The sobs from the boy echoed off the concrete walls and down the windowless halls where hope had given way to despair.
"Mister, get me out of here," he wailed. "I want my mother."
On a Sunday morning two weeks ago, Paul Doramus, director of the Division of Youth Services, drove from his home in Benton to the Central Arkansas Observation and Assessment Center in North Little Rock to check on "my boys."
DYS is a part of the state Department of Human Services and operates the observation center, where children declared delinquent and placed in the custody of the state are evaluated before being placed in a state-funded program for rehabilitation.
In his two weeks as DYS director, Doramus had dropped by O&A and the Alexander Youth Services Center at all times of the day and night to check on the safety of the children and the staff.
On this particular morning, he followed the doleful sounds to an isolation cell and discovered a 13-year-old black boy, sobbing so hard he could hardly speak.
The boy had been caught in a stolen car and arrested for theft of property. At O&A, he had been disruptive, and staff placed him in isolation.
"As I attempted to talk with him, his calls for help just grew louder," Doramus said.
The boy's next words jarred Doramus even more.
"Jesus doesn't love me anymore for what I did."
Doramus held the boy's hand through the cell bars.
"That's not true, partner," he assured him. "He does."
"All I could think of was my two kids who were at home, who got the hugs and got the love and got the support," Doramus said. "I thought, 'God forgive us all. How could we ever allow kids to live in an environment like this?' "
Doramus, 42, lives in Benton with his wife, Cindy, and sons Paul, 15, and John, 12. He grew up in Little Rock, graduated from Hall High School and attended Hendrix College in Conway.
Doramus owned landscaping businesses in Little Rock and Dallas but sold them several years ago. He was a member of the Arkansas Legislature from 1985-89. Four years ago, he revived the bankrupt Boys and Girls Club in Benton and last year, he opened a Boys and Girls Club at the Alexander Youth Services Center.
Doramus was chairman of Common Ground, the governor's commission on juvenile violence.
The governor appointed him this spring to become DYS director as of June 1.
The DYS environment, Doramus is quick to point out, is about to change.
After a series of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette articles on the conditions at the state's facilities for juvenile delinquents, Gov. Mike Huckabee announced June 19 that he was closing O&A within 60 days.
Changes are also planned at the Alexander Youth Services Center and the four serious-offender camp programs.
Doramus, working with consultant Jim Brooks of Georgia, has compiled a checklist of emergency improvements. They include:
Hiring a psychiatrist and a medical doctor for the Alexander campus and O&A.
Providing uniforms for security guards at Alexander. A recent state Department of Correction survey noted that the staff dressed so casually that it was hard to tell the staff from the kids.
Arranging training for security with the Pulaski County sheriff's office. Failure to train the staff in use of restraints and use of force has been a problem for years at the youth facilities. Incident reports show that children have been injured because staff members did not know how to restrain the kids properly.
"We can never lose sight of the fact that these kids are criminals," Doramus said. "This is a potentially dangerous environment, and we have to know how to handle these kids when they act up."
Setting aside 25-30 beds at the Arkansas State Hospital, particularly for sex offenders. Many of the youths in the state's custody have mental problems that have never been addressed -- even those kids who have been through the state system three and four times.
Hiring education consultants to assess the schooling at Alexander, where approximately 160 kids stay for months, and sometimes years. A final report is due at the end of June. There have been complaints that school is canceled frequently. Doramus has ordered that school not be called off unless he approves it.
Expanding the fencing at the Alexander campus. The state operates two serious-offender programs, one for boys and another for girls, at that site, in addition to programs for low- to moderate-risk offenders. The perimeter of the 90-acre campus is not fenced. The new fencing will surround the campus' six cottages.
"We need the fencing for security and to give us the confidence to be able to move the kids across campus. This will allow us to let them use the gym, the cafeteria and the school on a much more regular basis," Doramus said.
Destroying the isolation huts at the two wilderness camps operated by the Associated Marine Institutes of Florida. In the June 22 edition, the Democrat-Gazette reported allegations of children being taken to the isolation huts for punishment and being hogtied, left naked in the cold in sleeping bags and going weeks without showers or clean clothes.
Doramus and his assistant directors, Frank Green and Joann Underwood, recently toured the camp at Colt. (AMI's other camp is at Mansfield.)
"It was the strangest feeling walking into that 10-by-8-foot hut with a tin roof out in the woods," he said. "There was dirty bedding stuffed in the corner. It sent chills up my spine."
In May, the state decided against renewing its contract with AMI to run the two camps when the contact expires Tuesday, June 30. Operation of the camps will be assumed temporarily by the operators of the state's two other private serious-offender programs.
In addition to these improvements, the state is consulting an engineering group about installing a $1.5 million security and surveillance camera system at Alexander, perhaps as soon as October. That system will be expanded later to the four serious-offender facilities.
"We will be able to sit at a computer and monitor live, day or night. If you make a Freedom of Information Act request for an incident that happened on a certain day and time, you can call it up and look at it happening," Doramus said.
