unacceptable," said Kevin Dougherty, administrative judge of
Philadelphia Family Court.
Chad one of 110
behavioral-health facilities in 33 states
Chad and its corporate owner,
Universal Health Services Inc. of King of Prussia, declined to
respond to detailed questions. They did issue a statement defending
the facility's record.
UHS owns more than two dozen
hospitals and 110 behavioral-health facilities in 33 states. It
bought Chad and 29 other facilities the month after the Long Island
girl died. The deal was worth $210 million.
Chad's owner - Universal Health
Services Inc. Respond
"We have a reputation and history
of being a high-quality provider of behavioral health and
substance-abuse services to troubled youth and their families," said
Duwayne Glaser, Chad's chief executive officer.
He said Chad's training exceeded
industry standards.
Chad helps "troubled kids to get
better," the statement said. "We take the responsibility of their
safety and care very seriously."
Philadelphia's child-welfare agency
has been scrambling to remake itself since an Inquirer investigation
last fall explored a string of deaths of children under DHS
protection.
DHS has undertaken a host of
reforms, including new procedures to evaluate the safety of
children. Its workers visit the most vulnerable children more often
and has hired more nurses to spot medical problems.
In a tough report released four
days before Leach's death, an expert panel appointed by Mayor Street
said "significant system failures" at DHS had let children die
needlessly.
In particular, the report
criticized DHS oversight of the private agencies that receive
millions of dollars to work with the city's troubled children.
Although Philadelphia has sent
scores of teenagers to Chad, paying it $6 million in the last three
years, city and state social workers failed to closely monitor how
it was treating those children.
For example, in 2006, Pennsylvania
child-welfare officials sent out a directive strongly discouraging
restraint techniques except as a last resort.
Through a bureaucratic oversight,
that directive was never sent to Chad. On Friday, state officials
said they would make sure Chad got the message.
In Philadelphia, DHS officials
struggled last week to explain why Chad continued to earn their
approval, even as DHS's own inspectors filed reports that found the
center consistently failed to meet many standards.
For example, one 2005 report said
teenagers at the center had complained that staff members had
improperly used physical force to restrain them. They also
complained that staff members had sex with residents and watched
pornography with them.
Before releasing it, the city
censored that section of the report, saying it was related to the
ongoing investigation and needed to be kept secret. The contents
were confirmed by sources familiar with the document.
Throughout last week, DHS released
confusing, contradictory and, at times, incorrect information about
its dealings with Chad, particularly what it knew about the earlier
death.
On Tuesday, Arthur C. Evans Jr.,
the acting DHS commissioner, said in a statement:
"We were not informed of the
previous death. It was the Chad facility's obligation to inform DHS
of the 2005 death, but they did not do so."
By Thursday, DHS admitted that was
not true.
The agency reversed course after
learning that a former Chad executive disputed its account. The
executive said in an interview that he had flown to Philadelphia to
brief DHS officials about the girl's death.
A source at DHS said on Friday that
Evans was initially misinformed by a senior staff member.
Last week, Evans acknowledged
failures in DHS's oversight but said a new system would provide "a
much more accurate picture" of the quality of outside contractors
such as Chad.
Steven Oakman heads the contracting
office at DHS. "I'll have to refer you to the commissioner's
office," Oakman said on Thursday. "All of the statements are coming
out of there."
After Leach died, investigators
descended on Tennessee, including teams from from DHS, Family Court,
and the Philadelphia public defender's office.
They joined local detectives,
child-welfare advocates, and officials from two Tennessee state
child-welfare agencies in touring the Chad grounds. The center is a
20-acre complex in Ashland City in rural Montgomery County,
northwest of Nashville, with a main classroom building, a gym, and
several dorms.
Prentice, who is supervising the
criminal investigation, said the Sheriff's Office had fielded a
number of allegations over the years that Chad residents had been
assaulted, either by staff or by one another.
"There are reports all the time,"
he said. "There's a lot of runaways, stories [from children] that
'We're being abused out there.' We've had some broken arms, some
separated shoulders."
Prentice said victims would stop
cooperating with investigators, apparently because they feared
retaliation from staff or other youths. No charges have been lodged
in any incident, he said.
"They're mostly street kids," he
said. "They think they're better off to keep their mouth shut."
