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Youth services official alleges abuse, cover-ups
RAY PIERCE
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

The former security chief at the Youth Services Division's soon-to-be closed center in North Little Rock told lawmakers Monday that reports of abuse were more than allegations and that attempts were made to sweep them under the rug.
Gary Staggs, now an investigator for the division's Internal Affairs Unit, told the Senate Interim Committee on Children and Youth and the House Interim Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs Committee how incident reports at the Observation and Assessment Center in North Little Rock weren't followed up on and in some cases were changed.
When he raised concerns with supervisors, they were dismissed, he testified to the committees.
The committees are investigating who knew about alleged abuses of youths in state custody, when they learned about it, and what they did -- or failed to do -- about it.
In June, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published a six-part series of articles about problems within the division, including physical abuse of children in state custody. The articles contained information that some youths were subjected to raw sewage that had overflowed from a backed-up sewer.
Staggs said he saw a worker at the center hold a child by the neck and repeatedly push him against a cell door after an escape attempt.
Staggs said he wrote up what he saw. In a couple of days, Percy Nash, one of his superiors, came to him about amending the report, saying that the youth who gave Staggs the information had changed his story, Staggs testified.
"I told him I didn't get it from the kids. I saw it myself. He walked off," Staggs said.
State Sen. Mike Beebe, D-Searcy, who had spoken with Staggs before the committee meeting, guided Staggs through his two-hour testimony, stopping him to emphasize specific points.
Staggs said there was an air of noncooperation with state police investigators. He said that after he was interviewed by an investigator looking into a youth's rape allegation, Gary Rogers, then the center's director, called Staggs into his office.
"He told me that I was to tell the state police investigator to go through him," Staggs said.
Staggs also told the committee about a temporary worker the division hired who was alleged to have abused a youth at the center. He said Nash fired the worker, not for the alleged abuse but because the job had been eliminated.
"After the allegation was unfounded by the state police, [the man] was rehired two weeks later," Staggs said. "After that, he was involved in another abuse allegation but was only terminated because his temporary time was up."
Staggs said in June, Rogers called himto ask if he should rehire the temporary worker. Staggs said "no." The man was not rehired.
In another abuse allegation, Staggs said he received a report from a staff member about a center worker choking a youth. He told the worker to write a report. When the state police wanted the report, the worker came back and asked for it back. Staggs said he went to Nash about it, and Nash told him he "didn't want the report submitted as written."
"I went to Gary Rogers and told him I was unhappy with the situation," Staggs said. "Mr. Rogers said he had a problem with the report, too. He said the officer [who reported the abuse to Staggs] was messing with another officer's livelihood, so they wanted the report changed or pulled.''
Later, the committee heard testimony from the Democrat-Gazette associate editor whose investigation brought the allegations of abuse to light. Mary Hargrove said she was not an opinion writer and, therefore, couldn't say what some members of the committee wanted to know -- who she thought was responsible.
"I will not answer any questions that get into blaming somebody or my opinions of whether somebody had done their job properly or not," she said at the beginning of her testimony.
Hargrove made it clear that while her investigation began in April 1997 and her stories ran in June of 1998, she told the proper authorities about all abuse reports that she learned of during the investigation without waiting until publication.
"At no point did I know about any kind of allegations of abuse that were not reported the instant that I did hear of them," she said.
Hargrove said the youths she interviewed all had the same fear etched into their faces. She said the boys were scared of the staff.
"The ones I saw, the boys told me of how they were hogtied and that a staff member pulled their genitals," she said. "Or they were put into a cell with four bigger boys by an angry staff member and sexually assaulted. That face was fear."
She said the boys, who were supposed to be protected by the state, had no reason to believe the system was fair.
Not all of the lawmakers appreciated the images Hargrove conjured. Rep. Dennis Young, D-Texarkana, said he knows there are good, diligent employees with the division and that he resented the picture Hargrove painted.
Sen. Bill Lewellen, D-Marianna, took Hargrove to task over her reporting, especially since she said she never saw any abuse or any physical evidence of abuse.
Lewellen said during a break that he didn't believe the bulk of the abuse allegations. He said the children who make it to the Youth Services Division generally know how to work the system to get what they want. He added that he thought it was wrong for staff members at the detention facilities to have to prove their innocence against abuse allegations.
Lewellen said past governors and legislatures bear some responsibility for not adequately funding the juvenile justice system.
"When you take an agency that comes into this Legislature that says, 'We have problems. We need about $20 million to straighten this thing out,' and we give them $3 million, how do we absolve ourselves?" he asked.
Toward the end of the meeting, Department of Human Services' Chief Counsel Jonann Coniglio, through a letter she wrote to a legislative staff member Wednesday, told the committee that while she would appear before lawmakers, she wouldn't be able to answer some of the questions she believed they'd ask.
"Although I may be able to answer some of the legislators' questions, many questions I anticipate I will not be able to answer due to ethical constraints placed on me as a lawyer," Coniglio wrote.
She said that without a waiver from her clients, she wouldn't be able to answer questions regarding her discussions with department employees. She had asked in her letter that her name be excluded from the committee's witness list for Monday's hearings. It wasn't.
Sen. Mike Ross, D-Prescott, chairman of the Senate committee, wrote interim department Director Richard Weiss on Friday asking him to intervene so that Coniglio could testify.
"Since she is employed by the Arkansas Department of Human Services and not by individual employees that are either with or have been with this agency, I request that you provide her with such a waiver," Ross wrote. "In the meantime, her name will remain on the witness list."
Weiss told the committee that Ross' letter had not arrived at his office before Monday's meeting, which began at 9 a.m. and lasted until 3 p.m. "I would like some time to reflect on that. Thank you," he told the committee.
"There is an ethical rule that prohibits me from testifying against my client. My client is the Department of Human Services and all of its past and present employees," Coniglio said after the meeting. "It's not my privilege to waive."
Breck Hopkins, a lawyer with the chief counsel's office, said the ethical rule Coniglio referred to specifically deals with government attorneys.
"It talks about the fact that an agency is not a hypothetical construct. It is something that acts through its duly authorized representatives," he said. "When you talk about an agency as a client, you are really talking about the people who make up the agency as your client."
Committee members want Coniglio to tell them what former director Lee Frazier told her that he knew about the problems or what former Youth Services Division Director Ruth Whitney told her about what she knew or did, Hopkins said. He said all of that would be "textbook attorney-client privilege."
Hopkins said he believes that Weiss couldn't execute a blanket waiver for the department. Instead, Coniglio would need waivers from each individual that she would be asked to testify about, he said.
"I was disappointed by her letter," Ross said after the meeting. "She makes it sound like she represents an individual. She works for the people of Arkansas. She's the attorney, not for any individual, but for the Department of Human Services. I think that's kind of a weak lame-out from testifying.
"At this point, I have to hope that DHS wants to join us in restoring openness and confidence to our government," Ross added. "Once I get that response from them then we'll know whether they want to cooperate or whether they may have something to hide."

This article was published on Tuesday, July 28, 1998

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