The Abused: Scandal of assaults on children in custody

[Wanderer]

Who hired these guys?

Staff at Young Offender Institutions routinely hit youngsters in the face, bend back their thumbs and limbs to breaking point, and force fists into their ribs. In a report obtained by 'The Independent on Sunday', the Children's Commissioner has condemned this as 'unacceptable'. Brian Brady and Jonathan Owen investigate
Published: 30 December 2007

Thousands of assaults are being carried out each year on children in custody by the people employed to look after them. Hundreds suffer cuts and bruises and some require hospital treatment for dislocated or broken bones.

Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green, the Children's Commissioner for England, has highlighted the "over-use of restraint and force" in Young Offender Institutions and Secure Training Centres, and is calling for an immediate ban on the practice of painful restraint, which includes hitting children in the face, twisting their thumbs and limbs, and pinning them down in painful stress positions as a form of punishment or to ensure compliance.

In a new report to a government-commissioned inquiry into the issue, he writes: "The use of violence and force to control and punish some of the most vulnerable children in society is unacceptable."

Physical restraint – which is supposed to be a last resort – was used 3,036 times in Secure Training Centres (STCs) in 2005/06. More than 50 cases were judged so serious that a report was made to the Youth Justice Board (YJB).

Staff at STCs, which house some of the country's most vulnerable children, are trained to subdue children using forms of physical violence such as sharp blows to the septum area of the nose, bending thumbs to near breaking point and forcing a fist against ribs in the back.

These methods, supposedly to be used only as a last resort, are euphemistically described as "painful distractions". In reality they are forms of assault that would be illegal if done anywhere else. The techniques are detailed in a "Physical Control in Care" training manual that details an array of such moves and holds, some of which involve several adults overpowering a single child in positions that could put the child at risk of suffocation. The Government has kept the techniques a secret, refusing to reveal them despite repeated requests from lawyers and journalists.

Young people in STCs, Youth Offender Institutions (YOIs) and Secure Children's Homes (SCHs) were subjected to more than 2,000 cases of restraint between April and June this year, according to figures from the Youth Justice Board. Eighty of these required medical treatment for injuries such as cuts, concussion, bruising or sprains; children in STCs were twice as likely as those in YOIs to suffer injury as a result of restraint.

Answers to recent Parliamentary Questions have revealed a catalogue of hundreds of injuries suffered by young people in 10 YOIs over the past two years. These range from severe nosebleeds, cuts, and bruising, to fractured or broken bones. Young people in YOIs face what is described as "pain compliant" control and restraint designed for adult prisoners.

Natalie Cronin, head of policy and public affairs at the NSPCC, says: "For too long, children as young as 12 have been subjected to dangerous, violent and degrading restraint techniques in Young Offenders Institutions. It should not be legal for anyone to deliberately inflict pain on a child as a method of restraint."

A government-commissioned inquiry into the risks of death or injury associated with physical restraints is under way. In his submission to the inquiry, obtained by the IoS, Sir Al concludes that there needs to be a review of the juvenile justice system and that restraints should be used only as a final option, and even then "only when the child poses an imminent threat of injury to themselves or others". He calls for improved training of staff to safeguard children and says: "The use of techniques to inflict pain is in violation of the child's right under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) to be free from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.... We believe the practice in relation to restraint in some YOIs and STCs is in clear breach of the UNCRC." In some circumstances it may also contravene the European Convention on Human Rights, he said.

The controversy comes in the wake of inquests held earlier this year into the tragic deaths of 14-year-old Adam Rickwood and 15-year-old Gareth Myatt, both of whom died in 2004 after several members of staff physically restrained them in separate incidents at Hassockfield and Rainsbrook STCs. They are among 30 children who have died in custody in the UK in the past 17 years.

Gareth died of asphyxia while being restrained by three staff, using the now banned double-seated embrace technique. Adam became the youngest person to die in custody in the UK when he hanged himself soon after he had been restrained by staff using the "nose distraction" technique.