Investigators from Philadelphia
recently spoke with about 20 city children at Chad and heard
allegations that raised "serious concerns," said Robert Listenbee,
chief of the juvenile unit at the public defender's office.
"The general feeling is that there
are a lot of restraints, daily, weekly and monthly," he said.
Before Leach died, Listenbee said,
a child from Philadelphia sustained a broken arm; since the death,
another Philadelphia youth has suffered facial injuries during a
restraint, he said.
"We're concerned about how
frequently they use restraints, the types they use, and the quality
of training they have received," he said.
A troubled young man
Outside the Leach family rowhouse
in a battered part of Southwest Philadelphia, the walls are adorned
with posters with his photo and words of farewell for "Manny," as he
was known to friends and relatives.
His mother, Paulette Dolby, cried
when asked about her son. She referred reporters to a lawyer, Edith
Pearce, who is investigating the death for a possible lawsuit.
Pearce described Leach as an
ordinary teenager who loved basketball and video games and doted on
his younger sister. He carried a grade point average of 2.7 at
Daniel Boone disciplinary school.
"My career goal is to be a lawyer,"
he wrote recently, in words quoted in his funeral program. "I like
helping people, so I plan to be an affordable lawyer, and in that
case I will have to go to college."
His father, Omega Leach Jr., 50,
has been arrested nine times in two decades and has served time for
burglary and drug dealing.
The younger Leach also had a long
history of problems. One psychological report called Leach a "deeply
troubled and difficult young man."
According to official records,
police arrested Leach at age 14 after he allegedly cursed and
threatened students and teachers at his school, Tilden Middle. He
told one teacher he would "shoot him full of shells," police said.
"His mother is very afraid of him
and his behavior," police wrote. The teenager "is out of control."
The city tried to straighten him
out. In January 2005, just before Leach turned 15, he was sent to a
private facility in Virginia.
By the time he was 16, Leach was
back in Southwest Philadelphia. In December, police arrested him for
racing through his neighborhood in a stolen Nissan.
Family Court found that Leach was a
delinquent, as social workers labeled him with this diagnosis:
"conduct disorder."
This time, a judge sent him to
Chad. He arrived May 2.
DHS had been placing children from
neglectful or abusive homes there since 2001.
In 2006, Family Court judges began
using the facility as a destination for a different class of
children - those, like Leach, who had committed crimes.
Dougherty said his judges assumed
that Chad was a good option because DHS had a long history of using
it.
He said it was important that DHS
and the courts "develop a protocol" to make sure judges know much
more about the places where they are sending children.
Mediocre reviews
Even as the city accelerated its
use of Chad, DHS continued to find problems.
Over the past four years, Chad's
best evaluation found it met just 46 percent of DHS standards. Even
so, DHS ranked the place "average" each year - and kept it on the
approved list.
In 2005, Chad met only 34 percent
of applicable standards. The reports found that Chad appeared clean,
but faulted it for poorly documenting its service and for
communicating inadequately with residents' families.
Estelle Richman, Pennsylvania
public welfare secretary, said that performance was unacceptable.
"I would say 40 percent out of 100
percent is a problem," she said.
The DHS commissioner at the time of
the death, Cheryl Ransom Garner, faulted Chad for not reporting
critical incidents to DHS. "We were hearing about them from the
kids," she said.
She said the agency checked out
some of the reports but could not confirm them. On balance, she
said, Chad appeared to be serving children well.
Nowhere in the thick stack of DHS
reports on Chad is there a mention of the death of 14-year-old Linda
Harris on Sept. 18, 2005.
At the time, Chad officials said
she collapsed suddenly while being escorted to a "time-out room"
after an emotional outburst.
Harris, who took antipsychotic
medicines, had a history of going into rages.
The Nashville medical examiner
later ruled she had died of natural causes brought on by a heart
problem and asthma, aggravated by "morbid obesity." She was was 5
feet, 7 inches tall and weighed more than 300 pounds.
Michael G. Lindley, one of Chad's
former owners, said the staff bore no blame for her death. He said
Harris collapsed from a heart attack just moments after a counselor
grabbed her arm.
While a Tennessee child-welfare
investigation cleared the facility and its staff of any wrongdoing,
the state nonetheless decided to stop placing its children there.
