Author Topic: Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?  (Read 13242 times)

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Offline Anonymous

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Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?
« on: December 06, 2007, 05:51:27 PM »
This has been all over the news about the kid going on this shooting rampage in Nebraska. There was a small mention from a reporter that said something to the effect that either the parents or the courts had sent him to a school in Missouri for treatment. Could that be Thayer Learning Center?
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Offline Anonymous

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Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?
« Reply #1 on: December 06, 2007, 09:37:35 PM »
Hey, I'm getting good at this possession thing!
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Offline TheWho

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Re: Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?
« Reply #2 on: December 06, 2007, 09:52:33 PM »
Quote from: ""TLC""
This has been all over the news about the kid going on this shooting rampage in Nebraska. There was a small mention from a reporter that said something to the effect that either the parents or the courts had sent him to a school in Missouri for treatment. Could that be Thayer Learning Center?


If he didnt it wouldnt take a genius to know he needed some type of help and didnt get it.
Prime example of not just letting every kid just grow out of their problems, ignore the warning signs and work things out on their own.

The kid should have gotten some type of help.
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Offline Anonymous

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Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?
« Reply #3 on: December 06, 2007, 09:58:22 PM »
Fuck off, Who.

Kid gets sent to "therapeutic school" in Missouri. Kid gets out. Kid kills a lot of people.

Occam's Razor speaking: He got the "help" he didn't need, and it opened his heart to omnicidal rage.
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Offline Anonymous

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Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?
« Reply #4 on: December 06, 2007, 10:02:04 PM »
Quote from: ""Guest""
it opened his heart to omnicidal rage.

Sometimes reading this forum opens my heart to that, too. :)
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Offline TheWho

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Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?
« Reply #5 on: December 06, 2007, 10:02:51 PM »
Quote from: ""Guest""
Fuck off, Who.

Kid gets sent to "therapeutic school" in Missouri. Kid gets out. Kid kills a lot of people.

Occam's Razor speaking: He got the "help" he didn't need, and it opened his heart to omnicidal rage.


So tens of thousands of kids benefit from Therapeutic schools every year and one kid shoots up a mall and its the schools fault.  

Very realistic conclusion.
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Offline TheWho

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Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?
« Reply #6 on: December 06, 2007, 10:08:03 PM »
Quote from: ""Guest""
Quote from: ""Guest""
it opened his heart to omnicidal rage.
Sometimes reading this forum opens my heart to that, too. :)


Know what you mean.  How can we blame everything on these schools?  The kids that shot up Columbine highschool never went to wilderness or a therapeutic school.
How can that be explained?  Seems everyone is looking for some thread of a link to make the Therapeutic schools look bad and at the same time ignore all the kids who are benefiting from them.
Very strange argument position with very little evidence.
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Offline TheWho

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Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?
« Reply #7 on: December 06, 2007, 10:08:17 PM »
Quote from: ""Guest""
Quote from: ""Guest""
it opened his heart to omnicidal rage.
Sometimes reading this forum opens my heart to that, too. :)


Know what you mean.  How can we blame everything on these schools?  The kids that shot up Columbine highschool never went to wilderness or a therapeutic school.
How can that be explained?  Seems everyone is looking for some thread of a link to make the Therapeutic schools look bad and at the same time ignore all the kids who are benefiting from them.
Very strange argument position with very little evidence.
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Offline Anonymous

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Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?
« Reply #8 on: December 06, 2007, 10:08:37 PM »
Who, trying to hide yourself by making your grammar a little worse only makes me laugh at you. You're the only person on this board who actually believes that "tens of thousands were helped" crap.

Let's see how many were helped by taking a glance over at the CEDU people trying to find their fellow victims.. in jail, suicide, in jail, surviving with a maximum of hate for the program and their parents (the ones with this attitude always seem to do the best), in jail for life on three-strikes-you're-out.. Huh. Some help that is.
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Offline TheWho

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Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?
« Reply #9 on: December 06, 2007, 10:13:49 PM »
Quote from: ""Guest""
Who, trying to hide yourself by making your grammar a little worse only makes me laugh at you. You're the only person on this board who actually believes that "tens of thousands were helped" crap.

Let's see how many were helped by taking a glance over at the CEDU people trying to find their fellow victims.. in jail, suicide, in jail, surviving with a maximum of hate for the program and their parents (the ones with this attitude always seem to do the best), in jail for life on three-strikes-you're-out.. Huh. Some help that is.


Have you ever heard of anyone in jail who blames themselves?