Brooks is a former Georgia police chief who has done consulting work for the U.S. Department of Justice. He is a former U.S. Marine and Georgia state trooper and is president of Law Enforcement Associates in Macon, Ga.
He has a one-year contract with DHS for $87,500.
Brooks works out of the office of DHS Director Lee Frazier. (Frazier resigned Wednesday to become director of community programs at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Frazier became DHS director July 1, 1997. His resignation will take effect exactly a year after he took the job.)
While Brooks has coordinated some short-term changes in DYS, he also has concentrated on personnel issues.
"When I first came, I had the issue of facilities in the back of my mind as the chief problem," he said. "I did not fully grasp until later the magnitude of the personnel issues. But that will be the centerpiece for long-term changes -- how we train them, what we expect of them and how we set standards and how we follow up to ensure they carry out those standards."
Two weeks ago, Frazier approved one controversial change -- adapting the state's discipline procedures for DYS employees.
The change applies only to DYS workers and allows Doramus or one of his assistants to sidestep the traditional warning steps and suspend, then fire, employees who have endangered children at a DYS facility.
"DHS has a very broad umbrella in its 12 divisions," Brooks said. "On the one hand, you're dealing with the Division of Children and Family Services, and on the other hand, you're dealing with kids who are locked up and need to be watched."
Gina Jackson, an attorney with the DHS Office of Chief Counsel, said DYS employees are responsible for life-and-death situations.
The Democrat-Gazette on June 14 printed pictures of youth services workers sleeping on the night shift and reported that security guards' confiscated logbooks, where 15-minute security checks of the cells are supposed to be documented, had been filled out in advance.
"If you have employees sleeping on the job, not watching these children, that can be dangerous," Jackson said. "Previously, an employee would be given a verbal warning or a written warning or maybe a two-day suspension.
"Under the new adaptation, you skip all the minor warnings and jump right to a suspension. On the second offense, it's termination."
However, any violation resulting in injury to an employee or a juvenile or resulting in an escape, the employee will be terminated on the first offense, Jackson said.
The DYS director has the option to use the regular discipline system or the new procedure. The employee then can appeal to the DHS Office of Appeals and Hearings and proceed with the regular grievance process.
Brooks said another priority is investigating which employees have been involved in allegations of abuse and then seeking criminal prosecution, if necessary.
"Ferreting out the truth has been somewhat difficult," he said. "There's been an awful lot of people trying to cover their own selves at the expense of other folks.
"Quite honestly, we're trying to separate the dad-gummed truth from lies that have been told so many times that they have become the truth," he said.
Doramus last week delivered the DYS investigation file on abuse at the Mac and Powerhouse cottages at the Alexander campus to Saline County Prosecuting Attorney Barbara Webb.
The Democrat-Gazette reported June 21 that boys in the Mac Cottage reported having their palms hit and bloodied with a stick, being slugged in the face with rings turned outward to cause more damage and being forced to remain in lockup so that nurses would not see their injuries and report alleged abuse.
Three employees were terminated, and one was disciplined.
In January, employees at the Powerhouse Cottage took away clothes and bedding from boys who had been acting up, placed the youths in their cells for several days and turned up the air conditioning, records stated. One employee was terminated.
Brooks said DHS will offer to help Webb with investigations of the employees who have been fired from Mac Cottage and of employees who failed to report the abuse.
"I believe another look at those two files will net more than DHS administrative action," he said. "Some of the allegations, if true, have to be stopped. And whatever it takes to get that done is where we are. We are going to hold people accountable."
In the past, DHS has called in the Arkansas State Police to investigate allegations of abuse, and in many instances, has never asked for the results. The state police now operate the Child Abuse Hot Line for DHS.
Doramus also will be looking at what happens to delinquents when they return home.
"We want to build a 'fence' around each kid," he said. "We want to expand after-care services so that every direction that kid turns, everywhere he looks for trouble, we are waiting to help him, to steer him in another direction."
Doramus suggested lining up Boys and Girls Clubs, the Reserve Officers' Training Corps or church groups to provide after-school activities for youths who are assigned to after-care programs. In after-care programs, children released from detention programs are assigned counselors to help them adjust to life back in their communities.
He also would like to enroll the teen-agers in the ARKids First programs to ensure the kids and their families receive health care.
"Most of our kids would qualify," he said.
"The big challenge is when we return them home. If the home is not adequately addressed, then these kids are destined for failure and that shouldn't surprise anybody. Our after-care workers have to work with the families.
"We've had kids slated for release, and nobody showed up to pick them up. We've had parents go in front of judges and tell them, 'We don't want this kid anymore. Find something to do with him.' "
On a recent Sunday night, Doramus and his wife went to the center at Alexander.
The two serious-offender program groups were playing softball, surrounded by security.
"It sounded like any kids' baseball park in any place in America," he said. "They were laughing and cheering for each other.
"Over time I have learned that there truly are certain kids we won't be able to help. But that doesn't mean you give up on the rest of them," he said. "And it doesn't mean you don't try on every one that comes through your system.
"It's not going to happen overnight. But it's going to happen sooner rather than later."