"We made a determination it was not
worth the risk," said Randall Lea, assistant to the commissioner of
the Tennessee Department of Children's Services.
Last week, Lea likened the decision
to that of a restaurant inspector who gives a restaurant a 72, when
passing is 70 - but then chooses not to eat there with his family.
"There's a gap between minimum
acceptable standards and optimum practices, and every agency has to
decide what they will settle for within that line," Lea said.
After Linda Harris' death, New York
authorities also stopped sending juveniles to Chad and other
out-of-state facilities.
"We generally like to have an
extremely high confidence level on where we place children," said
John Desmond, director of probation in Suffolk County, which had
sent Harris to Chad shortly before she died.
"If we have questions about safety,
we will not use that facility."
As for Philadelphia, it stopped
sending youths to Chad for several months in 2005, but eventually
resumed. Ransom Garner, who said she met frequently with Chad
officials, said she did not recall discussing Harris' death.
At last count, DHS had 1,554
children in residential centers such as Chad. Of these, 233 were
placed outside Pennsylvania.
Under agency procedure, DHS first
tries to place all youngsters inside the state. Officials say they
send them outside Pennsylvania only as a last resort.
A videotaped scuffle
As sheriff's investigators in
Tennessee set out to figure out why Leach died, they caught a break:
Part of the death struggle was caught on video.
An account of the staff's
confrontation came from Prentice, who is supervising the probe.
A counselor confronted Leach about
2 p.m June 2 and told him to leave his dormitory room. Residents are
not permitted to stay in their rooms all day.
Leach responded by shoving and
trying to choke the counselor. A camera focused on the dorm hallway
caught what happened next: "You see them fly out in the hall, with
the juvenile actually being the aggressor."
The pair then tumbled back into the
same room, out of the camera's view. Another counselor and a nurse
run into the room, and the first counselor walks back into the
hallway, visibly exhausted.
Inside the room, according to
statements from Chad staff, the new counselor applied a restraint
technique as the nurse slipped a piece of plastic under Leach's chin
so he could breathe.
According to the statements, it
appeared that the counselor, though not sitting on Leach, was
putting his weight across him, while bowing his arms back, Prentice
said.
That may have crushed Leach's
diaphragm, he said.
According to a digital timer on the
video, the counselor and the nurse stayed in the room with Leach for
20 minutes. Finally, they emerged and frantically began seeking a
defibrillator.
Prentice said he could not say how
long Leach was under restraint.
According to a 2006 report on
restraint techniques issued by Pennsylvania child-welfare officials,
"research indicates that most deaths occur within the first six
minutes of restraint."
As yet, the medical examiner has
not determined the cause of death. Toxicological results are not
back.
An autopsy did find that Leach,
like Linda Harris, had an enlarged heart. His body bore no bruises
or signs of having been choked, Prentice said.
Prentice said he was deeply
troubled at the second death of a teenager in the facility. He said
he expected a long investigation that would focus in part on the
training given the two counselors, both new hires.
"We have a a lot more to do," he
said. "We've got to stop this. One is too many. Two is ridiculous."
Read a panel's report on DHS's
failures, and recent news coverage, at
http://go.philly.com/dhs
Contact staff writer John Sullivan at 215-854-2473 or
johnsullivan@phillynews.com.
Inquirer staff writer Nancy
Phillips contributed to this article.
Philadelphia teen dies at
Tennessee facility for troubled youth
June 24, 2007
PHILADELPHIA (AP) A teenager sent
to a Tennessee facility for troubled youth by the city's social
services agency died after a confrontation with the center's staff,
prompting Philadelphia officials to consider relocating dozens of
teens who were sent there.
Omega Leach, described by city
officials as a 17-year-old whose many troubles included racing a
stolen car, was sent last month to the Chad Youth Enhancement Center
outside Nashville. The mental health facility for troubled teens was
approved by the Philadelphia Department of Human Services.
But Leach got into a physical
confrontation with the staff on June 3 and died the next day at a
Nashville hospital. He tried to choke one counselor, and another
staffer pushed Leach facedown to the floor and pulled his arms
behind his back, police said.
Investigators are trying to find
out whether Leach was restrained improperly, preventing him from
breathing.
``There's no doubt that the kid had
an attitude and probably needed to be locked up somewhere,'' Sgt.
