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Huckabee faulted for inaction
RAY PIERCE
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

After learning in August 1997 about abuse of youths in the state Youth Services Division, Gov. Mike Huckabee "failed to take affirmative action to remedy the abuse" in a timely way, according to a draft report made public Wednesday.
Although Huckabee took action in April 1998, he did not do enough from August 1997 to April 1998 to ensure that corrective steps that state officials told him were being taken were curing the ills, the document says.
The report says he failed to adequately monitor the process "to ensure the situation was resolved."
The report was drafted for two committees that conducted seven days of hearings during the summer and listened to 37 hours of testimony about the division's problems. The committees were investigating who knew about the division's problems, when they knew it and what they did about it.
The draft has been ready since Monday, when it was mailed to committee members, but it was not released until Wednesday.
Declining to turn it loose earlier, lawmakers said they wanted their committee colleagues to get copies by mail before it was made public and they feared disclosure before Tuesday's voting on Huckabee's race for governor might lead to the findings being construed as political.
The committees will meet Monday to consider adopting the report and amendments that members want to attach.
The report listed 10 people in the governor's office and the Department of Human Services who were in positions to know about the abuse. Huckabee topped the list.
The governor was advised by liaison Sandra Winston in August 1997 of "founded cases of abuse" and an alleged sexual assault at the division's Observation and Assessment Center in North Little Rock.
The report summed up its view of Huckabee's role by saying a memo from Winston informed him of the abuse, and "written evidence and testimony fails to indicate that the governor monitored the process of addressing the problems of abuse at DYS to ensure the situation was resolved.
''Accordingly, we are compelled to conclude that the governor failed to take affirmative action to remedy the abuse."
Huckabee has said he made the mistake of trusting people in state positions who didn't tell him the truth. Once he learned details of the problems that were continuing in April 1998, he stepped in and took decisive action, he has said.
"I think the record very clearly shows that I took very strong affirmative action to correct the situation," Huckabee said Wednesday. "We all were shocked by the revelations but acted upon them as soon as we found out."
The report concentrated on what he might have done between August 1997 and April 1998 to discover whether remedies were being effectively implemented.
Huckabee said he couldn't comment on the specifics of the report since he hadn't read it.
Rep. James Luker, D-Wynne, said the documents presented as evidence to the committees speak for themselves. Huckabee, as chief executive, had an obligation to follow up to see that problems are being corrected or to have a subordinate take care of it, Luker said. "He or his staff did not do enough to follow through," Luker said.
The report criticized former Human Services Director Lee Frazier for not alerting Huckabee, the governor's staff or the Legislature about the problems that Frazier had been told about. Frazier testified that he was told the corrective measures were being implemented at the time he was told of the problems.
During the hearings, the committees heard from former Youth Services Director Ruth Whitney that she tried to make Frazier aware of the seriousness of the problems but that he didn't believe her.
"This unwillingness to recognize the problem negates the possibility of evaluating, monitoring and ultimately solving the problem," the report stated.
Frazier said he disagreed with the report's findings on him "wholeheartedly."
"Obviously they [the committees' members] didn't look at all the evidence because I reported and acted on the information I had at the time," he said. Frazier said he didn't follow up to see if Whitney's corrective action was working because he was never told that there were continued problems.
"We had staff meetings every week," he said. "I would have expected that to have come out at those meetings, but they were never put on the table."
The report's finding regarding Whitney was mixed. It said that Whitney, who was director from August 1995 to February 1998 when she was moved over to the department's County Operations Division, was aware of the allegations, lack of staff training and concerns about the center's physical condition, and that she tried to correct them. It said her correspondence and briefings to superiors were interpreted in many instances to "mean that the problems were being handled with appropriate corrective action."
The report concluded that Whitney took action to resolve the situation, but there was no evidence that she acted on the failure of the corrective measures or recognized the "urgency for immediate assistance."
The report says that Huckabee's Human Services Department liaisons Winston and Larry Toller failed to act to remedy the abuse when they did not monitor the corrective measures they were told were being initiated. Former Youth Services Division acting Director Larance Johnson and Human Services Department spokesman Joe Quinn also were mentioned as sharing responsibility.
Former Human Services Department Director Tom Dalton, former Youth Services Division Assistant Director Lloyd Warford and Huckabee spokesman Rex Nelson were absolved of responsibility.
Sen. Mike Ross, D-Prescott, chairman of the Senate committee, said the report was held until Wednesday because "I was afraid that the intent of the report would have been lost if we released it before the election. We need to learn from this and go on."
Sen. Mike Beebe, D-Searcy, said not releasing the report until after the election "shows that we tried to do this in a nonpartisan way."
The report lists several recommendations to minimize or prevent such problems from happening again. Among them is a proposed restructuring of the Youth Services Division to make it an independent department or place it under the auspices of the Department of Correction, or to privatize Youth Services Division facilities, appropriating more money for the division and hold management accountable for following up on their actions.
Beebe said he expected some of the recommendations to be enacted into law.
"If not, then the people who resist are just as remiss as those who allowed the abuse to take place," he said.
The committees are the Senate Children and Youth Committee and the House Committee on Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs.
In June, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ran a six-part series of articles about problems in the division, including physical abuse of youngsters.

This article was published on Thursday, November 5, 1998

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