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Weiss fires two from Youth Services Division
RAY PIERCE
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Two former officials at a center for youths in state custody who allegedly worked to cover up abuse allegations were fired last week.
Gary Rogers, former director at the soon-to-close Observation and Assessment Center in North Little Rock, and Percy Nash, the former program support manager at the facility, were discharged from the Department of Human Services more than a year after Youth Services Division officials recommended they be fired.
Interim Department of Human Services Director Richard Weiss said Monday that he sent dismissal letters to the two men July 27, the same day that a former security chief at the center testified to a legislative committee that Rogers and Nash knew of abuses of youths there and worked to keep them from coming to light.
Some lawmakers wondered aloud after Staggs' testimony why Rogers and Nash were still on the Youth Services' payroll.
Weiss said the timing of the two men's firing and Staggs' testimony was coincidence.
Both men had been moved into positions with Youth Services away from contact with children months ago, said department spokesman Joe Quinn.
Nash had been transferred to the division's warehouse and maintenance operations at Alexander on July 27, 1997. Rogers was demoted from center director and took an 8 percent pay cut and was put in charge of screening lower-grade applicants for jobs with the division in October 1997, Quinn said.
Weiss said he decided to fire the men shortly after taking the reins of the department in early July. Weiss became interim director last month after former director Lee Frazier resigned July 1.
Weiss said an Arkansas State Police report requested by the department's chief counsel to find out who knew what about the alleged abuses and what anyone did or failed to do about it led to his decision.
"It was my opinion that they were clearly way up there in the list of bad actors," he said.
Weiss said that the two men had "worked out a deal with the previous director to rehabilitate them, and it didn't seem right to me."
Telephone calls placed to Rogers' home weren't answered Monday afternoon. Nash couldn't be located for comment.
A July 31, 1997, department memo from Lloyd Warford, then the Youth Services assistant director for operations, to Frazier listed allegations against Nash at the center for abusing children and not reporting other allegations of abuse. The memo had an attachment saying that Nash was not fired but transferred to the Alexander Youth Services Center at Frazier's request.
Frazier said in May that if he had known in July 1997 what he knew in May, he would have had Nash fired. But he said that in the summer of 1997, with more than 80 people resigning shortly after he took over the department, he wanted to look for ways that employees could be salvaged.
Frazier said he recommended that the men be kept on in some capacity because of their "years of service."
The state police report, which also reflected Staggs' views, said that Nash and Rogers worked to cover up reports of abuse. Allegations were made against Nash that he physically abused children and struck a female employee at the center in the face, according to an investigation by Warford.
The state police report said that incidents occurred where staff members at the North Little Rock center felt that Rogers and Nash "were pressuring staff not to make reports" of abuse "or to modify their reports of abuse."
A security guard, Gerald Cole, said he saw a Youth Services worker choke a youth after a fight between two youths, the state police reported. Cole reported the choking to Staggs, his supervisor, who told Cole to write an incident report.
The state police report stated that Rogers and Nash later questioned Cole about the choking. Staggs testified that Rogers and Nash tried to get the original report back from Cole. Rogers was quoted in the state police report as saying that "no one outside of the [Central Arkansas Observations and Assessment Center] facility was to ever see that report."
The report stated that Cole was told to "be careful what he wrote because 'he was messing with peoples livelihoods.' "
In another abuse allegation, Nash questioned Staggs as to why the security chief had reported the allegation to a state police investigator.
The state police report stated that after Staggs reported the allegation, which concerned a youth being sodomized by other boys at the center, and other allegations to the state police, Rogers complained to Larance Johnson, assistant Youth Services director at the time, who instructed him to tell the investigator, a female state police trooper, that she was to deal only with Rogers.
Johnson has said that she worried that the state police investigator wasn't focusing on the incident but was going "way off into left field."
In a written response to those allegations, Rogers said that he never interfered with the state police investigation but was responding to employees' complaints that the investigator was mistreating them. Rogers said he had reports from employees that the investigator was referring to staff, most of whom were black, as "bad worms" and making racial slurs, such as "y'all don't want this white b**** over here telling you what to do." He said that caused him to worry that the investigator had a bias against black employees.
"My only concern was that staff be treated with some decency," Rogers wrote. "I had no idea this would be considered not cooperating with the state police investigation."
Warford wrote in an Aug. 1, 1997, report that abuse was commonly concealed at the center and staff members who didn't report abuse were not disciplined. State law and departmental policy required that all abuse be reported.
On July 22, 1997, Nash accepted disciplinary action for allegations against him. He agreed that he made serious mistakes and accepted a five-day suspension and reassignment to Alexander.
Warford wrote that the Nash knew that a Youth Services worker had hogtied a boy but Nash did not report the abuse to the child abuse hot line, the state police or the Youth Services central office in Little Rock. Nash contended he did not know about that incident. Warford claimed he could show Nash knew, but even if he didn't, "it was your job to know."
Staff members also felt threatened by other staff members, but Nash took no actions, Warford concluded. "Your failure to respond appropriately helped create an environment that discouraged reporting," Warford wrote in a notice to Nash.
Youth Services Director Paul Doramus wouldn't comment on the firings except to say that he "supported the decisions of the director [Weiss]."

Information for this article was provided by Mary Hargrove of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

This article was published on Tuesday, August 4, 1998

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