Trial set to begin in juvenile abuse case Five of six plaintiffs have already accepted cash settlements over alleged sexual crimes at a South Dakota center for young offenders.
Published: Star Tribune: Newspaper of the Twin Cities
Author: Mark Brunswick; Staff Writer
Location: Chamberlain, S.D.
Date: April 3, 2000
The back rubs came at lights out, when $6.50-an-hour counselor James Johnson made his rounds at the Chamberlain Academy, a residential facility for juvenile offenders. Former academy residents allege that its also when sexual advances that escalated into sodomy and oral sex occurred.
Six former residents, five from Ramsey County in Minnesota, sued the center and its for profit parent company, Youth Services International, in 1998. They alleged that YSI was negligent in hiring, supervising and retaining Johnson as an employee.
The trial is scheduled to start Tuesday in Sioux Falls, but only one plaintiff, who has rebuffed settlement offers, remains. The company agreed to a confidential cash settlement with the others last week.
Lawyers pledge to raise questions about the hiring and retaining practices of YSI and, in the process, of a burgeoning industry. States and counties nationwide contract with similar companies to provide secure facilities for incarcerated juveniles. At the end of 1995, more than a third of adjudicated youth in the country - nearly 40,000 - were housed in such facilities.
No bars or fences surround the Chamberlain Academy. Males and females between 13 and 19, most with long histories in the juvenile justice system, are sent there to participate in a highly structured program that allows them more freedom as they take on responsibility.
Words painted on the walls inside spell out some of the academy’s mantras: “Intensity. Integrity. Intimacy.”
Johnson, whose experience included ranching and two years of studying VCR repair, was hired in July 1995 as a teacher and counselor. A criminal-history check had shown nothing. But shortly after he was hired, he was being dubbed a “Chester,” a reference to the pedophilic cartoon character Chester the Molester portrayed in Hustler magazine, according to police files.
The first allegations against him surfaced during a routine psychological examination of a 14-year-old boy from Fargo, N.D., in January 1996. The boy told a doctor that a worker at Chamberlain had been touching him. The same day, the academy received an anonymous letter from someone claiming to be “hurt inside” because he was frightened of Johnson “feeling up on you.” Social workers later concluded that the Fargo boy had written the letter.
Later, a 16-year-old boy from St. Paul told police that Johnson had massaged him and put his hands under his shorts. A 15-year-old St. Paul boy alleged that Johnson had fondled his buttocks. And, according to police reports, Johnson took one resident out to dinner on the eve of his departure from the academy, then drove him to his home and sexually propositioned him.
‘Didn’t want to tell’
The Ramsey County man who is the remaining plaintiff in the suit spoke to the Star Tribune on the condition that his last name not be used. Jumal, who was 17 at the time, had been at Chamberlain previously - for burglary and assault - and had been sent back after failing to attend a mandatory after-care program.
According to police files and to Jumal’s account, the touching began with back rubs, escalating to masturbation and then oral sex and sodomy. Jumal said the encounters, generally in a basement weight room, began during his first stint at the academy between August and December 1995, and resumed when he returned in January 1996. There were an estimated 12 to 20 incidents.
“It was freaking me out because I never had nothing happening like that to me before,” he said. “I didn’t want to tell and get in trouble. You know, in order to get out you have to be good, and staff could make it hard on you. I closed my eyes and had pictures like I was somewhere else, like Jamaica or Hawaii or on the beach.”
But Jumal said word about Johnson’s actions slowly spread among the residents.
“People were embarrassed, but nobody wanted to admit what happened,” he said. “I thought maybe I could have prevented it, told him stop. But I was young and he was a staff person. I didn’t know what to think. Why is he in my room? Why, out of everybody else, is he sitting on my bed?”
In an interview with police after his arrest, Johnson acknowledged giving back rubs and occasionally applying foot spray to residents but said other staff were present. He told police he was unaware of an academy policy against touching. He denied any sexual contact.
In July 1997, Johnson was indicted on two counts of abuse of or cruelty to a minor. In May 1998, a plea bargain was reached: He would plead no contest to one count of simple assault - a charge that covers threats and acts of intimidation but not physical contact.
He was fined $700, sentenced to six months in jail with all but 60 days suspended, and put on probation for two years. Johnson, who now works at a meat processing plant in Iowa, didn’t respond to written requests for an interview.
His lawyer in South Dakota, Steven Bucher, said there was no physical evidence and several unreliable statements from key witnesses in the criminal case. He suggested that Johnson was a taskmaster who made few friends among the residents, and said the residents “were very hardened and old for their years.
“They knew how to push people’s buttons,” he said.
Confidence in YSI
YSI was started in 1991 by the founder of Jiffy Lube, the auto lubrication and oil-change company. It merged in March 1999 with Correctional Services Corp., based in Sarasota, Fla. It now operates 38 facilities and treats almost 6,000 juveniles at a time, both in secure and community-based settings.
YSI President James Irving said the company has a strong screening and monitoring process.
“Unfortunately, we hire staff that do violate our code of ethics,” he said. “If there is a violation of criminal law, we will try and get it prosecuted.”
Ramsey County officials say they remain confident in the YSI programs they use.
A Minnesota legislative auditor’s report last year showed that Ramsey County sent 6
percent of its juvenile placements out of state, more than any other judicial district. And in
1998, 75 of the 88 juveniles it sent out of state went to YSI facilities. The county spent half
of its $4 million budget for out-of-home residential placement with YSI and encouraged the
company to build a facility in Minnesota.
Jim Hayes, director of the juvenile division for Ramsey County Community Corrections, said that he is satisfied that the incidents cited in the suit were isolated, and that the company handled the allegations properly.
But Greg McEwen, a St. Paul attorney representing Jumal and the others, said he hopes to establish a pattern of negligence in hiring and training at the facility. McEwen has successfully sued YSI before and contends that the company should have been aware of the widespread rumors being circulated about Johnson.
“I think they knew a lot,” he said. “They continued to have this man as an employee; it was only [when] one of our clients went outside the facility that it stopped; then immediately he was put on paid leave.” Jumal, now 21, works in building maintenance at a Twin Cities hospital. He has had no further brushes with the law.
He said he often thinks about what happened, occasionally waking from sleep in a sweat.
“Johnson is gone, but in a few years there might be another Johnson out there,” he said. “Another young kid may have to go through what I went through.”
Copyright 2000 - Star Tribune: Newspaper of the Twin Cities