Gov Christie Ally & New RNC Member Palatucci’s Company Accused of Manslaughter
The Working Press July 13th, 2010
“Did you say Caleb is dead I repeated this three times I fell to the ground and began crying and screaming. Oh God how could this man be so heartless. How could he on the phone tell me my son is dead? Why didn’t they show me the some common curtsy that would be shown some one’s family that was in a car accident? Some one should have come to my door. No one would even talk to me.”
http://caleb-jensen.memory-of.com/about.aspxIf you remember, a few weeks ago THE STATE of NJ posted an article entitled Do as I Say Not as I Do Alive and Well in the Christie Administration.
http://www.thestatenj.com/engine/2010/0 ... istration/[Funding for half-way houses in New Jersey up by $3.1 Million while everything else is slashed. Could Governor Christie’s closest ally, William J. Palatucci, a senior vice president and general counsel for Community Education Centers in West Caldwell, have anything to do with the funding bump? Hmm what’s that old saying? Money talks and…]
That article detailed how Governor Chris Christie’s budget gave a $3.1 million funding increase Community Education Centers Inc while everyone else saw their budgets slashed. Christie ally William Palatucci is vice president of the juvenile delinquent rehabilitation and half-way house company.
Recently THE STATE was informed by an observant reader that Palatucci was just elected to the Republican National Committee.
William Palatucci has been elected by fellow Republicans as one of New Jersey’s two members of the Republican National Committee, a position being vacated after nearly 30 years by David Norcross.
http://blogs.app.com/capitolquickies/20 ... -rnc-post/ It may be common knowledge, perhaps, but we would be remiss to not call to readers’ attention the manslaughter case involving CEC and Palatucci’s lackluster response. What we have here is just another example of laws only applying to people who cannot afford (in terms of money & power) to break them.
The picture of the child posted at the start of this article is Caleb Jensen and alongside is the quote from his mother when she first learned that her son died of advanced, treatable, staph infection in a feces soaked sleeping bag.
Now, as Paul Harvey would say, is the rest of the story.
The last time Dawn Boyd Woodson saw her youngest child alive, he asked her to spray him with the perfume she kept in her purse.
“I said, ‘What if the other boys make fun of you?’” Woodson remembered about their final chat. “He just told me, ‘I don’t care. It reminds me of you, Mom … like you’re with me.”‘
Fifteen-year-old Caleb Jensen had already been away from his mother and siblings for seven months. Following a bout with the law, the troubled Murray teen was taken into custody by the state juvenile justice system in the summer of 2007.
“It was emotional,” Woodson said through tears during an interview this week. “My baby just wanted to come home.”
Five weeks later, Caleb was found dead, bundled in a feces- and urine-soaked sleeping bag, according to an autopsy report. His death was attributed to a days- to weeks-old “large amount” of staph infection, a methicillin-resistant Staph aureus.
Now, Woodson is suing Utah County doctor Keith R. Hooker, the now-defunct camp Alternative Youth Adventures and its New Jersey-based parent corporation, Community Education Centers Inc. — all of which had been entrusted with her son’s health while he attended a court-ordered, 60-day wilderness camp in Colorado. The lawsuit also names the Utah divisions of Child and Family Services, which had custody over Caleb, and Juvenile Justice Services, which had sent him to the camp. Neither division had been served a copy of the lawsuit as of Friday.
Woodson’s 50-page lawsuit, filed Jan. 13 in West Jordan’s 3rd District Court, seeks at least $45 million in total compensatory and punitive damages for the agonizing death of her son.
Caleb was not the first Utah child to have died in wilderness camps for wayward teenagers. Since 1999, three other children have died in such camps in Utah.
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Negligent homicide and other charges have been filed in connection with the death last year of a 15-year-old Utah boy who had been ordered by a court to participate in an outdoor program run by Alternative Youth Adventures.
Caleb Jensen died while on a hike with Alternative Youth Adventures last spring. An autopsy showed he died from a severe staph infection.
The investigation of a grand jury that returned the indictments is kept secret, according to a news release from the office of 7th Judicial District Attorney Myrl Serra.
Individuals and organizations named in the indictment are:
– Community Education Centers Inc., charged with criminally negligent homicide and child abuse resulting in death.
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In a last letter to his family from a wilderness camp for troubled youths, Caleb Jensen wrote about the difficulties of surviving in the wild and added a postscript: “I want my mommy.”
Caleb’s mother, Dawn Boyd of Salt Lake City, received the letter from her youngest child during the week before he died of an untreated staph infection. He was participating in a court-ordered wilderness therapy program through Alternative Youth Adventures near Montrose.
The program’s license to operate was suspended after the 15-year-old died May 2.
…Bill Palatucci, a spokesman for Community Education Centers Inc., the Roseland, N.J.-based company that created the youth camp, said complaints from troubled youths are common.
“They hear a lot that youths want to go home. The staff is taught to sort through those and determine the genuine issues and the non,” Palatucci said.
Palatucci would not reveal the amount of medical training the four camp counselors have. He said their training meets state licensing requirements
And here is a gratuitous reminder of the unique connection BFF William Palatucci and Gov. Chris Christie share.
http://www.thestatenj.com/engine/2010/0 ... slaughter/