Group That Does Good Deeds Threatened By Old Deed

12-8-2009 Connecticut:

Longtime home for troubled youths locked in legal battle for land

The Connecticut Junior Republic is a fixture in Litchfield, having housed and schooled thousands of troubled youths over the years. But now the private, non-profit organization faces a new challenge.

Someone is trying to take away its 160-acre campus and buildings, located just north of Litchfield’s historic downtown. That someone is the previous owners, who gave away the property nearly 100 years ago.

The battle over the deed has reached the highest levels of state government. State Sen. Andrew Roraback, an attorney at Roraback & Roraback in Litchfield, is leading the charge to protect CJR. Roraback, whose brother is a past president of the organization’s board of directors, said he “may have” contacted state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal about the situation.

CJR, Roraback said, “is part of the fabric of the community of Litchfield, well-respected and well-supported.”

The property was owned originally by Mary Buel, a Litchfield resident who donated the land in 1904 to an Upstate New York group called the George Junior Republic Association. It’s now called the William George Agency.

In 1915, the association deeded the property to the Connecticut Junior Republic, which was allowed to keep it so long as the property was used for residential treatment of children. But the deed said if CJR ceased using the property for that purpose, ownership would revert back to what is now the William George Agency, a children’s services organization headquartered in Freeville, N.Y. in Tompkins County.

Earlier this year, CJR announced that it would stop housing youths, whose transgressions ranged from vandalism to chronic truancy to being unmanageable in their homes. Instead, it planned only to provide daytime special, alternative and vocational education programs for about 22 young people. Students from nearby regular high schools also use the facility for farming programs and the campus pool for swim teams.

It seems that the William George Agency was not told firsthand about the new plans for CJR. When officials found out this past spring, they filed notification of a title interest on the land records and a notice of forfeiture.

“The William George Agency has a fiduciary responsibility to honor the terms of the deed and to continue services to at-risk youth,” wrote the William George Agency’s executive director, Brad Herman, in a statement. The agency’s lawyer, Dwight Merriam, of Robinson & Cole in Hartford, declined comment for this article.

Still, what’s to debate? The CJR was supposed to be residential. And now it’s not. So the deed reverts, right? Not so fast.

While the William George Agency was planning its takeover, the CJR says it was awarded a contract with the Judicial Branch’s Court Support Services Division to house boys in Litchfield again, beginning this coming spring. However, the state’s budget problems came into play. The Judicial Branch wrote a letter to CJR in October informing officials that the new program would not receive funding anytime soon.

“The funding has been delayed but we still have the contract from the Court Support Services Division of the Judicial Branch,” said Hedy Barton, director of development and public relations for CJR. “We’re currently in the process of renovating one of the cottages for that program for boys who will be referred from the court.”

Sex Offenders?

Raising the stakes for Litchfield and state officials are reports that the William George Agency would use the campus to house youth sex offenders and young violent offenders. In its prepared statement, agency officials didn’t confirm that report. Nor did it deny it.

“It has been our experience,” the agency’s statement said, “that children who are classified as sexual offenders are those who have a problem with sexual ‘acting out.’ They receive treatment for these issues and are very closely observed. However, they are not rapists or pedophiles.”

The statement further said the agency “typically” treats only youths who have “been involved in only minor offenses.”

Predictably, the situation has prompted a flurry of lawsuits. Blumenthal filed a suit last week against the New York organization to stop what he described as “illegally seizing” the Litchfield property. CJR went a step further, filing a suit that, according to attorney James K. Robertson Jr., of Waterbury’s Carmody & Torrance, includes “claims for slander of title and the demands for compensatory damages.”

Robertson says the controversy surrounding the Litchfield campus has hurt the “funding streams” for the Connecticut Junior Republic, which also has group homes, crisis intervention facilities and community-based programs in other Connecticut towns.

Meanwhile, Sen. Roraback’s idea is simply to get the state money to CJR so it can fulfill its state contract and truly become a residential facility again. He said he’ll push his legislative colleagues to find money for the Judicial Branch program.

“I’m going to do everything in my power,” Roraback said, “to make sure that dangerous sex offenders are not housed in an inappropriate location.” ..Source.. CHRISTIAN NOLAN