The deaths prompted calls by children's charities for risky restraints and painful distractions to be abolished. But the Government responded to concerns raised during the inquests into the two deaths by broadening the rules on restraint techniques, allowing them to be used as a means of "ensuring good order and discipline" rather than merely to prevent harm, escape or damage to property.

Giving evidence to the parliamentary inquiry earlier this year, Ellie Roy, chief executive of the Youth Justice Board, was asked to give an example of enforcing good order and discipline. She recounted an incident when four teenage boys linked arms and refused to go to bed. Arguing that the incident would have escalated if they had not been restrained, she said: "The question is what can they do in that type of situation?"

The Children's Rights Alliance for England, which represents 380 campaign and welfare groups, has reported the crisis of children in custody to the United Nations and has accused the Government of "wilful neglect" over its repeated failure to implement the international treaty protecting under-18s, the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Earlier this month a delegation from the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture took up the issue of child restraint with ministers.

"Some of the restraints could be viewed as assaults. We're doing things to children which they don't even do in Guantanamo Bay," says Frances Crook, director of the Howard League for Penal Reform. "Painful distraction is assault and I cannot see why the police aren't involved in investigating it," she says.

In evidence provided to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, the YJB admits that children in custody face varying levels of discipline depending on where they happen to be: "There is no single method of restrictive physical intervention (restraint) used across the different types of facilities for children and young people but the YJB has been working to develop common standards and principles."

Ministers recently announced the suspension of two of the most controversial restraint methods used on children in custody – the painful "nose distraction" and the "double basket" hold. The decision followed concerns by a new panel of medical experts that met for the first time last month to review the risks of restraint. But a series of alternative holds, including thumb and rib distractions, remain in routine use in child-custody institutions across the country.

Painful distractions are unnecessary and used out of ignorance, says Dr Theodore Mutale, a consultant psychiatrist who spent eight years on the board of the YJB until resigning in March this year. "I don't think you need to use pain to manage a youngster. Especially if they have been abused in the past, using painful distraction will just cause them further distress." He says that not all cases are reported. "Inspectors would witness restraint in the morning but when they looked at the log of restraints in the afternoon there would be no mention of it having happened."

Ms Roy of the Youth Justice Board says: "We all want to see a lower level of restraint but making it happen is quite a challenge." In an attempt to reduce the levels of force the YJB is piloting alternative behaviour management techniques, including therapeutic crisis intervention, and the government review into restraint methods is due to make its recommendations in April next year.

But this will come as little comfort to Pamela Wilton, mother of Gareth Myatt. "No parent expects to lose their child, particularly in the circumstances that Gareth died. I loved Gareth so much and my life will never be the same. Nothing can bring him back to me. My only hope is that the Government will listen to the voices of children in custody so that lessons can be learnt and other children can be kept safe."

To have your say on this or any other issue visit www.independent.co.uk/IoSblogs

[tim31]

Doesn't sound like things have changed a great deal then. Every few years another crop of former wards of the state come forward and reveal their mistreatment during care, but this still keeps happening.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Meanwhile in America...

Now Romney has links to teenager torture-camps.


http://www.reason.com/news/show/121088.html

Romney, Torture, and Teens

The former governor's connections to abusive "tough love" camps

Maia Szalavitz | June 27, 2007

When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he’d support doubling the size of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, he was trying to show voters that he’d be tough on terror. Two of his top fundraisers, however, have long supported using tactics that have been likened to torture for troubled teenagers.

As The Hill noted last week, 133 plaintiffs filed a civil suit against Romney’s Utah finance co-chair, Robert Lichfield, and his various business entities involved in residential treatment programs for adolescents. The umbrella group for his organization is the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS, sometimes known as WWASP) and Lichfield is its founder and is on its board of directors.

The suit alleges that teens were locked in outdoor dog cages, exercised to exhaustion, deprived of food and sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures without adequate clothing or water, severely beaten, emotionally brutalized, and sexually abused and humiliated. Some were even made to eat their own vomit.

