Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => Public Sector Gulags => Topic started by: Oscar on January 08, 2010, 07:23:11 AM
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From Miami Herald: Report: Sex abuse high at 13 juvenile centers (http://http://www.miamiherald.com/692/story/1413773-p2.html), By DEVLIN BARRETT and DENA POTTER, January 7, 2010
It is the same in Denmark and properly in every country where you place a lot of teens behind bars. We are trying to deal with it, but it is difficult to prevent.
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The Miami Herald
Report: Sex abuse high at 13 juvenile centers (http://http://www.miamiherald.com/692/story/1413773-p2.html)
By DEVLIN BARRETT and DENA POTTER
Associated Press Writer
Posted on Thursday, 01.07.10
WASHINGTON -- Nearly one out of every three youths at 13 juvenile detention facilities have reported some type of sexual victimization, according to a government study issued Thursday that found widespread reports of youth sex abuse at correctional centers.
Nationwide about 12 percent of youths held in state-run, privately run, or local facilities reported some type of sexual victimization, the Justice Department found in the first report of its kind. The rates varied widely between facilities.
Victimization included forced sexual activity with another youth and all sexual activity with staff.
"They were convicted of a crime. They have to serve time but they shouldn't serve time in a manner in which they're going to be abused or assaulted," said Troy Erik Isaac, 36, who said he was sexually assaulted in a California juvenile facility.
At 12, Isaac was sent to a juvenile center for vandalism, and within days his 16-year-old cell mate raped him during the night, he said. Isaac reported it and eventually was moved. But Isaac said the rapes continued as guards looked the other way and he became too afraid to fight back.
"It's a traumatizing experience for someone that is young. You take that with you wherever you go," said Isaac, who spent most of his life in and out of prison until he started a community service organization, Hands On Advocacy Group, two years ago.
About 26,550 juveniles are held in such facilities around the country, and the survey - conducted for the government by Westat, a company based on Rockville, Md. - collected information from about 9,000 of them via anonymous computerized questionnaire. The survey was conducted from June 2008 through April 2009 and asked whether the young inmates had been abused in the previous year of detention.
About 10 percent of youths surveyed reported abuse involving facility staff people, and nearly all of those complaints were against female staffers, who made up less than half of the workers. About 2 percent of the reported abuse involving other young inmates.
Although advocates said the level of abuse wasn't surprising, the prevalence of sexual abuse by staff, particularly female workers, was shocking, said Linda McFarlane, deputy executive director of Just Detention International, which fights to end sexual abuse of those who are detained.
"Many of these are already the most vulnerable and traumatized youth from all of our communities and they're placed for custody because they're considered to be a danger," she said. "If sexually abused in those very institutions that are supposed to help them prepare for life in the community, then it's just an incredible travesty."
The study identified six facilities where the survey found at least three out of every 10 inmates said they were sexually victimized while in custody: Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility in Indiana; Corsicana Residential Treatment Center in Texas; Backbone Mountain Youth Center in Swanton, Md.; Samarkand Youth Development Center in Eagle Springs, N.C.; Cresson Secure Treatment Unit in Pennsylvania; and the Culpeper Juvenile Correctional Center, Long Term, in Mitchells, Va.
Another seven sites reported nearly as high levels of sexual abuse or victimization: Victory Field Correctional Academy in Vernon, Texas; Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility; Shawono Center in Grayling, Michigan; Woodland Hills Youth Development Center in Nashville, Tenn.; L.E. Rader Center in Sand Springs, Okla.; Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center in Virginia; New Jersey Training School in Monroe Township, N.J.
The numbers were far different than the records kept by many states. Officials in several states, including Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee, New Jersey and Maryland, said they had very few or no substantiated complaints of sexual abuse in recent years at the facilities named in the report.
In New Jersey, the Juvenile Justice Commission has concerns with the Justice report, including "methodological problems often associated with self-reporting."
The Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice was shocked that it had two facilities on the list, spokesman Bruce Twyman said. In the last year, the department had increased training for staff and upgraded video surveillance to combat sexual abuse, he said.
"It's not something that we're proud of," Twyman said. "We look at it from this standpoint: Any sexual victimization is one too many so we want to be very aggressive about rooting it out, there's no question about that."
