Three former juvenile detention officers are accused of conspiring to assault inmates at a facility in north Arkansas, according to acting U.S. Attorney Patrick Harris.
A seven-count indictment handed down Friday names Will Ray, 26; Thomas Farris, 47; and Jason Benton, 42, as those being accused in the assaults of at least four teenagers at the White River juvenile detention center in Batesville.
In some instances, Harris wrote in a statement, the three officers shut inmates in their cells after pepper-spraying them to “let them cook.”
Ray is accused of grabbing a 14-year-old inmate who was lying asleep in his bunk and holding him so another officer could spray him in the face in November 2013.
Later that month, Farris reportedly sprayed a 17-year-old inmate in the face, according to the indictment in the Eastern District of Arkansas.
Benton faces charges in two assaults at the facility: one in June 2012 involving a 16-year-old boy who was grabbed, shoved and choked and a second in May 2013 in which a 15-year-old boy was pepper sprayed.
Court filings state that none of the inmates “posed a physical threat to anyone nor physically resisted in any way at the times they were assaulted,” Harris said.
Two former supervisors at the White River juvenile detention center, 43-year-old Capt. Petty Kendrick and 40-year-old Lt. Dennis Fuller, pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to assault juvenile inmates.
Reporting by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 2014 led state officials to remove teenagers in state custody from two county-run youth lockups, including the White River center, where allegations of abuse arose. In a January 2015 report on the removal of 14 teens from the Independence County facility because of allegations that youth had been improperly restrained, county Judge Robert Griffin said he had asked the FBI to investigate other possible violations.
Read Saturday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