Brian Prentice, of the Montgomery County, Tenn., Sheriff's Office
told The Philadelphia Inquirer for a story Sunday. ``It doesn't mean
he has to be dead.''
Leach's care was the responsibility
of Philadelphia's Department of Human Services. The department has
come under harsh criticism and seen an administrative shake-up after
reports in The Inquirer detailing the number of children who have
died under its watch.
The agency was paying Chad $285 a
day for Leach's treatment, even though questions had been raised
about the center in the past. In 2005, a 14-year-old Long Island
girl died there of heart failure as she was being escorted by a
counselor.
Now, the Philadelphia agency has
frozen admissions to Chad and says it is putting into place ``a
contingency plan'' for relocating 45 city children still there,
pending further investigation.
A Philadelphia judge criticized the
agency for failing to inform the courts of the 2005 death. Judges
had been sending children to Chad on the agency's recommendation.
``It's disturbing to the point that
it's unacceptable,'' said Kevin Dougherty, administrative judge of
Philadelphia Family Court.
Arthur C. Evans Jr., the city's
acting human services commissioner, originally told The Inquirer
that the agency had not been informed of the 2005 death. But
officials reversed themselves after learning that a former Chad
executive disputed their account, The Inquirer reported.
Evans acknowledged failures in
agency oversight, but said a new system would provide ``a much more
accurate picture'' of the quality of outside contractors such as
Chad.
Chad and its corporate owner,
Universal Health Services Inc. of King of Prussia, declined to
respond to detailed questions. They instead issued a statement to
the newspaper, defending their record.
``We have a reputation and history
of being a high-quality provider of behavioral health and
substance-abuse services to troubled youth and their families,''
Duwayne Glaser, Chad's chief executive officer, said in the
statement.
Information from: The Philadelphia
Inquirer,
http://www.philly.com
Former Chad Youth Center
Employee Speaks Out
June 11, 2007 07:14 AM PDT
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. - The Chad Youth
Enhancement Center for troubled youngsters has come under fire
lately, as investigators try to figure out why a young boy in the
Center's care died. Now, one former employee, who is on the Center's
side, spoke out.
Mike Smith admitted that abuse does
happen, but he said it's not the kids who take the beatings.
According to Smith, the kids are what drove him from his short stint
as a Center employee. Smith also said the kids, who often have
arrest records, know the laws are designed to protect them.
"They can do whatever they want to,
and they know there's nothing going to happen to them. There are no
consequences for whatever they do. They can fight, which they do
every day. I think one day there might have been one fight but most
days two or three fights every, single day," Smith said.
In the wake of allegations of
abuse, the Chad Youth Center is being investigated by at least three
agencies. No one from the Center has ever publicly addressed the
victims' claims.
Omega Leach, 17, of Philadelphia,
Pa., died while staying at the Chad Youth Center. The initial
autopsy has been completed with no definitive cause of death.
The Chad Youth Enhancement Center
in Montgomery County is a treatment center for troubled teens.
Parents Pull Children Out Of
Center Under Investigation
June 7, 2007
WTVF Nashville
 CLARKSVILLE,
Tenn.- A third agency is expected to join state and local agencies
investigating a treatment center for troubled youth.
At least two children have died
while in the care of the Chad Youth Enhancement Center, with the
latest happening this past weekend.
Two more families now admit that
they pulled their youngsters out, fearing for their safety.
The mothers said that their
children have problems and that they welcome help in disciplining
them.
But they claim the center operates
more like a prison.
"I took her out," said parent Norma
Davis.
Davis pulled her daughter from the
center.
"That's it, we're signing him out,"
said another parent Edith Ruland.
Their accusation is that the
center's staff is abusive.
"All of a sudden, I just remember
going down to the ground. And I guess when I raised my head up she
slammed it back down, and my mouth was pouring blood," said Davis'
daughter, Atlanta Redman, who once stayed at the center.
According to Davis, the staff calls
the maneuver a "safety hold" to restrain an out-of-control child.
Davis calls it criminal.
"Her face was black," she said,
referring to pictures showing her daughter with bruises on her face.
"Her whole left side of her face was black."
"It's like they broke her spirit,"
Davis said. "She wouldn't look at me the whole time. Her head was
down. It's like she was ashamed and that really tugged at me."