Cut us all a break.  They screwed their lives up and now they want to blame their parents or the last school they attended or the last girlfriend/boyfriend they dated.
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Offline Anonymous

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Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?
« Reply #10 on: December 06, 2007, 10:29:50 PM »
Quote from: ""Guest""
Quote from: ""Guest""
Who, trying to hide yourself by making your grammar a little worse only makes me laugh at you. You're the only person on this board who actually believes that "tens of thousands were helped" crap.

Let's see how many were helped by taking a glance over at the CEDU people trying to find their fellow victims.. in jail, suicide, in jail, surviving with a maximum of hate for the program and their parents (the ones with this attitude always seem to do the best), in jail for life on three-strikes-you're-out.. Huh. Some help that is.

Have you ever heard of anyone in jail who blames themselves?

Cut us all a break.  They screwed their lives up and now they want to blame their parents or the last school they attended or the last girlfriend/boyfriend they dated.


Have you ever heard of an abusive program that blames itself, and takes responsibility for the damages it causes? Why don't you be the first, who. Blame yourself for the damage you've caused, and the crimes that you've committed

Oh, yeah. If you're trying to distract parents from the consequences of torturing kids with pseudo therapy, you’re not doing a good job.

In your cult brain your program can save kids, but not harm them, and shutting some kid up in a box for 5 years has no effect on the kid that can be blamed on the abuser…but not everyone is evil and crazy.
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Offline Anonymous

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Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?
« Reply #11 on: December 06, 2007, 10:30:08 PM »
Don't you love the shifting around of personal responsibility?

"If the kid survives without getting into trouble, he was clearly helped by the program, because without that, he would surely be dead or in jail! Oh wait, he IS dead or in jail? Then it was his own fault!"
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Offline Deborah

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Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?
« Reply #12 on: December 06, 2007, 11:48:21 PM »
By ANNA JO BRATTON and NATE JENKINS | Associated Press Writers
11:06 PM EST, December 6, 2007

OMAHA, Neb. - The young man who killed eight people and committed suicide in a shooting rampage at a department store spent four years in a series of treatment centers, group homes and foster care after threatening to kill his stepmother in 2002.

Finally, in August 2006, social workers, the courts and his father all agreed: It was time for Robert Hawkins to be released -- nine months before he turned 19 and would have been required to leave anyway.

The group homes and treatment centers were for youths with substance abuse, mental or behavioral problems.

On Thursday, while some of those who knew Hawkins called the massacre Wednesday at a busy Omaha mall unexpected, not everyone was surprised.

"He should have gotten help, but I think he needed someone to help him and needed someone to be there when in the past he's said he wanted to kill himself," said Karissa Fox, who said she knew Hawkins through a friend. "Someone should have listened to him."

Todd Landry, state director of children and family services, said court records do not show precisely why Hawkins was released. But he said that if Hawkins should not have been set free, someone would have raised a red flag.

"It is my opinion, it was not a failure of the system to provide appropriate services," Landry said. "If that was an issue, any of the participants in the case would have brought that forward."

After reviewing surveillance tape, a suicide note and Hawkins' last conversations with those close to him, police said they don't know -- and may never know -- exactly why Hawkins went to the Von Maur store at Westroads Mall and shot more than a dozen people.

But he clearly planned ahead, walking through the store, exiting, then returning a few minutes later with a gun concealed in a balled-up sweat shirt he was carrying, authorities said.

Debora Maruca-Kovac, a woman who with her husband took Hawkins into their home because he had no other place to live, told the Omaha World-Herald that the night before the shooting, Hawkins and her sons showed her a semiautomatic rifle. She said she thought the gun looked too old to work.

Police believe Hawkins was using that AK-47 when he stormed off a third-floor elevator at the store and started shooting.

Police said they have found no connections between the 19-year-old and the six employees and two shoppers he killed.

"The shooting victims were randomly selected," as was the location of the shooting, Omaha Police Chief Thomas Warren said.

Acquaintances said that Hawkins was a drug user and that he had a history of depression. In 2005 and 2006, according to court records, he underwent psychiatric evaluations, the reasons for which Landry would not disclose, citing privacy rules.

In May 2002, he was sent to a treatment center in Waynesville, Mo., after threatening his stepmother. Four months later, a Nebraska court decided Hawkins' problems were serious enough that he should be under state supervision and made him a ward of the state.

He went through a series of institutions in Nebraska as he progressed through the system: months at a treatment center and group home in Omaha in 2003; time in a foster care program and treatment center in 2004 and 2005; then a felony drug-possession charge later in 2005. Landry said the court records do not identify the drug.

The drug charge was eventually dropped, but he was jailed in 2006 for not performing community service as required.

On Aug. 21, 2006, he was released from state custody.

