Feds cite sex abuse at juvenile girls center

5-19-2010 Indiana:

Report finds former Indy facility failed to protect offenders from harm

A U.S. Justice Department investigation uncovered new details about the scope of problems at a former state juvenile center in Indianapolis, including "a rampant sexual environment" and unnecessary strip searches.

Those are among problems that Indiana prison officials say they have worked to address since the federal investigation began in early 2008. The most drastic action came in November, when they closed the Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility and moved about 100 girls to a new center in Madison, along the Ohio River, with a largely new staff and a more modern facility.

But, in a 47-page letter sent to Gov. Mitch Daniels Jan. 29, and which was first reported by the media this week, the Justice Department painted a stark picture of what went on behind the previous facility's walls.

The investigation concluded that the Indianapolis facility failed to protect the girls living there from harm or provide adequate mental health care and special education services.

The letter, signed by Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez of the Civil Rights Division, cites safety concerns including staff sexual abuse and misconduct, a failure to conduct adequate investigations into reported incidents, inadequate numbers of women on staff, excessive use of isolation, a lackluster grievance system and even inadequate access to toilets.

The letter recounts an incident in which five male staff members took a 17-year-old girl with serious mental illness from her cell, shackled her limbs and forcefully cut off her clothes to strip-search her for contraband.

If they know who these male staff members are, have they yet been prosecuted for a sex crime? Maybe some time on the registry will teach them a lesson.

But they didn't have a sufficient basis for suspicion, the letter says, and the search clearly violated the law and professional standards.

The Indiana Department of Correction says the facility the Justice Department's consultants examined two years ago was very different from the one that now houses about 100 girls in Southern Indiana.

"We've taken a lot of steps to deal with a very difficult population," spokesman Doug Garrison said Tuesday.

The DOC's Division of Youth Services has worked with federal officials, the Indiana Juvenile Justice Task Force and other organizations on wide-scale reform of its facilities' practices in recent years. That includes shifting from a traditional prison model to one the DOC calls a "therapeutic community environment."

Conditions at several of Indiana's state juvenile correctional facilities have been scrutinized by the Justice Department over the past six years. An investigation looking at a maximum-security lockup for boys, the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility, is still under way.

The Pendleton and former Indianapolis facilities drew scrutiny in January when a separate Justice Department study listed them among 13 juvenile detention facilities nationally with the highest rates of sexual victimization reported by residents.
At Pendleton, 36 percent reported activity including nonconsensual sex acts with another youth or sex acts with facility staff within the previous year; at Indianapolis, the DOC's only facility housing girls, the rate was nearly 23 percent, about twice the national average.

If Indiana officials do not respond to the Justice Department's concerns, the January letter to Daniels says, officials could bring a lawsuit to force changes.

But the DOC says it is still working to improve conditions and safety at its facilities. Bill Glick, the Juvenile Justice Task Force's executive director, told The Star in January that the reforms are on the right track.

Since the release of the sexual victimization study, the DOC says, it has interviewed all juvenile offenders at the Madison and Pendleton facilities. Its study found reported rates of victimization less than one-third of those in the federal study. ..Source..