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Teen home staff raped girls: DA
assaults at lauded facility
August 5, 2007
By Brad Hamilton
Three workers at an acclaimed
residential treatment center for troubled teens - with access to the
psychiatric files of vulnerable patients - repeatedly raped young
girls over the course of at least two years, prosecutors allege.
The indictments refer to four
victims, but one source says they could be just the tip of a
sickening iceberg.
"You've got these guys preying on
young girls," said retired NYPD Detective John Savino, who worked on
the case. "I think there are other victims and other people involved
in criminality."
The charges have rocked the
high-profile August Aichhorn Center for Adolescent Residential
Care at 23 W. 106th St. in Manhattan, which got $5.6 million in
public funding last year and has been widely praised as a model
institution.
The center, with 32 beds, takes in
some of the most disturbed youths in the city - mentally ill and
seriously delinquent adolescents as young as 12, many from broken
homes and guilty of crimes.
"We get the youngsters nobody else
can handle," Michael Pawel, a psychiatrist and the center's
director, told New York magazine in 1999 when it named Pawel one of
the city's best doctors.
But charges brought by the
Manhattan District Attorney's Office in May tell a darker story,
alleging that the three staff members repeatedly had sex with four
different teenagers starting in July 2005.
Milton Venable, 46, was hit with
two counts of third-degree rape after he allegedly had intercourse
with two youths, one of them 16 years old, and with one count of
endangering the welfare of a child.
Phree Noel, 32, and Edward Tapia,
26, were each charged with one count of rape and one count of
endangering the welfare of a child.
In each case, according to the
charges, the sex occurred at the center itself.
Savino described a loosely
monitored environment where Venable and Tapia - "glorified security
guards," he said - had access to the victims' psychological records
and targeted them because they were particularly vulnerable.
And he said there could be more
victims.
"There was mention of at least two
other girls," he said.
Lawyer Bruce Young, who sued the
center last year on behalf of a former patient over a fistfight,
said, "There's a lack of oversight and supervision."
All three defendants have denied
the charges and are free on bail. None could be reached for comment.
A woman who identified herself as
Noel's mother blamed the alleged victim.
"He would never do this to her,"
said the woman, who would not give her name, at 733 Amsterdam Ave.,
Noel's home address.
The facility, which opened in 1991
in a six-floor brownstone, has four living units - three with eight
single bedrooms and one with four doubles, its Web site says.
It includes school, recreational,
clinical, administrative and support space and has about 86
full-time staffers, 46 of them child-care workers, the site says.
The clinical staff includes therapists and teachers.
The center was described by New
York magazine as "part hospital, part jail . . . and feels more like
a college dorm than like a locked-down psych ward."
The kids' rooms are "decorated with
the covers of hip-hop magazines and movie posters, and the relaxed
posture of the erstwhile menaces as they do their homework together
in the hallways."
The center gets grants from the
state Office of Mental Health and other agencies.
"Pawel's commitment to young people
is outstanding," Susan Thaler, an office official, told New York.
"He's really giving them a second chance."
In 2001, then-Gov. George Pataki
wrote a letter to the center, saying, "Through the committed work of
community-based organizations like yours, we will continue to
advance the well-being of young adults in your community and the
entire state."
One former staff member said she
wouldn't be surprised if the rape charges were true.
"These kids are really vulnerable -
they trust you. Some have been sexually abused by parents or
relatives," she said.
"If they were raped, this is bad
news. Those guys should go to jail."
Additional reporting by Hasani
Gittens, Eric Lenkowitz and Jana Winter
brad.hamilton@nypost.com
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