Tuesday, October 14, 2003

EDITORIAL: Governor should probe youth center allegations

The abuse allegations leveled against staff and management at the now-renamed Maine Youth Center are disturbing in a variety of ways.

The image of a child - and we shouldn't forget that these are children we're talking about here - tied up in restraints for 49 hours and kept in solitary confinement for nearly three months is horrific.

Those claims are among the allegations in a lawsuit brought on behalf of Michael T.

He is now 21, and as a boy Michael did several stints in the juvenile corrections facility. If the allegations are true, they are extraordinary. Guidelines at the Maine Youth Center in South Portland - which has since been replaced by the Long Creek Youth Development Center built nearby - were for children to be held in restraint no more than 30 minutes and in solitary confinement for no more than 72 hours.

More stunning, perhaps, is that the lawsuit alleges that the management at the center knew of this mistreatment and approved. In fact, the lawsuit says the current director at Long Creek, Lars Olsen, explicitly approved of exceeding youth center guidelines in the treatment of Michael.

This should alarm Gov. Baldacci who should immediately launch an investigation of Olsen's role in this matter.

If the governor concludes the allegations against Olsen in the suit are substantially true, Olsen should be fired. Not allowed to resign. Not given severance, but publicly fired for cause. Approval of such treatment is simply inexcusable. No governor of integrity would allow someone with such a record to serve under him.

NOW, IT IS IMPORTANT to remember that, so far, these are only allegations in a lawsuit, and that's why it is vital for the governor to launch an investigation. Still, the suit's defendants, including the state, have not refuted the allegations on a factual basis. So far, the defense being mounted is on the basis of technicalities, including arguments that this treatment was within accepted norms in the juvenile corrections field at the time.

Let's be clear. There can be no clinical justification for such mistreatment. One does not need to have a degree in psychology or years of experience in juvenile corrections to understand that doing this to a kid will not make him better.

Nor is it an excuse that the youth center was underfunded at the time. No doubt, the youth center was not equipped to handle Michael. There was no full-time psychologist on staff. There was little in the way of counseling, and a child determined to be a threat to himself or others presented an enormous challenge in that environment.

Michael had wide-ranging behavioral problems, too. He would, if in possession of a sharp object, get himself transferred to the infirmary by cutting himself. This behavior was addressed with ever-more severe confinements and restraints.

According to court records, videotape of Michael's confinement shows counselors at the youth center strapping him into the restraint chair. At one point, the boy looked at the camera and said: "I've been here since I was 13 years old. This is all I know how to do."

COMMON SENSE and common decency should have been enough to stop youth center staff and management from locking up a child in a bare cell for nearly three months. What positive outcome was expected with this treatment?

Society does not send children to places like the Youth Center with the expectation that they will be barely housed, mistreated and made a greater threat. There is an expectation that children sent into the corrections system will be educated, counseled and returned to life outside the institution better than when they arrived.

There is some hope that Long Creek is becoming what it ought to be. Individualized rehabilitation plans for kids, more counseling and even substance abuse programs are all in place. That represents real progress from the days when Amnesty International was targeting the youth center for human rights violations.

That progress cannot erase the past, however. It cannot inspire confidence in an individual who allegedly oversaw grotesque treatment of a child.

If proven factual, the story in Michael's lawsuit is one of an institution that failed in barbaric fashion. No one who has overseen such a place should keep his job, no matter how well he is doing it now.

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