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U.S. Rep wants fed probe of Mo.
boot-camp death
October 10, 2007
By Megan Boehnke
WASHINGTON -- A powerful U.S. House
member called today for the Justice Department to look into the
death of a 15-year-old boy at a Missouri “boot camp” in 2004
following release of a report that pointed to evidence of abuse.
Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.,
chairman of the Education and Labor Chairman, asserted during a
hearing that conditions in many residential treatment programs –
better known as youth boot camps – are “inhumane.”
He said he hopes the Justice
Department will examine the fatality at the Thayer Learning Boot
Camp and Boarding School in northwest Missouri considering that no
criminal charges ever were filed.
The Government Accountability
Office, the investigative arm of Congress, studied the Missouri case
and others for a report released on Wednesday.
The GAO said it had found thousands
of allegations of abuse at the boot camps and closely examined ten
cases in which teen-agers enrolled in the programs had died,
including the case at Thayer.
“Ineffective program management
played a key role in most of these deaths, Greg Kutz, who led the
investigation, testified. Advertisement
Kutz said later in an interview
that the Missouri death was “one of the worst three” of the cases.
Roberto Reyes, of Santa Rosa,
Calif., had been at Thayer Learning Boot Camp and Boarding School in
Kidder, for less than a week when he died after being bitten by a
spider in November 2004, according to his autopsy. The Caldwell
County coroner said at the time that the autopsy concluded that the
death was an accident and said Reyes could have been bitten before
he arrived at the camp.
The GAO report presented to the
committee yesterday said Reyes had more than 30 cuts and bruises on
his body when he died. The staff had interpreted Reyes’ symptoms –
including falling down frequently, complaining of muscle soreness,
vomiting and involuntarily urinating and defecating on himself – as
rebellion.
After complaining of illness, Reyes
was forced to the ground and held there on several occasions,
according to the report. On one occasion, he had a 20-pound sandbag
tied around his neck when he was too sick to exercise.
Reyes was placed in the “sick bay”
the morning of the day he died, where a staff member checked on him
mid-afternoon and found he had no pulse. The staff then called 911
and Reyes was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
A state investigation found that
Reyes might have survived if he had earlier medical attention and
that records at the camp may have been falsified. No criminal
charges were ever filed, though Reyes’ parents filed a wrongful
death suit that was settled out of court for about $1 million,
according to the GAO.
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