Dennis Ruland's mother also took
pictures to document alleged abuse against her son.
"I was very upset," Edith Ruland
said. "I was crying. He was crying, 'Momma, please don't make me
stay here. Please don't let me get whooped again.'"
The center is a residential
treatment facility in Montgomery County now under investigation
after the death of a 16-year-old boy.
"That this young man became unruly
and that they tried to restrain him. During the course of their
intervention, this young man may have suffered a heart attack," said
Ted Denny of the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office.
This is the same way 14-year-old
Linda Harris died a year and a half ago. She was forcibly taken out
of a time-out room by staffers.
Even though the center, according
to the families, did more harm than good, it might have been just
enough to scare Redman straight, she said.
"Me doing the things I did wasn't
worth me going down there," Redman said. "And I never want to go
back."
Davis and Ruland said they asked
about the marks on their children, but did not receive any
explanations.
The Montgomery County Sheriff's
Office is investigating the center as well as the Tennessee
Department of Children's Services. An investigator from the
Disability Law and Advocacy Center of Tennessee is expected to join
the investigation.
NewsChannel 5 tried to interview
center officials several times over the last two days, but the
reporters' phone calls were never returned.
Visit NewsChannel5 for Photos and Video
Civil Rights Group to
Investigate Deaths at Montgomery County Youth Center
June 7, 2007
By Terry McMoore
 Civil
Rights Activist and Director of the Urban Resource Center Mr. Terry
McMoore has assembled an investigation team to look into the recent
death of a 17 year old boy who allegedly, died this weekend of
cardiac arrest after being restrained for unruly behavior. This
marks the second time in little less than two years that a youth
housed at the Chad Enhancement Youth Center has died under the same
described circumstances.
Terry McMoore
“I find it very strange that two
healthy teen’s suddenly drop dead upon being restrained for
unruliness by staff members at this facility. Something does not
sound right about these deaths and we intend to do a full
investigation to not only get to the bottom of the truth but to make
sure that the current youths housed at this facility are not being
subjected to physical or life threatening abuse at the hands of
staff members.” - Terry McMoore.
The Chad Youth Enhancement Center
is located at 1751 Oak Plains Road in Clarksville-Montgomery County
TN. The Chad Youth Enhancement Center is a non-custodial placement,
50-bed residential treatment center for youth who have a significant
history of emotional and behavioral problems.
Contact person for this press
release is Mr. Terry McMoore (931) 552-9076 or (931) 378-1999
Email:
terrymcmoore@hotmail.com
Teen dies at local youth
treatment center over weekend
June 7, 2007
By Matt Rennels
The Leaf-Chronicle
A 17-year-old boy died Saturday at
the Chad Youth Enhancement Center, 1751 Oak Plains Road, and
authorities and the Department of Children's Services are
investigating.
Buddy Turner, divisional vice
president at the center, said they had chosen not to speak about the
case while the investigation is ongoing. The child's name has not
been confirmed, but Turner did say that he was not a resident of
Montgomery County.
Montgomery County Sheriff's Office
Spokesman Ted Denny said officials with the center told them the
death occurred when the juvenile was being detained for unruly
behavior and he went into cardiac arrest.
The Chad Youth Enhancement Center
is a non-custodial placement, 50-bed residential treatment center
for boys who have a significant history of emotional and behavioral
problems.
Police Investigate Death At
Child Treatment Center
June 5, 2007
WTVF Nashville
Montgomery County, Tenn.- Police
are investigating the death of a teenager at a treatment center for
troubled children. The 17 year old died over the weekend.
The teen was spending time at the
Chad Youth Enhancement Center in Montgomery County.
Officials with the school told
Montgomery County investigators the teenager became unruly on
Saturday. They restrained the child and something apparently went
wrong. An ambulance took the child to Vanderbilt Children's
Hospital. He died on Sunday.
"I know we've interviewed those
involved. There's not been any dispositions made from the sheriff's
office whether there was any wrong doing. Our investigation is still
on going right now," said Montgomery County Spokesman, Ted Denny.
No one from the youth center will
comment about what happened. The initial autopsy has been completed
with no definitive cause of death. Sources close to the
investigation have identified the teen as Omega Leach,17, of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
|