But the link to teen abuse goes far higher up in the Romney campaign. Romney’s national finance co-chair is a man named Mel Sembler. A long time friend of the Bushes, Sembler was campaign finance chair for the Republican party during the first election of George W. Bush, and a major fundraiser for his father.

Like Lichfield, Sembler also founded a nationwide network of treatment programs for troubled youth. Known as Straight Inc., from 1976 to 1993, it variously operated nine programs in seven states. At all of Straight’s facilities, state investigators and/or civil lawsuits documented scores of abuses including teens being beaten, deprived of food and sleep for days, restrained by fellow youth for hours, bound, sexually humiliated, abused and spat upon.

According to the L.A. Times, California investigators said that at Straight teens were “subjected to unusual punishment, infliction of pain, humiliation, intimidation, ridicule, coercion, threats, mental abuse… and interference with daily living functions such as eating, sleeping and toileting.”

Through a spokesperson, Lichfield has dismissed the similar charges against WWASPS to The Hill as “ludicrous,” claiming that the teens who sued “have a long history of lying, fabricating and twisting the story around to their own benefit.”

Straight would use virtually identical language in its denials: In the 1990 L.A. Times article cited above, a Straight counselor downplayed the California investigators’ report by saying, “Some kids get very upset and lie and some parents believe them.” Both Straight and WWASPS have repeatedly called their teen participants “liars” and “manipulators” who oppose the programs because they want to continue taking drugs or engage in other bad behavior.

Curiously, however, both programs regularly admitted teens who did not actually have serious problems. In 1982, 18-year-old Fred Collins, a Virginia Tech student with excellent grades, went to visit his brother, who was in treatment for a drug problem at Straight in Orlando, Florida.

A counselor determined that he was high on marijuana because his eyes were red (this would later turn out to have been due to swimming in a pool with contacts on). He did admit to occasional marijuana use, but insisted he was not high at the time, nor was he an addict. Nonetheless, he was barraged with hours of humiliating questions, strip-searched, and held against his will for months until he managed to escape.

He won $220,000 in a lawsuit he filed against the program for false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault, and battery. Ultimately, Straight would pay out millions in settlements before it finally closed. However, to this day, there are at least eight programs operating that use Straight’s methods, often in former Straight buildings operated by former Straight staff. They include: Alberta Adolescent Recovery Center (Canada), Pathway Family Center (Michigan, Indiana, Ohio), Growing Together (Florida), Possibilities Unlimited (Kentucky), SAFE (Florida), and Phoenix Institute for Adolescents (Georgia).

Sembler has never admitted to the problems with Straight's methods. In fact, when he recently served as Ambassador to Italy, he listed it among his accomplishments on his official State Department profile. Although all of the programs with the Straight name are closed, the nonprofit Straight Foundation that funded them still exists, though under a different name. It's now called the Drug Free America Foundation, and it lobbies for drug testing and in support of tougher policies in the war on drugs.

One of the plaintiffs in the current case against WWASPS, 21-year-old Chelsea Filer, spoke to me when I was researching a TV segment on the industry. She told me that she was forced to walk for miles on a track in scorching desert heat with a 35-pound sandbag on her back. “You were not allowed to scratch your face, move your fingers, lick your lips, move your eyes from the ground,” she said. When she asked for a chapstick, “They put a piece of wood in my mouth and I had to hold it there for two weeks. I was bleeding on my tongue.”

Why was Filer subject to such punishment? “I had less interest in school and more interest in boys and my mom was worried about me,” she says, explaining that her mother believed that the program was nothing more than a strict boarding school.

Because she has attention deficit disorder, Filer was unable to consistently follow the exacting rules, and repeated small violations were seen as ongoing defiance. “It broke my heart that my mom had no belief in me,” she says, describing how, because WWASPS had told her mother to dismiss complaints as “manipulation,” her mother ignored her pleas to come home.

“I’m not a bad kid,” she continued, “I never used drugs, I was never in trouble, I have no criminal record. I know my mom was worried about me—but so many times I told her that this is too much. I would gladly have gone to prison instead.”

