Pubdate: Tue, 14 Dec 1999
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 1999 by The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper.
Contact:  http://www.sunspot.net/
Forum: http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/ultbb/Ultimate.cgi?actionintro
Author: Todd Richissin And Thomas W. Waldron

GLENDENING ORDERS MONITORING OF ALL JUVENILE FACILITIES

A Maryland State Police commander said yesterday that criminal
investigations are under way to determine whether charges should be
filed against guards accused of routinely assaulting delinquent
teen-agers at three state juvenile boot camps.

In another day of sudden developments linked to the camps, Gov. Parris
N. Glendening ordered independent monitors placed in all other major
detention centers run by the state Department of Juvenile Justice to
ensure that teens in those facilities are not being abused.

In the criminal probe, Maj. Thomas Bowers said investigators have
served three subpoenas to the juvenile justice agency for records
relating to the boot camps.

Juvenile justice officials said the subpoenas are for videotapes shot
on the first day delinquents arrived at the Garrett County camps. The
videos, most of them taped since August, were turned over immediately
to investigators, a department spokesman said.

State police have joined social workers to interview more than 100
teen-agers who went through the camps. About 20 teens have reported
being assaulted, and investigators on a governor's task force have
found dozens of additional cases.

State officials said their investigation will include the 14 members
of Charlie Squad, a group of delinquents who entered one of the camps
in October 1998 and whose lives -- as camp cadets and after
theirrelease -- were chronicled in a Sun series last week. The
articles included eyewitness accounts of guards assaulting the squad
members.

Also yesterday, Juvenile Justice Secretary Gilberto de Jesus defended
his attempts to end violence at the camps to the governor's task
force. The task force has concluded that guards engaged in a pattern
of violence against teens that began at least a year ago and continued
in recent weeks.

De Jesus said Lt. Gov. Kathleen Townsend Kennedy told him in August
that a reporter was inquiring about violence at one of the camps and
that she instructed him to make sure it ended. The secretary said he
sent his agency's inspector general to the camps to investigate the
reports and his deputy, Jack Nadol, to tell guards and other staff
members that abuse of the delinquents would not be tolerated.

But, de Jesus said, the staff did not listen. "It was almost as if
we're in two parallel universes," he said. "It seems to me if you're
told not to put your hands on kids, you don't put your hands on kids."

No written records

Under questioning from former state public safety Secretary Bishop L.
Robinson, the task force's chairman, de Jesus said he had no written
records of actions taken since the lieutenant governor ordered changes
at the camp. "It was all oral," he said.

Robinson told de Jesus that he was concerned that memos written by
department underlings were being used to change official policy,
established in 1994, on when guards could use force. Robinson produced
a memo written in October by Jeff Graham, who ran the three camps,
telling guards that the use of force was up to their discretion.

"Had I seen this interpretation of the policy, I would have rescinded
this interpretation of the policy," de Jesus said.

The boot camps -- the Savage Leadership Challenge, Backbone Leadership
Challenge and Meadow Mountain Leadership Challenge -- were suspended
Saturday by Glendening.

Savage was closed altogether, and Backbone and Meadow Mountain remain
open as residential centers until officials determine what do to with
the more than 70 teens who remain there. The Maryland National Guard
took over the facilities Saturday.

The task force is to give Glendening a report on violence at the camps
tomorrow, and the governor has said he will set aside time Thursday to
review the programs and consider the fate of de Jesus and other
officials at the agency.

Glendening and Townsend have said that de Jesus misled them about
violence at the camps, assuring them that he had put a stop to it in
August.

De Jesus told the task force he thought sending the inspector general
and his deputy to the camps had solved the problems. "I'm at a loss to
explain why people who were instructed by me and my deputy secretary,
why they would do anything like this," he said. "This is not rocket
science."

Task force members said they were distressed by the testimony.
Witnesses painted a picture of a dysfunctional agency, with no clear
policies or accountability -- but an abundance of infighting.

"There are some very -- shall I say -- important concerns regarding
areas of professional responsibility, accountability and appropriate
internal controls," Robinson said later in an interview.

'Sickened and enraged'

Jann Jackson, executive director of Advocates for Children and Youth
and a member of the task force, said she knew there were severe
problems within the department but did not imagine they were as
serious as she learned during the testimony and from reviewing agency
documents.

"I am appalled, sickened and enraged by what I have heard," she
said.

She and other members of the panel were disturbed by reports from Joan
McEntyre, the agency's inspector general, who had heard rumblings
about problems at the camps in August, separate from what de Jesus had
heard.

"I went to the secretary and said something's wrong at the boot
camps," she told the task force yesterday. When she went to the camps
to investigate, she said, she was met by guards with "a smug attitude
- -- like, 'What are you going to ask me now?' "

After a tense day of interviewing guards, she said, she returned to
her hotel room to find a racially motivated message on the answering
machine.

The message was, "N-----, take your black ass back to Baltimore," she
told the panel.

"I decided it was time to get out of there," McEntyre said, adding
that she did not report the message to her supervisors.

The task force also heard yesterday from Jamie Woodring, a former
advocate hired by the state to ensure the safety of juveniles at the
camps. She said she had witnessed guards assaulting delinquents when
they first arrived at the camps and took "numerous" complaints from
teens who said they were abused out of her sight.

When she reported the abuses to her superiors and to camp supervisors,
she was eventually banned from inductions -- the first day the teens
arrive at the camp and the day guards tend to be roughest. An appeal
to her bosses in Baltimore did no good, she said, even though she was
supposed to report directly to de Jesus.

McEntyre, the inspector general and Woodring's supervisor, told the
task force that Nadol, the deputy secretary, upheld the ban. Nadol
could not be reached yesterday for comment.

Bowers, the state police commander, said that as of yesterday morning,
nine teams of investigators have completed 108 interviews of juveniles
and 87 staff members. Investigators have also obtained medical
treatment records for camp cadets.

The information is being entered into a database, he
said.

"In the incidents which have been alleged thus far, there does appear
to have been a pattern of inappropriate behavior," Bowers said. He
said the teens reported the guards assaulted them less often as their
20 weeks at the camps wore on.

He said there was evidence that disciplinary action was taken against
guards in some cases.

In Annapolis, Glendening spokesman Mike Morrill said the governor and
lieutenant governor were concerned by information being gathered by
the task force. He said because they did not know about abuses at the
boot camps, they were not taking for granted assurances from juvenile
justice officials that there are no serious problems at the
department's other facilities.

Placing monitors in those facilities is "an outgrowth of all that
we've been hearing about the boot camps," Morrill said.

Steve Berry, manager of in-home services for the state Department of
Human Resources, said the department will also investigate why
officials at the juvenile justice agency failed to report dozens of
cases of suspected child abuse at the camps. "The law is clear," Berry
said. "You're supposed to report your suspicion at the time you have
the suspicion."

The department also intends to interview about 500 more teens who have
passed through the three camps since they opened in 1996 and 1997.

But simply finding them for the investigation poses a large hurdle,
Berry said. In Carroll County yesterday, Juvenile Master Peter M.
Tabatsko removed four 17-year-old delinquents from the boot camps.

The youths recounted being slapped, punched or knocked to the ground
by guards. "When I send offenders to a boot camp, I expect them to be
safe, and it's outrageous what has happened at these camps," said
Tabatsko, adding that he asked juvenile authorities to investigate the
abuse after The Sun series began.

Sun staff writers Kate Shatzkin and Mike Farabaugh contributed to this
article.
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