OrlandoSentinel.com: State News

One of the most egregious child abusers in Florida is the very agency that's supposed to rehabilitate troubled youths: the state Department of Juvenile Justice.

It is responsible for 661 confirmed cases of abuse or neglect since 1994, according to records from the Florida Department of Children & Families obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.

Nearly two-thirds of those cases occurred in the past four years.

Since 1998, at least six boys died from injuries suffered at juvenile-justice facilities, although state investigators blame only two on abuse and neglect. Among them is 12-year-old Michael Wiltsie, who was crushed by a 320-pound counselor trying to calm the boy by pinning him to the ground at a facility near Ocala.

During the past few months, the agency has fallen into turmoil. It has faced a grand-jury probe, a legislative inquiry and public outrage in South Florida because its employees did nothing to save a 17-year-old boy who suffered an agonizing death from appendicitis. It also has lost more than a dozen employees, including its top two officials, who have taken leaves of absence.

But the Sentinel's investigation reveals problems more widespread than those in South Florida. Records show cases of abuse and neglect throughout the statewide network of about 200 lockups, boot camps, residential facilities and other programs. In case after case, records suggest an agency that cannot control its employees or those of the dozens of private companies it pays to run most of its field operations.

In fact, last year those privately run programs -- most of them long-term residential facilities -- were the source of 80 percent of the department's abuse and neglect cases.

The statewide total alarms state Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, a member of a select legislative committee investigating the agency.

"The problems at DJJ are deep institutional problems," he said.

Weak oversight

C. George Denman, acting secretary at juvenile justice, acknowledges the department must change.

"Any time we have one confirmed case of child abuse, it bothers us," said Denman, who has been on the job less than 60 days. "The higher the numbers go, the worse it is."

But given that the department oversees so many programs, Denman said, the numbers are easier to understand.

"I think DJJ is a good public agency."

It is home to about 8,500 juveniles, generally ages 11 to 18, who have broken the law. They are held from a few months to more than a year.

The agency runs or oversees nearly 200 programs and facilities. Most house juvenile offenders and range from nondescript rehabilitation centers -- some looking like apartment buildings -- to wilderness camps with tents and fire pits to prisons topped by concertina wire.

In agency reports, the department acknowledges that its own staff does a poor job of oversight and that many of its contractors earn failing marks. Seventy percent of its three dozen high-risk programs either failed or received D's on a departmental report card released in December that rated their cost effectiveness. Each of its four maximum-security facilities got a D or F.

Internal auditors reported last year that Department of Juvenile Justice employees failed to properly monitor 83 percent of the residential-facility contracts that it sampled.

Abuse in many forms

But the department's failures went far beyond its tracking of contracts. Children have died or suffered fatal injuries while in its care. They are:

Michael Wiltsie, the boy who was crushed. He died Feb. 5, 2000, one day after being injured at a camp run by a nonprofit company under contract with DJJ.

Shawn D. Smith, 13, who hanged himself at the Volusia Regional Juvenile Detention Center on Oct. 29, 2001.

The deaths that the state Department of Children & Families does not attribute to abuse or neglect are:

Daniel Matthews, 17, who died May 31 during a fight with another teen at the Pinellas Regional Juvenile Detention Center.

Omar Paisley, 17, of Opa-Locka, who died of appendicitis June 9 despite his repeated pleas for help at a Miami facility. DCF has not completed its investigation of that case.

Chad Franza, 16, who hanged himself with his bootstraps at a boot camp operated by the Polk County Sheriff's Office on Aug. 17, 1998.

Then there was the sixth death: Anthony Dumas. DCF did not count him as a victim of abuse or neglect, but jurors did last month.

Anthony, 15, tried to hang himself at a contractor-run home for troubled youths in Broward County four years ago. When employee Sandra Trotter found him, she didn't pull him down and start CPR. She grabbed a camera and took pictures, according to evidence at her trial.

Anthony died four months later from his injuries.

Trotter was convicted March 17 of child neglect. She has not been sentenced.

Working with the department's offenders is extremely difficult, said Christine Hendy, a clinician at the Kissimmee Juvenile Correctional Facility, home to 50 teenagers guilty of sex crimes. The state owns the building, but Three Springs, a private company, manages it.

'No excuse'

Sometimes the teens are angry, think they're being punished unfairly and attack one another and staffers, Hendy said.

Still, she said, "No matter how much stress there is in a work environment, there is no excuse for abuse."

Eight of 10 juveniles in custody are at long-term facilities. The juvenile-justice department operates 18 programs; the rest -- 149 -- are run by private contractors.

Most of the department's offenders are neither abused nor neglected.

The Department of Children & Families is required by law to investigate every complaint of child abuse or neglect, wherever it happens, be it a family's home, day-care center or government facility. The agency is separate from the juvenile-justice department.

Most complaints from state juvenile-justice facilities are found to be false or cannot be verified, according to state records.

Even so, the 661 confirmed cases at DJJ-controlled facilities are scattered from one corner of the state to the other.

The problem peaked in fiscal 2001-02 with 119 verified cases of abuse and neglect, according to DCF. Last year, the most recent for which data are available, the number dropped to 72.

The numbers don't include hundreds of cases annually in which DCF investigations have found some evidence of abuse but did not count them as confirmed.

DJJ spokeswoman Catherine Arnold could not explain the spike or drop in the number of confirmed cases except that they could have been influenced by more children being confined, better reporting or improved staff training.

DCF did not identify the abusers, except to report that they were among the thousands of adults who have contact with offenders at DJJ facilities.

Within the past two weeks, Denman, DJJ's acting secretary, ordered workers to stop using the "hammerlock," a hold in which they twist an offender's arm behind his back and lift.

Denman issued that edict after a worker used it at a Panhandle facility operated by Premier Behavioral Solutions Inc., one of the agency's biggest providers, and broke the arm of a 14-year-old boy March 21.

That employee was fired, the company reported.

Over the years, abuse of juveniles under DJJ's watch has taken a variety of forms.

Details were not available from the Department of Children & Families, but DJJ usually does its own investigation into the same cases. Its records show a pattern of physical abuse -- often when workers try to get control of an unruly juvenile -- as well as sexual abuse.

At a girls prison in South Florida, an employee had sex with two teenagers and was arrested, according to prosecutors.

In another case, a girl was hogtied after she began kicking at the windows of a DJJ van, according to a DJJ report issued last year.

And in Marianna, two employees choked a boy and hit him in the groin while trying to restrain him, according to juvenile-justice records.

What happens to most workers found to have abused or neglected a DJJ child is unclear. Some are suspended, others fired, according to DJJ records. In the most-serious cases, employees are arrested.

DJJ policy requires all employees or contract workers to undergo a criminal-records check before they are allowed contact with agency children.

'A lot of abuse'

Since 1994, when DJJ was created, Polk County has had 93 confirmed cases of abuse and neglect, far more than any other county in the state.

It was followed by Palm Beach County, with 56 cases. Elsewhere in Central Florida, Orange County had 31 cases, Volusia County had 25, Seminole County had 17 and Brevard County had 13.

Many facilities have just a few confirmed cases of abuse or neglect, often clustered within a short period, according to the Sentinel's analysis of data since 1994.

At the other end of the spectrum is Polk Youth Development Center in Polk City. It has recorded 57 since 1998, more than any other program.

The reason for so many cases there is not clear. Details about the incidents were not available. DCF abuse records are sealed, and DJJ did not provide its investigative reports in time for publication, despite a public-records request made March 10.

The facility is operated by Premier, the same company in charge of the one where the 14-year-old boy's arm was broken last month.

However, five of the six cases of abuse confirmed there last year happened when a different contractor, Youth Services International, was in charge.

No one from that company or its parent, Correctional Services Corp., both based in Sarasota, would comment.

The provider with the highest number of abuse and neglect cases last year was Premier, with 11. Jorge Rico, chief operating officer, said most happened when staffers tried to restrain offenders.

He said Premier employees must keep control of its 1,200 children, many of them suffering serious emotional and behavioral problems. That is difficult, he said, and sometimes staffers get too rough.

When they do, they're terminated, he said.

Claudia Wright, professor at the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida, represented a child housed in the Polk City facility when it was run by Youth Services.

"We saw a lot of abuse," she said, "overuse of isolation, using children to supervise other children, provoking fights between the children."

Part of the problem, she said, is the facility's size. It houses 350 high-risk offenders, making it one of the biggest in the state.

"It's just impossible to effectively either punish or treat children in large institutions," Wright said. "They're just throwing money absolutely down a rathole."

Department in trouble

For months, DJJ has been under siege. Grand juries in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties conducted separate investigations in the fall and winter into allegations of abuse and neglect at two facilities.

Both produced reports that were extremely critical of the agency.

In their wake, more than a dozen employees have departed. They include DJJ's top two executives, Secretary W.G. "Bill" Bankhead and Deputy Secretary Francisco Alarcon.

One grand jury focused on Omar Paisley, the boy who died of appendicitis. He was jailed at the Miami-Dade Regional Juvenile Detention Center for getting in a fight and pulling a weapon. Last summer, he got sick and, for three days, begged for medical help. He didn't get it.

He writhed in pain, vomited and soiled his bed, according to the grand-jury report. He died in the hallway outside his dorm room. No one called 911 in time.

