India: Teacher sent to 3-month jail for beating student

Excerpt from The Times of India

TNN, 3 February 2010, 06:55am IST

AHMEDABAD: To set an example in order to curb corporal punishment in schools, a city court on Tuesday punished a teacher and sentenced him three-month imprisonment for beating a student. The court has also awarded compensation of Rs 5,000 to the student.

[The teacher, Ranjitsingh] Yadav teaches Hindi language at Rashtriya Bharti Hindi School located at the CTM in Amraiwadi and went to standard IX on February 20, 2002 to [seek] books from students [and] to check home work assigned to them. A student named Mukesh Kushwaha, who had forgotten to bring the book to school that day, could not satisfy the teacher's queries.

Angry with the student, the teacher twisted Kushwaha's left arm and caused a fracture. The student was then rushed to the hospital for treatment, but his parents lodged a complaint with the Amraiwadi police station.

For the full article, please click the following link: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Teacher-sent-to-3-mnth-jail-for-beating-student/articleshow/5529070.cms

PA: Luzerne officials deny knowing of abuse

By William Ecenbarger

For The Inquirer

November 11, 2009

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/20091111_Luzerne_officials_deny_knowing_of_abuse.html

WILKES-BARRE - To the frequent frustration and occasional exasperation of a special panel investigating judicial corruption in Luzerne County, yesterday's testimony gave off the steady and unmistakable sound of the buck being passed.

Phrases like "I was not aware," "Yes, but," and "It was not my responsibility" wafted from the witness chair as officials who oversee the county's courts denied knowing that thousands of adolescents were being locked away, often for petty offenses, after hearings in which they had been effectively denied lawyers.

When Luzerne County District Attorney Jacqueline Musto Carroll challenged the 11 members of the state-appointed Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice to "tell me what you do when you have a judge who is a crook," she was promptly interrupted by the questioner-in-chief.

"You report him," interjected John M. Cleland, the commission chairman and a judge on the state Superior Court.

Cleland and his fellow panelists have until May 31 to discover how two former judges, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan, managed to get away with what federal prosecutors say was a five-year, $2.8 million kickback conspiracy, a scheme that one juvenile-justice advocacy group called "one of the largest and most serious violations of children's rights in the history of the American legal system."

Musto Carroll said she was unaware that more than half the teenagers whose cases came before Ciavarella did not have legal representation. She said the judge's "zero-tolerance" policy was a result of the 1999 Columbine High School shootings.

"I think Judge Ciavarella was probably doing what he thought he ought to do," the district attorney testified. "I have heard in a number of cases, what he did actually straightened out kids' lives. Some went on to get scholarships and college educations."

That brought an angry response from panel member Robert L. Listenbee, head of the juvenile unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia. "Ms. Carroll, I remind that you and I as attorneys took an oath to uphold the Constitution. There were children here whose basic constitutional rights were being violated every day. Let's keep that in mind."

Lawyer Kenneth J. Horoho Jr., a commissioner from Pittsburgh, offered a litany of questions about Musto Carroll's having not known or questioned Ciavarella's methods. Horoho concluded, "The bottom line is that 'zero tolerance' went unchallenged by your office."

"Don't worry about Luzerne County," Musto Carroll assured the commission. "As long as I'm here, it's in good hands."

Yesterday's first witness was David W. Lupas, Musto Carroll's predecessor as district attorney and now a county judge, who said that none of his assistants ever brought concerns about Ciavarella's conduct to his attention.

Panel member Dwayne D. Woodruff - the head juvenile judge in Allegheny County, and a former Pittsburgh Steelers safety - noted that 54 percent of the children brought before Ciavarella did not have lawyers. "Would you expect your assistant D.A.s to come to you with that?" Woodruff asked.

"No one came to me," Lupas said.

Cleland interjected, "I could understand a case here and a case there. But 6,000 cases? This went on for years, and it was a massive deprivation of rights. No assistant D.A., no public defender, no private lawyer ever raised a question? That's hard to believe."

Basil G. Russin, who has been chief public defender in Luzerne County since 1980, said that even if he had known the extent of Ciavarella's denial of rights to juvenile defendants, he would not have had many options. "We don't have the time or the money to look into things very deeply. We just do the best we can," he said.

Besides, Russin said, the judges' get-tough stance against juvenile misbehavior had wide public support.

"Everybody loved it. The schools loved it because they got rid of every problem kid. The parents loved it because there were kids they couldn't control. The cops loved it because it got kids off the streets, and the D.A. loved it because they were getting convictions."

In earlier testimony, Sandra Brulo, a former Luzerne County probation official, said she had raised concerns about Ciavarella with her boss, but did not hear back.

"Don't you think you should have taken it further when you didn't get any satisfaction from your supervisor?" asked Ronald P. Williams, a panel member from nearby Wyoming County, raising his arms in amazement.

"I took it to my boss," Brulo replied. "That's as far as I thought I should go."

She testified that probation officers, not attorneys, asked young defendants to sign forms just before they entered Ciavarella's courtroom that waived their right to a lawyer. Commissioner George D. Mosee, a deputy Philadelphia district attorney, asked Brulo if this was a proper role for probation officers.

"We did what the judge instructed us to do," she said.

"Even when their very liberty was at stake?" Mosee asked. Brulo did not answer.

Joseph Massa, senior counsel for the state Judicial Conduct Board, which investigates complaints against judges, told the panel that his agency had acted properly more than two years ago when it referred allegations it received against Ciavarella and Conahan to federal prosecutors.

By not acting on its own, the board allowed the jurists to stay on the bench until they resigned this year. The judges stepped down after a federal grand jury indicted them on racketeering, bribery and fraud charges.

"To allege the [Judicial Conduct Board] members put their heads in the proverbial sand while juveniles in this county were sent to the hoosegow is a disgrace," Massa told the panel.

Ciavarella is accused of taking bribes from operators of two for-profit detention centers in return for sending children to the centers. Conahan is accused of securing lucrative contracts for the private jails, which the state paid according to the numbers of inmates they housed.

Once the scheme was set up, prosecutors say, Ciavarella guaranteed that the jails were filled with a steady stream of juvenile offenders.

Ciavarella and Conahan are awaiting trial. They initially pleaded guilty but withdrew their pleas after a federal judge rejected the terms of their plea agreements.

MO: Former Leavenworth school librarian sentenced for sex abuse

The Associated Press

http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_news/story/1213150.html

LEAVENWORTH | A former Leavenworth elementary school librarian has been sentenced to almost 25 years in prison for sexually abusing a student.

A Leavenworth County District Court judge sentenced 37-year-old Anthony C. Baker to 299 months on Thursday.

Baker pleaded guilty last year to a federal child pornography charge and was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison. The new sentence will run consecutively with that one.

PA: Luzerne judge broke his vow to reform

NOTE: "Luzerne County District Attorney Jacqueline Musto Carroll, who assisted with the investigation into the judges, said last year that the case lacked merit because it identified only a handful of juveniles who were affected."

This is how the justice system works in PA....ignore "and justice for all" in favor of "and justice only if you're lucky to have been one of a significant number abused by a corrupt system..."

Every system I've worked with in PA is like this....hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil...until the "evil" is so rampant it can no longer be hidden away; so it becomes more of a positive PR stunt that anything else....when they have no choice but to fix one series of problems to divert attention from the numerous others...

Posted on Wed, Jan. 28, 2009
By John Sullivan Inquirer Staff Writer
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/38520577.html

Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. said he'd never do it again.

In 2000, the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia accused the Luzerne County Juvenile Court judge of detaining a 13-year-old boy without informing him of his constitutional right to an attorney.

A state court agreed.

"Even if they come in and tell me that they don't want a lawyer, they're going to have one," Ciavarella told the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader in 2001.

Yet for years afterward, Ciavarella repeatedly violated the rights of hundreds of children by shipping them to a juvenile center without telling them they had the right to an attorney, according to a petition to the state Supreme Court filed by the Juvenile Law Center.

On Monday, Ciavarella and another judge said they would plead guilty to charges that they hid $2.6 million in secret payments from one of the centers' owners and a construction contractor.

The charges include allegations that the judges locked up juveniles at the detention centers even when probation officers recommended against it.

Through an attorney yesterday, Ciavarella declined to comment on allegations by the law center that he violated the rights of juvenile offenders by failing to tell them of their legal rights.

In a statement, Ciavarella's attorney, Al Flora Jr., said the judge denied sending any child to a detention center because of money.

The revelations renewed the controversy over Ciavarella's court practices and have prompted the juvenile center in Philadelphia, which filed both petitions, to consider further moves, including an appeal to a federal court.

"There are hundreds of kids whose constitutional rights have been violated in the most flagrant way," said Marsha L. Levick, the center's legal director.

"It was stunning to us that the same judge was still doing the same thing" he was doing in 2000, she said.

The case revolves around two child care centers: PA Child Care L.L.C. and Western PA Child Care L.L.C., both of which opened in the last few years.

Federal authorities allege that Ciavarella and another Luzerne County Court judge, Michael T. Conahan, accepted payment from two people, identified as Participant 1 and Participant 2 in the federal charges.

Participant 1 is described as a Luzerne County lawyer who conducted business as PA Child Care L.L.C.

PA Child Care was owned at the time by Butler County lawyer Robert A. Powell and Pittsburgh-area investment banker Gregory R. Zappala, according to the state Department of Public Welfare.

Powell sold his interest in the facility to Zappala in June 2008, after the alleged illegal activity occurred.

An attorney for Powell, who has not been charged, said his client had no comment. Officials with PA Child Care did not return a call seeking comment from Zappala. Zappala is not accused of any wrongdoing.

Participant 2 is identified as a contractor who was a friend of Ciavarella's who built the center.

The charges also allege that the judges removed funding from a competing county facility that they said was unsafe and helped secure deals that reaped the new detention facilities millions of dollars.

In an audit, the DPW found that PA Child Care earned an excessive profit and that the county could have built three detention centers for the cost of what it paid to PA Child Care.

Now, the Juvenile Law Center is considering reprising its petition to the state Supreme Court, which declined to hear it this month. It may also consider a civil action.

"You have, arguably, a rogue judge acting outside the requirements and obligations of his office, making decisions influenced by financial remuneration on the backs of children," Levick said. "That's something the Supreme Court ought to want to fix."

The Juvenile Law Center was joined in its 2008 case by the DPW. In a brief, the welfare department said the rate at which juveniles were unrepresented by attorneys in Luzerne County was 10 times the state average and "so dramatic as to require inference of a systematic deprivation of the constitutional rights of accused juveniles by the Luzerne County Court."

The state also noted that out-of-home placements in the county were 21/2 times higher than the state average, a number that would surely have been lower if more juveniles had attorneys, Corbett said.

State Attorney General Tom Corbett also filed a brief saying that 60 percent of the youths who did not have attorneys landed in detention centers. He said the allegations raised serious concerns about the fairness and integrity of the proceedings.

Luzerne County District Attorney Jacqueline Musto Carroll, who assisted with the investigation into the judges, said last year that the case lacked merit because it identified only a handful of juveniles who were affected.

One case the juvenile law center cited in its petition was that of high school student Jessica Van Reeth, a good student who had never been in trouble before she was caught with a lighter and a marijuana pipe.

She and her father did not recall signing a waiver of counsel. Van Reeth, who was 16, had been suspended from school for 10 days. A Juvenile Court officer recommended probation because she seemed like a good young person.

But in a 90-second hearing in 2007, Van Reeth admitted having the lighter and pipe. Ciavarella asked whether she had heard him speak at her school about drugs.

She had.

Ciavarella then sentenced her to three months in a wilderness camp.

Contact staff writer John Sullivan at 215-854-2473

PA: Editorial: Judges Sentenced

Kids for cash
Posted on Wed, Jan. 28, 2009
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20090128_Editorial__Judges_Sentenced.html

The setting is Pennsylvania coal country, but it's a story right out of Dickens' grim 19th-century landscape: Two of Luzerne County's most senior judges on Monday were accused of sending children to jail in return for kickbacks.

The judges, Luzerne County President Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., 58, and his predecessor, Senior Judge Michael T. Conahan, 56, will serve seven years in jail under a plea agreement.

They're alleged to have pocketed $2.6 million in payments from juvenile detention center operators.

When a federal judge reviews their plea, though, the question ought to be whether the punishment is adequate - along with the judges being bounced from the bench, disbarred, and losing their pensions.

If the allegations are true, Ciavarella and Conahan were involved in a disgraceful cabal far worse than one that merely lined their pockets.

First, the judges helped the detention centers land a county contract worth $58 million. Then their alleged scheme was to guarantee the operators a steady income by detaining juveniles, often on petty stuff.

Many of the kids were railroaded, according to allegations lodged with the state Supreme Court last year by the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, an advocacy group.

In asking the court to intervene in April, the law center cited hundreds of examples where teens accused of minor mischief were pressured to waive their right to lawyers, and then shipped to a detention center.

One teen was given a 90-day sentence for having parodied a school administrator online. Such unwarranted detentions left "both children and parents feeling bewildered, violated and traumatized," center lawyers said.

"Very few people would stand up" to the Luzerne judges, according to the law center's executive director, Robert G. Schwartz.

Fortunately, Juvenile Law Center was willing to do so, along with backing from state Attorney General Tom Corbett's office and the state Department of Public Welfare.

The blind justices on the state's high court, though, took a pass. Only last month, they offered no explanation in declining to take up the law center's request that the court step up.

Now, the state Supreme Court should revisit the issue, since the scope of corruption alleged at the Luzerne County Courthouse in Wilkes-Barre could further undermine confidence in the courts statewide.

Authorities need to redress running roughshod over juveniles' rights - a process also likely to bring damage suits. While the local district attorney pledges to "do our best to right the situation," this calls for an independent, outside review.

The two judges' downfall may have rooted out the worst perpetrators of this evil scheme, but the abuse of power alleged in Luzerne County is so startling that it should send shock waves for reform around the state court system.

TX: Two boys accuse Dallas ISD instructor of molesting them at county jail

06:58 AM CST on Friday, January 23, 2009
By JENNIFER EMILY / The Dallas Morning News
jemily@dallasnews.com
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/dallas/stories/011509dnmetjailmolest.3d7efb9.html

At least two boys awaiting trial as adults say a Dallas Independent School District instructor repeatedly molested them at the Dallas County Jail while he was supposed to be teaching them.

Luis Enrique de los Santos is charged with one count of sexual assault of a child, and authorities said additional charges will probably follow. He is on administrative leave and has been released on $100,000 bail. He could not be reached for comment Wednesday, and it was unclear whether he has an attorney.

Authorities said a handful of boys made molestation accusations against de los Santos, 36, who was arrested last week. It was unclear how many.

Defense attorney Bill Wirskye said Wednesday that he represents two teenage boys who say de los Santos molested them. One is charged with capital murder, and the other is charged with aggravated assault of a police officer.

The boys are not being identified because The Dallas Morning News does not name possible victims of sex crimes.

The Dallas County Sheriff's Department contracted with DISD to provide instruction at the jail. De los Santos had been assigned there for about a year, officials said. But since 2004, he has taught at detention facilities and taught kids too sick to attend school, the district said.

The Sheriff's Department and the school district are investigating whether other children taught by de los Santos may have been molested.

The Sheriff's Department said de los Santos passed its background checks, but that point was of little solace to Wirskye.

"If you are going to certify kids" as adults, he said, "I think you have an obligation to protect them."


Door open, officials say

De los Santos is accused of taking boys into a bathroom at the jail and performing oral sex on them, authorities said.

Sheriff's spokeswoman Kim Leach said Wednesday that students were taught one or two at a time in a multipurpose room and that the door was left open. She said a jail guard checked on them periodically.

"We place the same trust on this teacher coming into the jail to tutor students just like any educator who teaches students in a normal classroom setting," Leach said. "We try not to interfere with students' learning while they're in this setting."

In the case in which he faces charges, it is believed de los Santos was teaching two students and took the victim out of the room to another area.

"If there were two in the room, he would just occupy the other one with something and would go out to an area where there was a bathroom right outside," Leach said.

Wirskye said that de los Santos had unfettered access to the children and that he used both rewards and threats to abuse them.

"He sometimes promised to give them things he shouldn't," like hamburgers he brought to the jail, Wirskye said.

Then, he told the boys, "if you don't do what I want, I'm going to tell the authorities, and it would really hurt your case."

Through Wirskye, the family of one of the boys he represents declined to comment. The other family could not be reached.

Wirskye said the boys need sexual abuse counseling, which they are not getting at the jail.

"They're both kids. They don't really know how to deal with it," Wirskye said. "They're in a bad situation to begin with, being certified as adults. And now, they've been abused."


Policies re-evaluated

In a 2006 Dallas Morning News story about educating juvenile inmates, a Texas Education Agency spokeswoman said that children in jail are entitled to continue their education and that it's the school district's responsibility to provide studies for them.

Leach said the Sheriff's Department is re-evaluating its policies on teacher-student supervision.

Wirskye, however, said the allegations show that the supervision and training by the school district and the Sheriff's Department is lacking. He said improvements are needed in those areas to better protect children held in adult jails.

"I'm just appalled," he said.

Staff writers Scott Goldstein and Tawnell Hobbs contributed to this report.

TX: Dallas County jail teacher faces more sexual abuse charges

07:04 AM CST on Friday, January 23, 2009
By DIANE JENNINGS / The Dallas Morning News
djennings@dallasnews.com
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/012309dnmetsantossexcharge.4efed73.html

Authorities now say at least four juveniles are alleging that they were molested or assaulted by an instructor at the Dallas County jail.

Additional charges have been filed against Luis de los Santos, who had previously been charged with sexual assault of one of his students.

All of the alleged victims were juveniles waiting to stand trial as adults, said Kim Leach, spokeswoman for the Dallas County sheriff's office.

De los Santos, 36, was charged Thursday with another count of sexual assault of a child; one count of improper relationship between an educator and a student; and one count of indecency with a child.

Calvin Johnson, attorney for de los Santos, said his client "totally denies that he did anything inappropriate to any student" and suggested the alleged victims are "trying to use this situation to get released from incarceration."

The complainants are not being identified because The Dallas Morning News does not typically name possible victims of sex crimes.

The two original alleged victims each have been certified to stand trial as adults. Two others, ages 16 and 17, have already been tried and sent to the state prison system. Charges against the alleged victims range from robbery to murder, Leach said.

Johnson emphasized that the alleged victims "are not your typical juveniles or your typical inmates. They're young offenders who have committed crimes so heinous that they are certified adults."

Bill Wirskye, attorney for the two original complainants, said his clients have been charged with serious crimes, but they are not making up the charges in an effort to gain release from jail.

"When you talk to these kids up close, and you know more about the facts of this case, there's no doubt in my mind that this guy molested my two clients and probably molested more children in the Dallas County jail.

"If Dallas County is going to certify them to stand trial in an adult court, and put them in an adult jail, I think they have an obligation to protect them from sexual predators. And they have not protected them, so I don't believe it is a safe environment."

Wirskye said he did move to have bonds reduced for both of his clients. The judge reduced the bond for a client charged with assault of a police officer from $250,000 to $50,000, with the stipulation that he be monitored electronically. Bond reduction in a capital murder case is "still under consideration."

The client in the capital murder case has been awaiting trial for a year; the other client has been in jail since June 2008, Mr. Wirskye said.

When juveniles are in jail, local school districts are responsible for providing studies for them. De los Santos had been with the Dallas Independent School District and the jail since late 2007, Leach said.

HI: State agrees to end 'therapeutic lockdowns' at OCCC

Note: Prisons are even moving away from "therapeutic seclusions" yet young children are being placed in "seclusion rooms" and "time out" in public schools...

By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer

Updated at 3:16 p.m., Tuesday, December 30, 2008

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20081230/BREAKING01/81230056/-1/RSS01?source=rss_breaking

Mentally ill prisoners at Oahu Community Correctional Center will no longer be put in "therapeutic lockdowns," and treatment plans will be created for them that "adequately address serious mental health needs."

Those changes are part of a long list of improvements in the treatment of mentally ill inmates at OCCC included in a 29-page agreement filed in court this week by state and federal authorities.

The agreement is intended to settle a lawsuit filed at the same time by the U.S. Justice Department that alleges the state failed "to provide constitutionally adequate mental health care" to OCCC inmates.

Federal investigators in 2007 alleged widespread deficiencies in mental care policies and practices at the facility and since then the state "has made progress in remedying several of the alleged constitutional violations," the agreement said.

The federal investigation began in 2005 and the Department of Justice "received complete cooperation and access to OCCC and documents from the state of Hawai'i," the agreement said.

The agreement was signed by Gov. Linda Lingle, Attorney General Mark Bennett and state Public Safety Department director Clayton Frank as well as attorneys with the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department in Washington, D.C.

Both sides agreed to use an outside monitor, University of Utah professor Russell Van Vleet, to oversee the state's compliance with the agreement.

Van Vleet has monitored state improvements at the Hawai'i Youth Correctional Facility that were implemented under a similar agreement between federal authorities and the state.

The state will pay Van Vleet's salary and expenses.

Among the "substantive remedial measures" at OCCC:

• End "therapeutic lockdowns," which federal investigators said in 2005 involved the long-term isolation of mentally ill inmates in cells with no contact with staff or mental health experts. DOJ experts said the practice amounted to unconstitutional punishment and "often exacerbates the effects of detainees' illnesses."

• Involve qualified mental health experts in all cases where inmates are placed in "individualized seclusion," including a "face to face assessment" within four hours of such seclusion and periodic assessments thereafter.

• Strict limits on physical restraints, which cannot be used "as punishment for psychosis-related behavior."

• Improvements in "suicide watches" of mentally ill detainees.

• Strict control of psychotropic medications to ensure they are not used as punishment, as a "substitute for adequate staff" or in lieu of "less intrusive therapies."

• Improved mental health screening of detainees and development of "individualized treatment plans that adequately address each detainee's serious mental health needs."

• Employment of an adequate number of mental health professionals, including psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, social workers and counselors.

The settlement agreement, if approved by U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright, will be in effect for 42 months, with compliance reports submitted by the monitor in 15 and 30 months.

Failure to show "material progress toward substantial compliance" with the settlement agreement could lead to reinstatement of the lawsuit.

Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com.