Indiana Department of Correction spokesman Doug Garrison said the agency saw the report as an opportunity to reinforce to staff and inmates that it has a "zero tolerance" policy toward sex.
"There's no such thing as consensual sex in a correctional facility, certainly not in a juvenile facility either," he said.
In Texas, the news comes amid major reforms following a widely publicized abuse scandal.
"We have a zero tolerance policy on sexual misconduct," said Jim Hurley, spokesman for the Texas Youth Commission. "This is a very important subject for us, and something we are on top of at the Texas Youth Commission."
During the time the survey was conducted the agency had 23 allegations of sexual misconduct. One was adjudicated and two remain open.
Genger Galloway, of Crockett, Texas, fought for many of the reforms that are in place now. Her son, Joseph, who was jailed for molesting his siblings at 15, said he was sexually assaulted by a female staff member and beaten and sodomized by a male inmate as a guard stood by in 2003.
Galloway lobbied the Texas legislature for change, but she said it was too late for her son.
"My son will never be the same," she said. "My son is full of hatred."
Staff sexual misconduct was higher in state-run facilities than in privately or locally operated sites, the study found, and smaller facilities tended to have fewer reports of sexual victimization.
Potter contributed from Richmond, Va. Associated Press writers Kelley Shannon contributed from Austin, Texas; Emery Dalesio from Raleigh, N.C.; Charles Wilson from Indianapolis; Dave Dishneau from Hagerstown, Md.; Travis Loller from Nashville, Tenn.; Beth DeFalco from Trenton, N.J.; and Ramit Plushnick-Masti from Pittsburgh.
Copyright 2010 Miami Herald Media Co. All rights reserved
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People should not be suprised by this.
Where would you expect to find pediphiles working?
Certainly not at the old folks home.
This shit goes on everywhere there are kids.
School, youth sports,church,Boy scouts........
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People should not be suprised by this.
Where would you expect to find pediphiles working?
Certainly not at the old folks home.
This shit goes on everywhere there are kids.
School, youth sports,church,Boy scouts........
Good point.
and from before.....
Staff sexual misconduct was higher in state-run facilities than in privately or locally operated sites, the study found, and smaller facilities tended to have fewer reports of sexual victimization.
This has always been the sense that I had and makes for a good argument for placing kids in private TBS's or programs vs State run programs. The safety we find in the smaller programs clearly out weighs their lack of regulation and government oversight.
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The safety we find in the smaller programs clearly out weighs their lack of regulation and government oversight.
Sergey Blashchishena disagrees with that assessment.
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I think we can agree that privately run or publicly run or privately run and publicly funded, the larger the program the more problems you're going to have, the less oversight (as opposed to regulation - i.e. Utah plenty of regulation, little oversight) the more problems you're going to have.
The issue of abuse in juvenile detention placements is one that all of us should be concerned about. When young people who have been in juvenile detention start speaking out about the abuse they suffered on a daily basis, the way survivors of privately run programs have been, then maybe we can look forward to real action being taken. This report is certainly a start.
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I think we can agree that privately run or publicly run or privately run and publicly funded, the larger the program the more problems you're going to have
Not necessarily. Consider all the "parents" out there who run their own homes as mini-programs. There was another very small one with four girls, run only by a man and wife; after three of the four tied her up and beat her with a frying pan (LOL PWNED, should have hit her harder!), they got out of it after that.
The only difference between a larger and smaller program is that the larger one can abuse more kids at one time.
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State Will Ask Juvenile Inmates If They've Been Victimized Behind Bars (http://http://www.wibc.com/news/Story.aspx?ID=1182812), Eric Berman, WIBC, January 8, 2010
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wholoter wrote:
This has always been the sense that I had and makes for a good argument for placing kids in private TBS's or programs vs State run programs. The safety we find in the smaller programs clearly out weighs their lack of regulation and government oversight.
That's pretty convoluted logic. The reason there are less sexual abuses in private programs is that there are simply
less kids in the private programs.
I'm sure the state runs better backround checks. And doesn't just hire their cronies.
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Studies typically report results on a statistical bases so what they are saying is the “rate of sexual abuse” is lower in the private sector and smaller programs. So the thinking still holds true in my opinion. Parents would be wise to choose a smaller local, private program vs a larger state run facility.
