A guard at the White River Juvenile Detention Center in Batesville has been arrested on charges that he sexually assaulted a 17-year-old boy in the lockup's employee bathroom, Independence County officials confirmed Tuesday.
Bradley Kyle Hopper, 27, of Batesville was arrested Friday on two charges of first-degree sexual assault and two charges of second-degree sexual assault after the boy told the lockup's administrator that Hopper had removed him from his cell on two occasions to have sex.
The boy said the encounters occurred during the evening hours of June 16 and June 20 while he was housed in the maximum-security section of the 52-bed lockup.
The guard's arrest comes as the FBI continues to investigate potential civil-rights violations at the lockup related to the treatment of youths.
The lockup also has been under increased scrutiny from the state Youth Services Division after the division pulled youths from the lockup in January over concerns that guards were using restraints and 23-hour lockdown as punishment.
In an interview, Robert Griffin, the county judge for Independence County, said the boy came forward about 7 a.m. Friday, and Hopper was fired, arrested and jailed within eight hours. At the time, Hopper had been employed 26 days.
The Batesville Daily Guard first reported Hopper's arrest after court papers were filed Tuesday afternoon in Independence County Circuit Court. He was being held at the Independence County jail Tuesday with bail set at $50,000.
According to an arrest affidavit filed in court, the boy reported that about 8 p.m. June 16, Hopper arrived at his cell in the maximum-security wing, and the boy told Hopper he was "sexually frustrated" and asked Hopper what to do.
The boy said Hopper suggested masturbation, which the boy said he had not done because of the camera in his cell, the affidavit said.
According to the affidavit, Hopper then walked away but returned shortly after and slipped the boy a note that read, "What do you want to be done to you?" The boy wrote back, describing a sex act, and Hopper wrote, "I will take you to the bathroom when everyone is asleep," the affidavit said.
The boy said Hopper returned between 10 and 10:30 p.m. and took him to the employee bathroom in the maximum-security wing, which is one of the few areas in the facility not equipped with a surveillance camera, the affidavit said.
The boy said he and Hopper had sex, and Hopper then left the boy unattended in the bathroom while he conducted a "pipe check," a procedure in which guards do a walk-through of the unit and swipe a device outside each cell that logs the time.
The boy said Hopper returned to the bathroom and they had sex again before Hopper returned the boy to his cell, the affidavit said. The boy reported that a similar event occurred June 20.
According to the affidavit, Detective Shane Meyer of the Independence County sheriff's office interviewed Hopper on Friday, and Hopper admitted having sexual contact with the boy but not to the extent the youth reported.
Hopper also told Meyer that on the night of the second encounter, the boy "threatened to tell everyone about the first incident."
"Mr. Hopper got scared, so he got [the boy] out of his cell and took him to the staff bathroom," and again had sexual contact with the boy, according to the affidavit.
On Tuesday, Griffin said the lockup's administrator, Kellie Bradley, had reviewed surveillance camera footage showing Hopper taking the boy into the employees' bathroom. Griffin said no other youths had reported any similar contact with Hopper since his hire June 1.
Griffin said Hopper passed both a background check and a psychological evaluation when he was hired. But court records show that Hopper had at least four misdemeanor convictions for writing hot checks dating back to 2010, and he was arrested on felony charges of theft of property and fraudulent use of a credit card in Faulkner County last year.
Hopper pleaded the felony charges down to one misdemeanor and received a year of probation, but Griffin said the arrest did not show up on a background check.
"We're reviewing the background check system to understand how did it miss that there was a felony [arrest] out there," he said, noting that he couldn't comment on whether Hopper's criminal history would have precluded him from employment.
In response to Hopper's arrest, Griffin said all employees will be going through a secondary background check as a precaution.
"This is just one of those things that's atrocious, and you can't expect. He did not slip through any cracks. He went through the process and the process failed," Griffin said.
The boy who reported the sexual assault is in the custody of the Youth Services Division, but the division was not involved in housing him at the Batesville lockup, officials said Tuesday.
The Youth Services Division hasn't sent children to the facility since January, but individual circuit judges have continued to commit youths into the division's custody and then send them to the Batesville lockup despite the division's concerns. As of Friday, the lockup housed 17 such youths.
In an interview, Youth Services Division Director Marcus Devine said his staff began moving the 17 youths -- including the boy -- to other facilities last week as a result of Hopper's arrest. The last child was scheduled to be moved by the end of Tuesday.
"We're very disappointed. We want to make sure that they understand how serious this is, but we have not decided to take them offline permanently," Devine said.
"This is a move to get them in a corrective position. Our next step is to continue to monitor them, judges hopefully will send fewer kids there in the interim and hopefully they can rehabilitate themselves," Devine added.
Youth Services Division monitors were in the lockup in April and May, and no youths reported any abuse during those visits, which included one-on-one interviews with the children.
Devine said that the lockup had addressed the division's concerns about the use of restraints on youths, but he still had concerns about how long children were staying in cells, a matter that had not yet been resolved.
In April, the Youth Services Division also ran background checks on employees at the White River lockup, the Yell County Juvenile Detention Center and the Jefferson County Juvenile Detention Center.
Devine said the check turned up problems that led to the firing of some employees, but he did not recall any from the White River facility.
He said Hopper wasn't among those the division looked into because he wasn't employed at the time.
Devine said that no youths have made any other allegations against Hopper, but his staff members will be talking with the children about what occurred while they were housed at the Batesville lockup to determine if there is a more widespread problem.
"We're trying to find out what happened. We have an idea of what happened in this case, but we do want to make sure that it's not a larger issue and that there are no other kids involved," Devine said.
Metro on 07/01/2015