On Jan. 27, the Miami-Dade County grand jury handed down manslaughter indictments against two nurses who were under contract to care for juveniles in that facility, which was run by DJJ.

"We are appalled at the utter lack of humanity demonstrated by many of the detention workers charged with the safety and care of our youth," the panel wrote.

The grand jury also was frustrated, it said, because it was precluded by law from indicting DJJ.

Omar's death prompted another investigation, one by the Florida House of Representatives. The House issued subpoenas, forcing witnesses to testify about Omar's death and other problems within DJJ.

The House Select Committee on Juvenile Detention Facilities, however, has focused solely on DJJ's detention centers, the 25 short-term lockups, about the equivalent of county jails. They are used primarily to hold juveniles before they go to trial. They house an average of 2,000 juveniles a day.

But the Sentinel's review of DCF records show most cases of child abuse and neglect took place at DJJ's residential facilities, where, like state prisons, juvenile offenders serve their sentences.

Those facilities house an average of 6,600 children a day and are where the real work of rehabilitation is supposed to take place.

The overwhelming majority are run by private contractors, and among them, about half are for-profit companies. Some are paid millions of dollars a year by DJJ.

The abuse and neglect numbers stunned Rep. Gustavo Barreiro, R-Miami Beach, chairman of the House investigative committee.

"I'm appalled by that," he said. "It's unacceptable.

Barreiro said earlier he intends to expand his investigation into child abuse at those facilities, but he must await authorization from House Speaker Johnnie Byrd.

Some facilities try to turn offenders' lives around, teaching them, for example, how to survive in the woods. Others try to reform them by teaching life and job skills, such as repairing cars or electronic components.

Richard Block oversees operations for a private contractor in charge of three long-term residential facilities. One is Three Springs, a prisonlike compound near the Volusia County Sheriff's Office.

"Our philosophy is this is an opportunity -- not a punishment," he said.

Three Springs is designed to house 33 boys. Each has committed a sex crime.

They sleep in unadorned, 8-by-10-foot single rooms. The walls are concrete block, painted yellow. Each has a window that's covered in wire mesh. There's also a bunk, toilet, sink and metal footlocker.

One of the offenders sent there was a 15-year-old boy from Orlando. He was arrested and found guilty of fondling his stepsister while she was sleeping. Earlier, he had been arrested on suspicion of hitting a friend with a chair and a 2-by-4 piece of wood.

He understands why he's there and that he needs to change.

"I know what I did was wrong," said the boy, who is not being identified by the Sentinel because he's a minor. "I can't afford to hurt nobody else."

Once he's released, he wants to finish high school, go to college and play for the University of Miami Hurricanes, he said. But not quarterback.

"There's too many plays that I don't know," he said.

A second grand jury

The Florida Institute for Girls has been one of DJJ's biggest problems, not in number of cases but in severity. It is a 100-bed prison in Palm Beach County for Florida's worst female juvenile offenders.

Within a two-week span in July, guards there broke the arms of two girls, according to DJJ records. In the preceding two years, two staffers were arrested and eventually sentenced for sexually abusing residents.

Those things prompted the Palm Beach County grand jury to investigate. The panel handed down no indictments, but it released a scathing report in February critical of agency and the contractor that operates the facility, Premier Behavioral Solutions.

The prison simply was not safe, the panel wrote. That's largely because Premier didn't provide enough staff and didn't adequately train them.

The girls in the prison often were locked in their rooms for extended periods of time, not because they had done anything wrong, but because Premier didn't have enough employees to watch them.

Repeatedly, the facility canceled recreation, therapy, family visits, even school, which was scrubbed 41 times in 61/2 months.

The lockdowns caused the girls to act out, become more defiant and more violent, the panel said.

The lack of staff training was in direct violation of Premier's contract, the panel wrote, and though DJJ had known about it for three years, the agency did nothing to stop it.

Bennett H. Brummer, the elected public defender in Miami-Dade, said that lack of accountability is consistent with what he has seen the agency do in his county.

"There's no consequence when a department facility fails to meet the department's standards," he said.

Premier has since lost the $5 million-a-year contract to run the facility. Earlier this month, DJJ announced it would turn the place over to Lighthouse Care Centers LLC of Safety Harbor under a five-year contract worth $21 million.

The new contract is a tougher one, Denman said. It forces Lighthouse to be more accountable for safety, staff training and services.

Denman said he also is requiring more training for employees who come into contact with children. That won't help Cherry Williams, the mother of Omar Paisley, the boy who died of appendicitis. She was heartened, she said, when the nurses were indicted.

"It is a beginning," she said, but then she added, "It cannot bring back Omar."

Liz Gibson of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. Rene Stutzman can be reached at rstutzman@orlandosentinel.com or 407-324-7294.