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whooter wrote:
Parents would be wise to choose a smaller local, private program vs a larger state run facility.
It would seem that parents should find a way to keep their kids at home and protect them.
Not just turn them over to strangers (public or private),and cross their fingers.
It's just not safe to be a kid anymore!
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Studies typically report results on a statistical bases so what they are saying is the “rate of sexual abuse” is lower in the private sector and smaller programs. So the thinking still holds true in my opinion. Parents would be wise to choose a smaller local, private program vs a larger state run facility.
The brainwashing is also more effective in many of those smaller private programs, that is, those which are invested in thought reform. Kids are often taught to regard staff initiated sexual assaults as being basically the kid's fault.
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Ursus wrote:
Kids are often taught to regard staff initiated sexual assaults as being basically the kid's fault.
Or part of their therapy
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Studies typically report results on a statistical bases so what they are saying is the “rate of sexual abuse” is lower in the private sector and smaller programs. So the thinking still holds true in my opinion. Parents would be wise to choose a smaller local, private program vs a larger state run facility.
The brainwashing is also more effective in many of those smaller private programs, that is, those which are invested in thought reform. Kids are often taught to regard staff initiated sexual assaults as being basically the kid's fault.
I have never seen any studies (to date) which support that brainwashing is more effective in smaller vs larger programs, although it would make an interesting observation. I have also never seen any documentation to support kids being taught by staff that sexual assaults, being the childs fault, is common place.
I would guess from your post, Ursus, that you did not fare well yourself from being in a program and that you had a bad experience. Bad experiences do occur in all industries but there is no data to suggest that what you speak of is the norm.
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My post ... pertains to the topic of this thread, and in reply to your comment. As to smaller programs, I was referring specifically to the "private sector and smaller programs" that you brought up in said comment, perhaps more explicitly referred to as the "parent-choice" programs you are so fond of defending.
I brought up coercive thought reform as a probable variable which might result in under-reporting the "rate of sexual abuse" in certain types of programs, namely, the parent-choice industry which does employ thought reform. Many folk have commented on a difference in the psychological climate of private programs vs. juvenile detention centers. To my mind, I think there are also quite a few programs that are intermediate.
How many CEDU folk used to think that smooshing and laying your head in a faculty member's lap was a sign of genuine care and concern at one point? What about spooning on the couch with your counselor at Carlbrook? There are plenty of similar examples for other programs...
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State Will Ask Juvenile Inmates If They've Been Victimized Behind Bars (http://http://www.wibc.com/news/Story.aspx?ID=1182812), Eric Berman, WIBC, January 8, 2010
WIBC 93.1FM · INDY'S NEWS CENTER
INDIANA NEWS
State Will Ask Juvenile Inmates If They've Been Victimized Behind Bars
Federal survey finds high rate of sexual misconduct claims at 2 facilities
By Eric Berman
1/8/2010
The state will question every offender in Indiana's six juvenile prisons about whether they've been sexually abused, after a federal survey ranked two facilities among the worst in the U.S. for sexual victimization.
Indiana Department of Correction spokesman Douglas Garrison says the department already conducts surveys similar to one released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice. He says the federal findings show a victimization about triple what those studies found.
Garrison says it's unclear whether the gap in the findings represents a difference in the sample of offenders questioned, a reluctance to come forward to state officials with allegations, or something else. In light of the Justice Department study, he says investigators will interview all offenders, not just a sample.
Garrison says the department thoroughly investigates all allegations of sexual misconduct and will do so with any new charges that emerge.
The Justice Department survey found 46 of 127 offenders questioned at the Pendleton juvenile prison reported sexual conduct with staff or other inmates. The 36-percent rate ranks second-worst among 195 facilities surveyed nationwide.
23-percent of inmates questioned at the Indiana Girls School reported being sexually victimized in custody. The facility has since become the new home of the Indiana Women's Prison, with juvenile inmates transferred to a facility in Madison.
Victimization reports at juvenile prisons in Logansport and South Bend and at the Camp Summit Boot Camp in LaPorte were slightly below the national average of 12-percent. The Northeast Juvenile Correctional Facility in Fort Wayne was not included in the federal survey.
Four staffers at Pendleton were suspended last month over allegations they sexually abused inmates. Those charges were lodged after the April end date of the Justice Department's 10-month study.
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