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| * Story Highlights * U.S. Justice Department suing 11 jurisdictions, alleging abuse of teen inmates * Girls as young as 13 say they were shackled for days at Mississippi lock-up * An official at a Texas jail allegedly offered birthday cake for sex with teen * "It's a nationwide crisis," says expert with 30 years experience in juvenile justice |
JACKSON, Mississippi -- Girls
as young as 13 say they were shackled for weeks at a time in Mississippi.
A Texas teen was allegedly offered birthday cake in exchange for sex.
A guard drove his knee into the neck of a frail suicidal Ohio boy after the
youth was wrestled to the ground and held down by other guards who stripped him
and covered his face with a smock, a state report said.
More than two dozen girls at an Indiana lock-up describe "networking" -- their
term for sneaking into each other's cells to have sex, with no interference from
guards.
This is a glimpse into what America's juvenile jails look like, according to
lawsuits, criminal cases and experts who have spent years delving into what they
call a broken system.
"It's a nationwide crisis that has been going on for years, one the public has
never been told the extent of," said psychiatric social worker Jerome Miller,
the co-founder of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, who has
evaluated and helped reform juvenile jails for more than three decades.
This summer, Mississippi plans to close Columbia Training School, a juvenile
facility that houses mostly minor offenders. They are often runaways from
abusive homes. Listen to stories of Mississippi's teen lock-ups »
Erica was 16 when she was sentenced to Columbia after running away, a probation
violation of an earlier marijuana conviction.
She admits she was a girl quick to sass her parents, full of anger about the
death of a relative that happened around the same time Katrina wrecked her
family's Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, home.
Nervously touching a sparkly barrette in her red hair, she cries as she
describes how guards forced her legs into tight metal shackles. She said
she was cuffed and chained when she ate and used the bathroom -- and was even
forced to play soccer that way against other girls.
Guards called her "Chain Gang," she said.
"I will always remember them things around my ankles, the way they cut into me,"
she said, pulling up her pant leg to show slash-mark scars on her ankles and
heels. "They made you feel like you were nothing."
Represented by attorneys with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Erica and nine
other girls housed at Columbia are suing the state, claiming they endured a
range of sexual and physical abuse, including shackling. Don Desper, a
licensed therapist and former employee at Columbia who opposed the practice,
told CNN it was used to prevent the teens from escaping.
In a handwritten affidavit, a 15-year-old girl described a male guard molesting
her. She wrote: "He came inside my cell half way half of his body
and he started touching me and he tryed (sic) to kiss me and then he left he
came back with my snack in his hand and he opened my cell again and he started
grabbing me around my waist and he tryed (sic) to stick his hands in my pants
and I started crying."
When the lawsuit was filed in 2007, a U.S. Justice Department monitor was making
periodic inspections at Columbia as part of a 2005 settlement with Mississippi
in a previous case. The Justice investigation that led to that settlement
found Columbia youths were hog-tied, forced to strip and eat their own vomit and
were held in isolation in what was called the "Dark Room," a windowless room
with a hole in the floor used as a toilet. Read the Justice Department
report that describes girls being shackled to poles
Hundreds of youths have allegedly suffered similar abuse at juvenile detention
centers across the United States, according to experts interviewed by CNN and
court records checked for this story.
The U.S. Justice Department has sued nine states and two territories alleging
abuse, inadequate mental and medical care and potentially dangerous methods like
the use of restraints. The department doesn't have the power to shut down
facilities -- states do -- but through litigation it can force a state to
improve its detention centers and protect the civil rights of jailed youths.
Another facility under Justice scrutiny is Oakley Training School near Jackson,
Mississippi, which was sued by the department at the same time as Columbia.
Gov. Haley Barbour recently announced Columbia's inmates would be transferred
this summer to Oakley when Columbia is closed.
But the Justice Department said Oakley has satisfied barely a fraction of
requirements the department set for it years ago. According to a March
2008 Justice report, there is an "enormous amount of work" needed to make Oakley
a safe and productive place to rehabilitate troubled teens.
Barbour would not respond to questions for this report. The Mississippi
Department of Human Services, which runs Columbia and Oakley, refused to answer
most of a CNN public records request citing pending litigation and also declined
to be interviewed.
The U.S. Justice Department could not talk specifically about ongoing cases, but
civil rights division assistant attorney general Lisa Krigsten noted the
department is going after double the number of juvenile jails for civil rights
violations during the Bush administration than in any previous administration.
"We take this seriously and are committed to protecting the vulnerable children
who are in these places," she said.
A CNN check of other juvenile facilities shows that, despite years of court
wrangling, serious problems persist.
In Ohio, a dozen employees at the Scioto Juvenile Correctional Facility have
been indicted since 2003 on charges relating to physical and sexual abuse of
youth, according to a May 2007 Justice report. Five were convicted of various
charges, including sexual battery and assault; six cases were dismissed and a
jury found one employee not guilty.
