Arkansas Online : Previous Features / Investigations

Youth-unit testimony points to ills at the top
RAY PIERCE
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

A former acting director of the state Youth Services Division said after a legislative hearing Monday that she may have been set up to take the fall for allegations of abuse and mistreatment of children in the division.
When asked on April 24 to resign, Larance Johnson of Little Rock had been acting director for six weeks of the division that oversees delinquent youths. Her request came at the behest of then-Department of Human Services Director Lee Frazier of Little Rock.
The man who took Johnson's place as assistant director for operations, Lloyd Warford of Little Rock, told lawmakers about the systemic nature of problems within the troubled division and how he felt that neither he nor former director Ruth Whitney of Little Rock received any backing from Frazier.
Johnson denied any responsibility for youths being abused at any of the division's facilities. Until this year, Johnson had been an assistant director of the division since it became a division in October 1993. For four of those years, she was responsible for operation of the youth facilities.
"I worked very hard to ensure that juveniles were taken care of in our facility," she told legislators.
She was moved from assistant director for operations in 1997 to assistant director for community programs.
In February, she was named acting director when Whitney, who then was director, was transferred to the department's County Operations Division.
Johnson's and Warford's testimony came during a nearly eight-hour meeting of the joint Senate Children and Youth and the House Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs committees.
The joint hearing's aim is to find out who knew what and when -- and who acted or failed to act -- about the abuse of youths in state custody, although lawmakers often veered into inquiries about division policies that might be affected by legislation in the next legislative session.
In June, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published a six-part series about problems within the division, including allegations of physical and sexual abuse.
On April 24, Gov. Mike Huckabee held a news conference to say that he had just learned specifics of the problems within the division, mostly from information uncovered by Democrat-Gazette associate editor Mary Hargrove during her year-long investigation of the division.
During that news conference, Huckabee announced that Johnson had tendered her resignation.
Johnson told the committee during her 2 1/2 hours of testimony that she wasn't given a reason for why her resignation was requested.
Former Huckabee aide Ed Rolle, who had moved to deputy director of the department, told her that no reason was needed because she served at the pleasure of the department director and the governor, she said.
Johnson, a 23-year veteran of state government, said that when she talked to Frazier, he said there were serious problems within the division and that as head of the division, she would have to go.
"It looks like that I was an appropriate candidate," Johnson said after her testimony. "As I said in my testimony, never in my history in state government have I ever seen anyone fired as an acting director, especially after only six weeks. I could not have corrected anything in six weeks compared to what was going on in Youth Services."
Johnson said the problems that have been reported about the division occurred after she had been transferred out of operations in April 1997 and into overseeing community-based programs for delinquent youths.
Johnson said she was transferred because some officials believed she was hindering an Arkansas State Police investigation into the alleged March 1997 broom-handle sexual assault of a boy at the North Little Rock Observation and Assessment Center. She told the committee that she was not interfering with the investigation but was trying to follow established division procedure.
Johnson said the accusation that she was interfering stemmed from her insistence that the state police investigator coordinate with the facility director, Gary Rogers.
"The facility director needs to know what is going on in their facility," she said. "At no time did anyone give me any concern why I shouldn't do that."
Johnson said she didn't learn until later that Rogers was part of an investigation into allegations that reports of abuse were being covered up.
She was interested in the sexual-assault case, which she thought was the most serious, Johnson said. But the state police investigator kept raising other allegations, prompting Johnson to ask where the investigator had gotten the information.
Johnson said she was fired as a public showing that something was being done to correct problems in the division.
But Warford said he and Whitney had wanted Johnson fired, along with two other Youth Services Division officials, back in July 1997, just days after Frazier took over the department.
Frazier wouldn't authorize the terminations.
"If Mr. Frazier had listened to what we had told him in July and to what we had told him in the interim, he would not have put Larance Johnson in charge of a group home, much less the Division of Youth Services," Warford said.
He said Johnson was not a bad person and that he liked her very much. But he said she didn't have the right philosophy to deal with juvenile delinquents.
"Her attitude about discipline and her method of managing is inconsistent with that type of institution," he said.
Warford began his testimony with a recitation of some of the problems he encountered in the division and some of the actions he and others took to try to correct the problems. That recitation took more than an hour before legislators began interrupting him with questions.
Warford said the division had a systemic battle between management and staff, which he blamed largely on the department's inability to fire employees because of its grievance procedures that are more stringent and legalistic than state law requires.
He also said the employees who deal directly with the children are inadequately trained, only receiving a two-hour orientation when they join the division.
He said that on July 7, 1997, shortly after Frazier took over the state's largest department with 12 division and nearly 7,700 employees, he and Whitney tried to explain the problems they were having, but Frazier wouldn't listen to them. Warford said he and Whitney wanted to brief the governor on what was going on, but Frazier rebuffed them.
"Our perception was that Lee didn't believe us, that we were exaggerating the problems," he said.
Warford said he had been communicating with Bud Cummins, Huckabee's former chief legal counsel, about the Youth Services Division, particularly in a memorandum with the heading "Request for HELP!" The memo was about the department's grievance procedures.
He said later that month Frazier threatened to fire Warford if Warford continued to talk to the governor's staff. Frazier said he would handle all such communications.
The communication with Cummins continued, however, Warford said, until Cummins resigned from the governor's staff in March.
Warford said he thought it was necessary to go behind Frazier's back to Cummins, whom Warford had known professionally for years, because Frazier didn't appreciate the seriousness of the problems within the division. He said he even thought about mailing a report to the Governor's Mansion.
"When he finally learned of what was going on," Warford said of Frazier, "it was too late."
Senate committee chairman Sen. Mike Ross, D-Prescott, said he would hold these committee meetings each Monday, excluding Labor Day, until all of the witnesses have been heard. In three days of meetings, the committee has only heard from three division employees, one reporter, and a handful of state police investigators.
Frazier, Whitney and nine other people are on the witness list.

This article was published on Tuesday, August 25, 1998

Copyright, permissions and privacy policy
Copyright © 2008, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved.
This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc.