EDITOR'S NOTE In response to stories of abuse of children in state facilities, Gov. Mike Huckabee announced Friday that the Central Arkansas Observation and Assessment Center would close in 60 days and the juveniles sent to Alexander Youth Services Center and to four serious offender programs.
However, contracts for two of those programs, operated by Associated Marine Institutes of Florida, have been canceled. Beginning July 1, AMI's wilderness camps will be run temporarily by private operators of other serious offender programs.
For more than a year, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has investigated allegations of abuse and mismanagement throughout the state Division of Youth Services -- the agency entrusted with caring for Arkansas' delinquent children. Today, the Democrat-Gazette looks at AMI's wilderness camps.
THE DOG LYING on the porch in the summer heat slowly raises his head, glances briefly with annoyed brown eyes at the visitor and resumes his siesta.
"That's Bones. He's one lazy dog," says 15-year-old Antonio.
Antonio has been showing the visitor around the East Arkansas Wilderness Institute at Colt. He trudges past wire pens of nose-wriggling rabbits, stalls filled with horses named Dixie, Thunder and Slick, and a garden sprouting a few scraggly greens.
When he reaches the hogs or pigs -- he's not sure which they are -- he lowers his voice: "They gonna be slaughtered, but they don't know it."
The institute is a serious offender program for juveniles committed to the custody of the state. Like its counterpart, the Ouachita Wilderness Institute in Mansfield, it is operated by the Florida-based Associated Marine Institutes.
The Division of Youth Services, or DYS, part of the state Department of Human Services, contracted with AMI in 1992 to take 25 boys at each site -- called wilderness camps -- and rehabilitate them in a noninstitutional environment. Last year, Arkansas spent $2.1 million on the two camps.
For six years, the Colt and Mansfield camps were part of the state's program to regionalize juvenile serious offender facilities. The camps tutor teen-agers for their General Educational Development tests and work at controlling the boys' behavior using a reward-punishment system to teach children the consequences of their actions.
Antonio, from West Memphis, was sent to the Colt camp after being picked up for robbery. He works in the camp kitchen and is proud he has learned to make meatloaf and peach cobbler.
"Every Monday advisers talk to you all day," Antonio says. "I got my head in the right place. I ain't getting in no more trouble."
AMI officials extol their performance, hailing what they say are the state's lowest recidivism rates and the high numbers of boys who have received their GED certificate.
But state records obtained by the Democrat-Gazette and interviews with the children, camp staffers and DYS officials sketch a different picture. They suggest a system out of control, riddled with incidents of physical abuse and barbaric punishment that had not been communicated to the local AMI board.
On May 28, DHS notified AMI that its contract in Arkansas wouldn't be renewed when it expires June 30.
AMI officials describe a tension-filled face-off between DHS officials and local and national AMI board members two weeks ago in Little Rock. They say that DHS auditors claimed to have found financial discrepancies in AMI bills to the state. The DHS officials questioned AMI officials about allegations of past abuse at the two facilities.
Jonann Cognilio, who heads the DHS Office of Chief Counsel, told the Democrat-Gazette: "There are legal reasons that prohibit me from discussing why the contract was canceled.
"We made a decision not to do business with AMI any longer. The quickest, cleanest way out of the contract was to exercise our option to give AMI 30 days' notice that we were terminating the contract. And that's what we did."
At the end of the meeting, "we agreed to disagree," says Cognilio.
But AMI does not plan to walk away quietly.
"We didn't agree to disagree. We didn't agree on anything," says Thedford Collins, former chairman of the local AMI board and a government affairs manager for Weyerhaeuser Co.
"I really cannot understand why we were canceled," Collins says. "There were some issues raised as the result of an audit and some accusations that have been made. They have made a deliberate effort to discredit us and we are not going to accept that. We want to know why."
DHS has questions, too. A DHS auditor rejected $79,000 in costs charged by AMI to the state last year. Among the disallowed costs -- reimbursements for liquor, meals, plane fares for a director and his family, and golf tournament expenses.
The bulk of the questioned costs, though, involved indirect costs charged by the parent company -- $400,000, or 20 percent, of the $2.1 million.
The state is awaiting a final report to determine how much money, if any, it is owed by AMI.
DHS questioned the same type of costs last year, and AMI reimbursed Arkansas $113,489.80. The pay-back included funds for two "after-care" positions required by contract, but never filled by AMI. The positions are to supervise children after their release from custody.
AMI also faces a more disturbing set of questions. Did AMI staffers physically abuse children housed at the two camps? At Cognilio's request, the Arkansas State Police and the Civil Rights Division of the FBI are investigating past and present charges of abuse.
Children and ex-staffers said they have been hogtied, forced to sleep naked in rainy, 40-degree weather, and compelled to chop wood with axes weighing as much as 55 pounds for 12 hours a day, weeks on end, till their hands bled.
Bill Hoffman, an AMI vice president at Tampa headquarters, acknowledged one incident of hogtying at one of the camps, but insisted that AMI fired an employee after verifying that and other incidents of abuse. He denied that the Arkansas camps use overweighted axes or require that kids chop wood all day. Rather, he said children who misbehave are sometimes forced to chop wood for a couple of hours to "adjust their attitude."
"Those things happened two years ago and we took action as we found out," Hoffman said of the hogtying incident. "This is baffling. We used to have a partnership with Arkansas. When we came, they were so glad to have us."
DHS officials were excited when they signed AMI to a contract in fiscal 1992. The Tampa-based company had built a national reputation for turning around troubled teen-agers. Arkansas had recently settled a federal lawsuit alleging abuse at the Pine Bluff Youth Services Center. The state wanted to close down the large institution in favor of four smaller facilities in different corners of the state.
Associated Marine Institutes originated in 1969 as an oceanographic research lab known as Florida Ocean Sciences Institute. AMI's unlikely move into the business of housing and reforming juveniles began later that year when its president and a juvenile judge arranged for several boys to work with scientists on their research projects.
In 1974, AMI, a nonprofit corporation, was formed as a central office that trains workers and sets out policies for youth programs. There are 48 institutes in eight states and the Cayman Islands. Each is autonomous with a local board of directors, but they are managed through contracts with the Tampa-based parent company.
AMI initially offered to set up a boot camp for Arkansas, but state officials balked. They didn't want military-type training tactics used on youths. Subsequently, AMI and Arkansas agreed on the concept of "wilderness" camps.
But nothing has come easily for AMI in Arkansas.
AMI bought 120 acres near Mountainburg between Lakes Fort Smith and Shepherd Springs for $185,000. When residents discovered that a camp with some of the state's most dangerous youthful offenders was to be built in their area, they succeeded in beating back the proposal. The camp plans were canceled.
"When a mistake has been made, we should admit it and get on with the business of finding a new site," said then-Gov. Jim Guy Tucker.
AMI ultimately succeeded in locating one camp in Colt in St. Francis County and another in Mansfield in Sebastian County after a citizens lawsuit failed and residents' complaints failed to sway state officials. The Colt camp opened in April 1993; the Mansfield camp in August 1994. AMI agreed to limit the number of boys at each camp to 25 to placate area residents.
It didn't take long for residents' fears to come true. In its first two years, the Colt camp reported eight escapes resulting in three assaults and the death of one teen-ager who was shot prowling behind a house in Cammack Village.
The Mansfield facility had barely opened when charges of misuse of state funds surfaced. A resident reported to state Rep. Jerry Hunton of Prairie Grove that the camp maintained a 24-foot party barge, replete with 115-horsepower motor, depth finder, cover, anchor and fishing gear. DHS had paid $15,997 for the boat. After a public outcry, AMI reimbursed the state for the boat.
The Colt escapes and the Mansfield party barge incidents weren't isolated. Additionally:
In October 1995, a 14-year-old Fort Smith boy escaped from Mansfield after a guard who was supposed to watch him fell asleep.
Five months later, an employee of the Mansfield camp was fired and another resigned after an investigation into a Christmas Day conversation the pair had about alleged illegal drug use. A group of camp opponents used a police scanner to tape the conversation and gave a copy to the Sebastian County sheriff's office.
In July 1996, seven boys escaped from the Colt camp, but were quickly recaptured and put in shackles. However, AMI officials demanded the Arkansas camps return the shackles to the Tampa headquarters because they felt it was inappropriate to use such restraints.
In September 1996, six juveniles overpowered a guard and escaped from the Mansfield facility.
"The recent runs from the Ouachita Wilderness Institute were in part due to program management not following appropriate established procedures and inadequate security measures. We have corrected both of these situations," wrote Rusty Russell, AMI regional director, to Ruth Whitney, then the DYS director.
Whitney demanded the camp implement a 3-to-1 staff-to-juvenile ratio and dress the boys who were high-escape risks in distinctive uniforms so they could be spotted easily if they ran away.
AMI officials stepped up their public relations efforts. They stressed community services projects by the boys, including providing winter firewood to the elderly. They reminded communities that they were helping the boys learn a new way of life as the troubled teens worked with animals, planted gardens and baled hay for neighboring farmers.
By 1997, the Colt and Mansfield camps were in a state of crisis.
In January, three boys who had left the Mansfield camp were interviewed at the Alexander Youth Services Center by DYS staff. According to a DYS memo, one stated he was "called the 'n' word," while another alleged sexual misconduct between staff and boys, records show. No further information about the alleged sexual misconduct was available.
The same memo says that DYS officials then interviewed nine boys at Mansfield. The youths reported staff cursed them, calling them "faggots" and "niggers." One boy alleged a staff member choked him during an altercation.
And the boys reported that while in the facility's punishment area, called Attitude Camp or A-Camp for short, they were taken out in the woods, not allowed to shower and forced to sleep naked in sleeping bags under a tarp. A-Camp is used to punish minor infractions of camp rules.
Whitney told AMI to improve the sleeping area in A-Camp by putting tents on pallets on the ground in bad weather.
Because of how boys were treated at A-Camp, AMI officials fired the Mansfield camp director and brought in Philip Adams to run Mansfield. Adams, who had been with AMI for years in Florida, brought a sensitive but no-nonsense approach to running the camp. He worked with the boys to build self-esteem and accept responsibility for their criminal actions.
A memo by Elbert Grimes, a DYS administrator, stated that Adams brought stability to the camp.
"Since the new executive director took over, A-Camp has changed. Juveniles now go to A-Camp as a last resort," the memo said. "Juveniles said that staff talked with them about why they went to A-Camp and suggested how they might change the negative behavior that got them to A-Camp."
Adams told the Democrat-Gazette that he stressed to the boys that they needed to get their GED certificates.
"Going back to school is a bad idea for most of the boys," he said. "If they could go to another county where nobody knew them it might work. But most of our kids have a bad reputation a mile long and nobody wants them."
The Mansfield camp also had numerous community service projects, including working with the U.S. Forest Service, the Arkansas Riding Center for the Handicapped and the Fort Smith Food Bank.
Boys from both AMI camps have participated in out-of-state sports competitions as a reward for good behavior. Last fall, five boys traveled to the Alexander Youth Services Center for a day of sports activities, speech contests, spelling bees and arts contests.
"These trips have to be earned by the boys and they are not easy," Adams said. "All the kids are working every day to get the privilege."
Adams hoped the problem years were a thing of the past.
"Arkansas has been a black eye for AMI," Adams told the Democrat-Gazette in September 1997. "AMI has a successful track record nationally. But there's nothing worse than the program almost doing the job. And that's what this has been.
"There has been a combination of program mistakes early. Normally, five years into a program, we've had very few mistakes. Here, we were unfortunate."
He said the program was sound but realized too late that the company had hired bad managers in the early stages of the camps' operation.
Despite all the problems over the years, DHS had supported the AMI concept. But when two graduates of the Colt camp kidnapped and brutally attacked a West Memphis woman in April 1997, state officials began closer scrutiny of the programs. They would not like what they found.
Stepbrothers Donnie Allen, 15, and Robert Shaw, 16, were glad to be back in the West Memphis area after spending a year in wilderness camps.
Under terms of their release, they were still being monitored by AMI "after-care" workers who were supposed to ensure they were attending school and staying out of trouble.
But unknown to DYS, the after-care worker was recovering from surgery and the boys were asked to call in and report what they had been doing. Their last face-to-face contact with the worker was April 7.
On April 12, they checked in and reported all was well.
At 7 p.m. that day, Roberta Thompson, the 65-year-old manager at the West Memphis Days Inn, pulled into her driveway. Allen and Shaw sprang from behind a garbage bin.
They forced her back into her light blue Toyota Camry at gunpoint. They struck her in the head with a gun and beat her. Thompson refused to withdraw money from an automated teller machine, so they beat her again. Then, they shoved her into her car trunk, police records show.
The boys drove around for several hours and then met two friends. The boys gave their friends the car with the woman still in the trunk.
Seven hours later, Thompson was found in a parking lot. She had been stabbed 27 times in the face and the back. Her throat had been slashed from ear to ear. And the car had been driven over her body. Thompson survived the attacks.
Allen and Shaw checked in with the Colt camp the next day and assured staff that everything was fine. A few hours later, they were arrested and charged as adults with kidnapping.
When DYS was notified of the attacks, Lloyd Warford, then the agency's assistant director of operations, began to examine how AMI handled its after-care program.
He said he soon discovered that the state was being charged for four after-care workers, when only two had been hired.
Warford also learned that Allen should have seen an after-care worker 24 times after his release in January. Instead, records show that a community coordinator had visited Allen only nine times, and there had been no contact in February when the worker was on sick leave.
After-care workers visited Shaw four times during March, his first month back in the community.
Two months later, in June 1997, DYS canceled the after-care contracts with the AMI camps and two other serious offender programs and turned those duties over to 15 community-based providers. The providers, which typically are private, non-profit firms that run counseling programs, took over monitoring the 100 boys returning to their communities from the camps each year.
DYS had reviewed the Colt camp's after-care files. They discovered that 42 of the 52 boys sent home from the camp didn't have after-care plans set up for them.
AMI's Hoffman, from his Tampa office, wrote Warford to express his disappointment that the company lost the contract for providing after-care counseling.
"I appreciated your call last Thursday informing me of your decision on after-care," he wrote, "I would have appreciated more the ability to provide meaningful input into the decision."
He reminded Warford, "We encountered some tough bumps along the road, especially in the form of nay-sayers who didn't believe that service could be improved for the youngsters. However, in conjunction with DYS, these obstacles have been overcome."
The DYS look into the after-care program led to an examination of the financial records, where auditors discovered problems.
The total overbilling was $113,489.80.
AMI reimbursed the state for disallowed expenses, which included airline tickets, meals and alcoholic beverages for family members and friends; meals that had been charged even though the employee was not taking a business trip; mileage paid an employee for simply commuting from home to work; and the salaries of two employees who had not been hired as required by contract.
Two months later, in August 1997, the Democrat-Gazette learned of allegations of past abuse at the Colt camp that the state didn't investigate until called by a reporter.
Two former employees said some staff members abused several boys following their July 1996 escape from the facility. One boy was interviewed by a reporter, then he and another boy were interviewed by DYS's Warford. They described how they were treated when they returned.
After their capture, they were returned in shackles and taken to Discipline Camp. D-Camp is reserved for boys who commit serious violations of rules.
One boy said the escapees were forced to stay out in the woods for 30 days. They slept in shackles.
"If you lay wrong, your hands go to sleep on you. You can get real messed up," one boy said. "They shackle your legs, you get boils on your legs."