In January, a state-hired consultant blamed a "culture of violence" in Ohio's
juvenile jails for numerous abuses. The expert's report details examples
of "egregious use of force" by guards and included a video he viewed of a 2007
incident in which a "frail" boy who was threatening to harm himself was
restrained by guards.
The boy was wrestled to the ground, cuffed and stripped, with one guard seen
putting his full body weight on the boy's back while driving his knee into the
boy's neck.
A so-called "Suicide Smock" was placed "over his airways," the report said. "The
youth actually screams that he can't breathe."
In response to the report, the Ohio Department of Youth Services, which oversees
detention facilities, has installed more surveillance cameras and beefed up its
mental health care staff, spokeswoman Andrea Kruse said.
"We're doing everything we can to improve," she said.
On Thursday, Ohio announced settlement of a suit brought by Children's Law
Center of Kentucky. It will add up to $30 million annually to its juvenile
justice budget and hire more guards, psychologists and teachers for its system.
Accusations similar to those made in Ohio were made at a Florida boot camp in
2006. Martin Lee Anderson, 14, was seen on surveillance tape being beaten
and restrained by guards. Anderson later died. Seven guards and a nurse
were acquitted of manslaughter in October.
Since then, the NAACP's Florida chapter has called for an investigation of the
state's teen jails, noting at least seven youths have died at lock-ups since
2000, including 17-year-old Omar Paisley, who died at a Miami detention center
of a ruptured appendix after begging for help during three days that he was in
pain.
A grand jury found that two nurses repeatedly failed to help Paisley. They
are charged with third degree murder and manslaughter, have pleaded not guilty
and are scheduled for trial in July.
Florida issued a report in January asking for more than 50 changes to its system
and a partnership with the Department of Education to attack problems before
kids drop out of school. Overall, the report calls for treating troubled
kids with therapy as an alternative to jail.
Texas is grappling with the fallout from reports of long-term sexual abuse at
its facilities, where, since 2000, more than 90 Texas Youth Commission employees
-- roughly one a month -- have been sanctioned or fired for sexual misconduct
with adolescents, commission spokesman Jim Hurley told CNN.
Texas granted early release in February to a 16-year-old girl who attempted
suicide after she was allegedly molested repeatedly by a male guard. The
guard was indicted in December on four counts of molesting the girl. He
was previously charged with raping four other female inmates, but those charges
were dropped, said Hurley, after witnesses retracted their accounts.
This spring, two administrators at a west Texas youth facility are scheduled to
stand trial on charges they were having sex with juvenile inmates, one allegedly
enticing a teen to perform sex acts for birthday cake. The men resigned in
2005, Hurley said.
Texas recently has added hundreds more surveillance cameras and personnel to its
facilities to avoid more problems, he said.
"Girls are sexually abused in these institutions more often than the public
would believe," said Paul DeMuro, a delinquency expert who in 2002 inspected
Columbia for the Justice Department and is now a consultant for the Southern
Poverty Law Center. Nationwide, the Justice Department has said 2,821
allegations of sex abuse were made in 2004, the most recent data on the topic
available.
An Indiana juvenile judge said there's another dimension of sexual misconduct
happening at Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility -- inmate on inmate
sex.
State Judge Peter Nemeth is refusing to send female offenders to the lock-up
after a team of delinquency experts interviewed a total of 31 girls at the
facility. The girls described "networking," or sneaking into each other's cells
for sex. Members of the team told CNN that locks on cells were not working,
allowing the young women to leave and enter their cells whenever they wish.
One girl interviewed said a guard had participated in the sex.
"It's a dangerous place," said Nemeth, who is sending youths to two other
facilities at more than twice the cost to taxpayers. "It seems like chaos
to me, very little discipline. The girls say they are running the place."
In March, the Indiana Department of Correction said it is transferring boys at
the facility to another lock-up, which Nemeth hopes will allow more staffers to
oversee the girls section. "It may be a step in the right direction," he
said, but won't necessarily solve the problem of girls frequently having sex
with other girls.
Before March, the judge detailed his concerns in two letters to Gov. Mitch
Daniels, whose office referred all questions for this story to Indiana
Department of Correction spokesman Doug Garrison.
"We disagree with the judge's characterization," Garrison said, adding that no
investigation at the facility has substantiated the girls' claims.
When Erica was held at Columbia, she said she didn't think anyone would believe
her accounts of abuse. It's taken months of therapy, including some
counseling at a YMCA, which she found in her small Mississippi hometown.
Erica talks about wanting to be an attorney. It's the first time in her
life she is considering her future. She tries not to think about
Columbia, but smiles when she talks about the facility closing.
"I'm happy, real happy," said Erica. "That means nobody is going to get
hurt there again."
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