WWASPS is linked with facilities Academy at Ivy Ridge (New York), Carolina Springs Academy (South Carolina), Cross Creek Programs (Utah), Darrington Academy (Georgia), Horizon Academy (Nevada), Majestic Ranch Academy (Utah), MidWest Academy (Iowa), Respect Camp (Mississippi), Royal Gorge Academy (Colorado), Spring Creek Lodge (Montana), and Tranquility Bay (Jamaica).

Although it has settled several lawsuits out of court, the organization has never publicly admitted wrong-doing. However, the U.S. State Department spurred Samoa to investigate its Paradise Cove program in 1998 after receiving “credible allegations of physical abuse,” including “beatings, isolation, food and water deprivation, choke-holds, kicking, punching, bondage, spraying with chemical agents, forced medication, verbal abuse and threats of further physical abuse.” Paradise Cove closed shortly thereafter. That same year, the Czech Republic forced the closure of WWASP-linked Morava Academy following employees’ allegations that teens were being abused.

The former director of the Dundee Ranch Academy Program in Costa Rica went to local authorities after seeing medical neglect and other severe abuse, although human rights abuse charges were ultimately dropped against the owner, Robert Lichfield’s brother Narvin. That program closed in 2003.

Police in Mexico have shut down three WWASP-linked facilities: Sunrise Beach (1996), Casa By The Sea (2004) and High Impact (where police videotaped the teens chained in dog cages).

In 2005, New York’s Eliot Spitzer forced WWASP to return over $1 million to the parents of Academy at Ivy Ridge students, because the school had fraudulently claimed to provide legitimate New York high school diplomas. He fined Ivy Ridge $250,000, plus $2000 in court costs. A civil suit has been filed for educational fraud in New York as well, by a different law firm.

Straight's Sembler currently heads the Scooter Libby Defense Fund, in addition to his work for Romney, and has worked tirelessly to keep the Vice President's former Chief of Staff out of prison, even after his conviction on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. After all, if running programs that impose these kinds of "treatments" on American teenagers is not a prison-worthy offense, why should lying to a court be?

The Romney campaign is aware of the WWASP suits, and should be familiar with the Straight suits. If not, it's worth asking: Does Romney support these types of tactics for at-risk youth? Or does he take the line the organizations founded by his fundraisers take—that these dozens of lawsuits are merely from bad kids who make up lies?

Coming from the man who wants to double the size of Guantanamo, these aren't insignificant questions. If Romney doesn't believe the aggressive tactics he supports for use against enemy combatants ought to be used against troubled teens and youth drug users, he should say so, and show he means it by removing these men from his campaign.

Maia Szalavitz is author of Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids (Riverhead, 2006) and a senior fellow at stats.org. Her latest book, co-written with Dr. Bruce D. Perry is The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook. (Basic Books, 2007).

This is really why Guantanamo exists. We've been torturing our own CHILDREN without a second thought, so no one feels remorse at torturing other countries' children and adults.

Yeah, french repoast with grape jelly and butter from The Mittens Thread.

[The Yosemite Bear]

remembering about how serial killer Mary Bell became a mother whilst in custody...

[ArmorPierce]

As I've brought up before, children in these situations are in a very desperate situation. They are unable to file a complaint and have anything done. First they have to prove the complaint and the complaint has to be enough to get away from those committing the act of abuse. However, before even reaching that, the accused is informed that a complaint is brought up against him or her and they can pretty much figure out who did it and make the person's life a living hell. Heard stories like that from people, not from youth detention centers, but from people brought up in foster homes and such which I expect would be in the same predicament.

[Ryan Thunder]

How the fuck is it that assholes always end up in positions of authority where they can screw shit over for everyone.

How the hell am I supposed to trust that cops will be the good guys when shit like this happens?

I need absolutes to lean on, for fucks sakes!

[CaptainChewbacca]

How the fuck is it that assholes always end up in positions of authority where they can screw shit over for everyone.

How the hell am I supposed to trust that cops will be the good guys when shit like this happens?

I need absolutes to lean on, for fucks sakes!

I'm afraid there is only one absolute in life.