"During the first two and a half weeks, we didn't take any showers," the boy said in a separate interview. "After that, we took a shower once every weekend so long as it wasn't raining or so long as Mr. Isaac [Isaac Christopher, Colt camp program manager] didn't have anything to do, And before [we went] to court."
The shackled boys were required to sit for the first week at D-Camp.
Then the boys said they chopped wood with an overweighted ax all day until their hands bled.
"They would blister up and get blood blisters, and then it would bust with the ax in their hand. They would bleed for a while, then they would scab over," he said. "[Other boys] would do anything from take their socks off their feet and put them on their hands, or they would take tissue and wrap it around their hands."
The boy said one of the staff pitied the boys and brought a pair of gloves from home for them.
"He was wrapping them around [their hands]. Whatever hand hurt the worst, he put it on that hand," the boy said.
One Sunday, after chopping wood all day, the hungry boys went to the main office looking for food.
Security was called, and all seven were taken back to D-Camp and hogtied for at least an hour, the boys said. Two former workers confirmed their stories.
That same night was hot and humid. Mosquitoes and horseflies bit the boys over and over again. A guard used bug repellent on himself, but would not spray it on the boys.
"When you sit still, the mosquitoes and horseflies attack you," one boy said. "They bite you through your jumpsuit."
One of the boys said when the boys managed to get to their knees to ward off the bugs, the guards would shove them back down. Another boy said that Christopher became angry when he refused to sit down.
"He came over and pushed me down. We got to tussling and he grabbed my private parts," the boy said. "I was hollering."
When the hogtying was reported to AMI by Warford in September 1997, AMI fired Christopher for lying about the investigation. Christopher has denied anyone was hogtied.
While they were out in D-Camp, three boys were laid on the ground on top of blankets, then covered with another blanket. Their hands were handcuffed behind them and their legs were shackled. They generally were kept in a shed for the night.
"That was our bed for the night," one boy said. "It kept off the mosquitoes. Not to mention the spiders and copperheads.
"But sometimes if you make them [the staff] mad, they'll make you sleep on the ground. They'll put a night watchman with you. They're old men. About 50 or something like that."
He said sometimes a night watchman took pity on them and shackled their hands in the front so they could sleep.
When the Democrat-Gazette called DYS's Warford on Sept. 23, 1997, and informed him of the allegations of abuse, he called the Child Abuse Hot Line and investigated the abuse himself.
He was shown a weighted ax. "They were standard ax heads welded to steel pipes for handles. Additional weights made of plate steel were welded to the heads and handles to achieve weights that varied from 25 to 55 pounds," he reported in October 1997.
The staff told Warford the weights were added because the boys could break the handles off regular axes. "They didn't try to hide it," Warford said. "They were proud of it."
Colt staff told the same story to a Democrat-Gazette reporter.
However, AMI's Hoffman recently denied that weighted axes were ever used at the camp. He said boys might be kept there at D-Camp for two hours at a time until they "adjusted their attitude." But he said AMI would never permit such punishment and he did not believe it had occurred.
"They don't chop wood all day. That's not accurate at all," he told the Democrat-Gazette. "Those kids they were quoting were out there a year ago. They said they were out [at D-Camp] for 40 days. That's not our policy."
Warford also reported to his boss, Whitney, that boys in D-Camp worked from 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
In April 1998, Warford wrote a memo to Cognilio, the DHS chief counsel, asking, "How much work is too much? When being punished, the juveniles are sometimes made to work all day, well in excess of eight hours chopping wood. They may be forced to do this for days or weeks. Can we legally exceed a 40-hour week? Is it prudent to exceed a 40-hour week chopping wood from a liability standpoint?"
DYS recently began another financial review of AMI's books.
Auditor Robin Raveendran flagged $79,272.69 in expenses he said he couldn't verify. AMI had billed the state and been paid earlier.
The questioned costs again included meals, small liquor tabs and mileage.
They also included $70,000 in expenses from the home office for indirect costs. AMI routinely deducts a 20 percent management fee from each camp site. But Raveendran said there were no specifics to show how much was actually spent and what the money was spent for. There was no listing of supplies, salaries, or computers dedicated specifically to the Arkansas programs.
"We told AMI, 'Justify the $400,000,' " he said. "Is it fair if one state is consuming more in home office costs for another state to pick it up?"
DHS and AMI await Raveendran's final report of the financial review.
Meanwhile, Collins, the former chairman of the local AMI board, said he was told informally by DHS Director Lee Frazier in May that the AMI contract would not be renewed.
Pulaski County Circuit Chancery Judge Joyce William Warren, another AMI board member, called Cognilio for an explanation after Frazier failed to return phone calls to AMI headquarters for three weeks.
She wrote Frazier on May 27 that the AMI board has "a very serious concern. Late yesterday your legal counsel shared with our board members allegations of ongoing abuse of students at those two programs," she wrote. "We are very disturbed since there appears to have been no action on the part of the department to communicate these allegations to AMI, to the board, or initiate an investigation of the allegations.
"AMI takes pride in the fact that we immediately address issues of which we are aware -- as evidenced by our track record in the state," she wrote. "I am frankly appalled that you would take such drastic action [canceling the AMI contract] based on allegations without allowing AMI the benefit of knowing what the allegations are or of responding to them."
Her letter was followed by the June meeting between DHS and AMI officials. AMI officials felt afterward that the problems cited by DHS were either old allegations, unproven accusations or minor financial discrepancies.
However, DHS officials learned of new allegations of which the local AMI board was unaware.
Cognilio, DHS's counsel, told the Democrat-Gazette that "allegations of inappropriate physical discipline, children made to work long hours chopping wood with heavy axes, and other abuse allegations will be turned over to the Arkansas State Police for investigation."
Cognilio's concern was based on Raveendran's June 4 visit to Mansfield and a June 10 visit to Colt to collect financial records and interview juveniles housed at both places. Fifteen of the boys at Colt and one at Mansfield stated that they had chopped wood from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. with a 10-minute break each hour and 30-minute meal breaks. Several said their hands blistered and bled.
However, some boys also said they were learning new skills at the camp and were benefiting from staying there.
At Colt, they said they had learned plumbing, caring for poultry and livestock, carpentry and first-aid. At Mansfield, the boy said he had learned about bricklaying, farming, landscaping and cooking.
Raveendran reported the Mansfield boy felt "all the staff are nice and any student in the program should consider himself lucky. He feels like he has been treated like a family member."
Another boy who has been at the Mansfield program for six months told the auditor he had learned to control his anger and was studying algebra. He was very happy with Bible studies by different church groups.
But despite these kinds of positive comments, Collins and AMI's Hoffman agreed that they would not rebid for the contract because Arkansas does not want their program and they cannot work with a hostile DYS.
"We are children-oriented," Collins said. "We believe that rehabilitation is better for the children and the communities from which they come. We try very hard to find ways to rehabilitate and get them back as productive members of society.
"All these incidents were over a year old," he said. "We have responded every time there has been an allegation. We certainly feel like our reputation has been hurt by DYS. We have done what our contract called for. For us to be singled out as a program in disarray that needs to be replaced for no good reason is a concern."
The AMI camps will be taken over by the operators of the other two serious offender programs. The Southwest Regional Wilderness Camp in Lewisville, run by Jerry Walsh, opened in June 1994. Walsh will take over the Mansfield camp.
Bonnie Smith, who opened the Northeast Arkansas Juvenile Offender Program in Harrisburg in April 1997, will assume control over the Colt program.
Smith and Walsh will run the camps for 90 days while the state looks for firms to run them under a new contract.
Collins and Hoffman did not rule out a lawsuit if DYS asks for additional repayments.
"The auditor did not do a thorough job," Collins said. "We are waiting to get the final draft and see if they have taken back those allegations of overpayments and abuse.
"It's real difficult to bring things to closure after six years. We want to be sure our reputation is intact when AMI leaves," he said. "We're not going to sit back and let DYS impugn us for no good reason."