Exclusive: Nashville’s juvenile lockup operator has left a trail of violations across states – The Tennessean
The company running Nashville’s juvenile detention center has a record of staff misconduct that extends well beyond the lapses that led to recent high-profile escapes.
Regulators and past employees of Youth Opportunity Investments have described assaults against youth, understaffing, low pay, sexual relations with minors, faulty employee background checks, insufficient medical care and other problems in Tennessee, Michigan, Florida and Arkansas.
A top Youth Opportunity executive also previously led other facilities that faced a litany of violations.
In an ongoing federal whistleblower lawsuit, one former staffer at the Davidson County Juvenile Detention Center accused the company of retaliating against her after reporting a range of misbehavior in 2018.
Jesica Llana, a former youth development specialist, said she told superiors about a staff member who had “sexual relations” with a youth detainee, and kept a diary listing other sexual interactions with juveniles in custody. Another worker, she said, allowed youth to walk around naked. Llana thought the incidents violated the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
She also said one of the staff members “physically assaulted” a youth who was trying to read the Bible in her cell, and Llana reported the incident to the state Department of Children’s Services. That same detainee was denied medical care three days earlier, Llana said, when she had a glass shard stuck in her eye.
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After her reports, Llana alleges, her coworkers “began turning youths against” her, threatened to beat her, and in one instance locked her in a room with seven male detainees.
Instead of disciplining the offending staff, Llana said in her lawsuit, her supervisors retaliated by assigning her 16-hour shifts and denying her a leave request. Tennessee’s whistleblower law protects employees who report crimes.
Youth Opportunity denied most of the allegations in a court filing, but acknowledged the worker accused of assault used an “improper restraint” and was fired for that and other reasons. The company said Llana’s leave request was denied because she “did not follow the proper procedure for requesting time off.”
A Youth Opportunity representative did not respond to interview requests.
Davidson County Juvenile Court officials were caught off guard last week when they learned about the federal whistleblower case, more than three months after it was filed in August, according to an email obtained by The Tennessean. The court contracts with Youth Opportunity to run the detention center.
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“Your employees provided detailed information for the (case) but never told us about the lawsuit, despite being asked twice by our contract monitor in writing if there had been a whistleblower lawsuit filed about our facility,” Court Administrator Kathy Sinback wrote to Jim Hill, the president of Youth Opportunity Investments.
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Company operates across five states
Founded in 2009, the Indiana-based Youth Opportunity Investments operates 22 facilities across five states that serve young people, often in the juvenile justice system, who face problems ranging from behavioral and mental health issues to substance abuse and gang involvement.
The company has run into trouble in at least four states, according to court records, state inspection reports, internal documents and news reports. Among the issues:
- At the Nashville facility, four youths — two of whom were accused of homicide —escaped Nov. 30 after staffers made a series of missteps. They let the boys out of their cells after the typical 9 p.m. bedtime, for instance, and let them ride an elevator to an unsecured basement.
- An internal company report obtained by The Tennessean shows that Youth Opportunity management retained an employee for more than a year after multiple violations of company policy. She was found to have used force improperly, lost her keys to the secured facility, brought a contraband cell phone into a unit, and violated the sexual misconduct policy when she caressed a resident’s face, head and hair. This was the same employee from the lawsuit who was fired after an “improper restraint.” In that incident, according to the internal report, surveillance video showed her “striking the youth with a closed fist.”
- A cook at the company’s Roane County, Tennessee, facility said in another federal lawsuit the site’s clinical director knew about an accusation of inappropriate touching but didn’t report it to state officials.
- Two of the company’s sites in Michigan had a total of 84 written violations between 2014 and 2018.
- In Arkansas, the company slashed teacher pay at its centers.
- In Florida, company executives failed to catch a past gun arrest in an employee background check.
- The company’s current chief operating officer, Brian Neupaver, held a similar job at G4S Youth, when the now-closed company operated Florida and Arkansas juvenile detention centers. State investigators in Florida substantiated more than 1,500 allegations against staff members at G4S-run centers between 2007 and 2017, including abuse, neglect and sexual violence, according to state data. Detainees told a federal overseer in Arkansas that staff would give candy bars to “reward” youth for punching, slapping or bullying others.
Roane County allegations
In a federal discrimination lawsuit, a cook at the company’s Roane County, Tennessee, facility alleges that one of the residents accused a male youth counselor of inappropriate touching, and that the site’s clinical director knew about the accusation but didn’t report it to state officials.
State law requires any allegations of child abuse or neglect be reported to the Department of Children’s Services.
On the other hand, the former cook Brittany Valdez was reported to DCS for an allegation that she was “being inappropriate with a client,” according to court records. She was also suspended because of that allegation and for entering a youth’s dorm room after previously being told not to.
Valzez said she was cleared by DCS, and is suing Youth Opportunity for sexual discrimination because, she said, the company treated male employees differently.
Records about child abuse and neglect complaints are considered confidential under state law, so DCS could not disclose information about the reported allegations.
Understaffed and asleep
In Michigan, the Department of Health and Human Services publishes the results of investigations online, including at three residential treatment centers run by Youth Opportunity Investments.
Two of the company’s sites in Michigan had a total of 84 written violations between 2014 and 2018, according to a report by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock. The state found that staff members injured children, fell asleep on duty and called girls “black b***hes.” Officials also found that workers failed to routinely check on a suicidal teen left alone in his cell, and their lapses were the primary cause in his death.
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In a November report, Michigan investigators documented that the Muskegon River Youth Home:
- Was understaffed and workers were not checking on residents at random intervals, as required by law. Because of the understaffing, two residents were able to have sex in the bathroom.
- The staff inappropriately restrained residents on multiple occasions.
- Youth were improperly clothed when moving from one building to another in cold weather.
Controversy follows in other states
In Arkansas, Youth Opportunity slashed teachers’ pay at detention centers that were previously state-run. Under the company, teachers were making $42,900 this year, down from $56,000 when the centers were publicly-run.
After the drop in pay, one of the four facilities had no teachers, according to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette report.
Company administrators in Florida failed to catch a prospective employee’s recent gun arrest when hiring a counselor for teens with drug or behavior problems.
Two months into the job, Chris W. Jeffries was charged with child abuse for allegedly hitting a 16-year-old boy in the jaw at the Broward Youth Treatment Center. A lawyer for Youth Opportunity Investments told the Miami Herald that the company fired another employee who “knew or should have known about the prior arrests.”
USA Today contributed to this report.
Reach Mike Reicher at mreicher@tennessean.com or 615-259-8228 and on Twitter @mreicher.
Published 11:00 PM EST Dec 8, 2019