Under state law, Landry said, wards are released when all sides -- parents, courts, social workers -- agree it is time for them to go. Once Hawkins was set free, he was entirely on his own. He was no longer under state supervision, and was not released into anyone's custody.

Ahh. The exit plan.

"When our role is ended, we try to step out," said Chris Peterson, director of the state Department of Health and Human Services.

About an hour before the shootings, Hawkins called Maruca-Kovac and told her he had written a suicide note, Maruca-Kovac said. In the note, Hawkins wrote that he was "sorry for everything" and would not be a burden on his family anymore. More ominously, he wrote: "Now I'll be famous."

"He had said how much he loved his family and all his friends and how he was sorry he was a burden to everybody and his whole life he was a piece of (expletive) and now he'll be famous," Maruca-Kovac said on CBS' "The Early Show," describing the note. "I was fearful that he was going to try to commit suicide, but I had no idea that he would involve so many other families."

Bellevue police on Thursday arrested a 17-year-old friend of Hawkins who they said threatened to kill a teenage girl. The girl had made remarks about Hawkins that offended his friend, Chief John Stacey said.

The teen was being held in a juvenile detention center on suspicion of making terroristic threats, Stacey said. Police found a rifle and two shotguns at the teen's house, weapons he had access to, the chief said.

The shoppers that Hawkins killed were Gary Scharf, 48, of Lincoln, and John McDonald, 65, of Council Bluffs, Iowa. The employees killed were Angie Schuster, 36; Maggie Webb, 24; Janet Jorgensen, 66; Diane Trent, 53; Gary Joy, 56; and Beverly Flynn, 47, all of Omaha.

* __

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Nate Jenkins in Lincoln, Neb., and Oskar Garcia in Omaha.
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Hidden Lake Academy, after operating 12 years unlicensed will now be monitored by the state. Access information on the Federal Class Action lawsuit against HLA here: http://www.fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?t=17700

Offline Anonymous

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About Piney Ridge Center
« Reply #13 on: December 07, 2007, 05:57:11 AM »
From: http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs ... /1006/NEWS

[qoute]For the past eight months, Michael Talmo has tried his best to fix the Piney Ridge Center, a private, 60-bed juvenile psychiatric treatment facility in Missouri, where allegations of patient abuse, rape, kidnapping and riots have worked against his self-described reputation as a fixer.

The townsfolk living near the facility call it a hellhole.

"That's why they sent me there," Talmo explained. "I was only there eight months."

Located within the city limits of Waynesville, problems at Piney Ridge have strained the scant emergency services of the small town.

In September, one of Talmo's youth care workers was charged with kidnapping and raping a female patient,a 17-year-old who ran away with the staffer voluntarily.

The teen suffered from what one Missouri state trooper described as extreme post-traumatic stress disorder.

Waynesville Police Chief Don McCulloch said "the employee got intimate with one of the patients. It was all voluntarily. She was of age. They're emancipated at 17 in Missouri."

Last month, in the middle of fallout from the Missouri kidnapping case, Talmo was recruited by Vince Meconi, secretary of the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services, to replace Susan Watson Robinson as director of the Delaware Psychiatric Center.

Talmo takes over the Delaware facility in two weeks, armed with assurances from Meconi that he will have the authority and the support needed to make changes.

Meconi said he had "some awareness" there were problems at the Missouri facility and that he knew about the kidnapping and rape charges when he recruited Talmo.

"I heard about that," Meconi said.

The Piney Ridge staffer has pleaded not guilty.

Talmo says he regrets leaving his work in Missouri unfinished. Those who live in Waynesville, a town of 4,000, have grown accustomed to a constant stream of administrators at Piney Ridge.

The Waynesville police chief has never met Talmo, or most of the previous administrators. McCulloch said he and his 20 officers respond to Piney Ridge most often when children run away.

"Most of them are misdirected kids," he said. "Most of them are not from Missouri."

Six police agencies responded to Piney Ridge in August 2006 after staff reported a riot.

Waynesville Fire Chief Doug Yurecko and his firefighters were called to help ventilate the buildings after police used pepper spray to quell what turned out to be a disturbance involving a handful of youth.

"We've has some minor fires there, when a juvenile set a fire, and we've been involved with other fires," Yurecko said of his 25 volunteer firefighters. "The staff come and go. I don't know what their pay scale is, but if I go there one month, the next month I won't see the same faces."

Compared to a state hospital, Piney Ridge isn't very big, Yurecko said.

With 60 beds, Piney Ridge is one-fourth the size of the Delaware Psychiatric Center, with its average daily census of 245 patients. In addition, the juvenile population suffers from emotional, psychological and behavioral problems that are minor when compared to the serious psychological illnesses among the patients at DPC.

In their testimony before the various groups investigating DPC, Meconi and his management team, which now includes Talmo, have stressed the severity of illnesses at DPC, which include schizophrenia, personality disorders, dementia and behavioral concerns such as pica, the eating of materials that are not food products, such as batteries and toilet paper.

Assurances

The last time Talmo ran the Delaware Psychiatric Center, micromanaging by senior officials and an inflexible system prevented him from making changes he felt were necessary to improve the facility.

This time, Meconi has assured him he'll be able to make his own decisions without interference.

"That was part of our discussion when the secretary called me -- what's it going to be like, and do I have the autonomy to get to say what's wrong," Talmo told The News Journal. "I got assurances that I would get his full support. That was the deciding factor."

Talmo, who has supervised adult and juvenile psychiatric facilities in nearly a dozen states, said he's garnered a reputation as a fixer.

"Mike has a good track record of improving facilities," Meconi said. "He improved the facility when he was here previously, and I expect him to do it now."

This is the second time Talmo has replaced Robinson at Delaware's state hospital.

The 58-year-old Delaware native first served as DPC director from late 2001 through the end of 2004 and was credited with bringing DPC back from the brink of decertification.

When Talmo was brought in in 2001, Robinson, then the deputy of Renata Henry, who directs the Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health, had been serving as acting DPC director for four months. Robinson took over when former director Wesley Perkins resigned after allegations of short staffing prompted federal intervention.

One of the reasons Talmo left in 2004 was because of interference from Henry, some current staffers said.

Talmo, who will again report directly to Henry when he starts work, said it wasn't Henry so much as an inflexible system that caused him to leave.

"It comes with the territory," he said. "It's part of working with a big system -- lots of competing voices. I wouldn't put it all on Renata. I would put it on working in a state system."

When Talmo walks in the door, he'll be making $130,000 a year -- about $40,000 more than Robinson made while in charge of the facility. After resigning as director, Robinson became deputy director of the facility, a well-protected merit position.

"When she was Renata's assistant, I thought she was pretty sharp," Talmo said of his future deputy. "What she did at the facility, I really don't know."

Meconi said he plans to resume weekly meetings with the DPC director, something he did not do when Robinson ran DPC.

"Mike is going to be part of a team," Meconi explained. "He is in a chain of command. He is not going to be micromanaged."

Talmo, Meconi said, will report directly to Henry, adding, "but I expect everyone to work collaboratively."

Henry did not respond to calls or e-mails seeking comment.

Meconi's spokesman, Jay Lynch said in an e-mail, "In response to your request to speak with Ms. Henry I offer the following statement: We look forward to having Mr. Talmo join the leadership team of the Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health. His extensive experience in psychiatric hospital management will be an asset to the hospital, the Division and the community."

Proposed changes

Talmo promised to consult with the line staff at DPC once he returns.

"I need to be out and about," he said. "I'll talk to everybody. I plan to come in at night and weekends. I want to see what's happening since I was there last, see how bad it is. If it is bad, I want to make that assessment myself."

He's inheriting a hospital where the staff is polarized into cliques. Some of these groups have submitted petitions calling for unpopular staffers to be removed.

"You'll have more of these cliques when a facility is under fire," he said. "People need to talk to each other."

As part of its ongoing investigation into conditions of care at DPC, The News Journal has documented allegations of patient abuse and sexual assault that have led to felony assault and rape charges against two former DPC attendants. More than six federal and state agencies are conducting separate investigations into patient care and supervision at the state hospital.

Talmo said he's got a one-strike-and-you're-out policy regarding patient abuse.

"I don't tolerate patient abuse," he said. "To have someone discharged, there's a process. You've got to go through the process, but they'll not work in the building as long as I'm there."

Since the newspaper began investigating DPC, Meconi, Henry and Robinson have made few public comments, except when testifying before the various groups investigating the facility.

Talmo promised to be available when questions of patient abuse or other incidents arise.

"It's a public facility," he said. "The public has a right to know."

He said no one has ordered him not to talk to the public.

"I haven't been yet, and hopefully I won't be," he said.
[/quote]
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Offline TheWho

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Robert A. Hawkins/ mall shooting/Thayer Learning Center?
« Reply #14 on: December 07, 2007, 11:27:50 AM »
Quote from: ""Guest""
Don't you love the shifting around of personal responsibility?

"If the kid survives without getting into trouble, he was clearly helped by the program, because without that, he would surely be dead or in jail! Oh wait, he IS dead or in jail? Then it was his own fault!"


It goes on and on here at fornits, you would be amazed at how responsibility is shifted around here on a daily basis.  (1,500 kids commit suicide every year who have never seen a program). You take some “at-riskâ€
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