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Some migrant youth who have bravely reported that they’ve been sexually and physically assaulted inside children’s detention facilities—sometimes by other detained kids themselves—have seen investigations into their cases essentially “open and shut,” a ProPublica investigation finds, with police “closing the cases, often within days, or even hours.”
In one instance, a 13-year-old asylum seeker detained at Catholic Charities’ Msgr. Bryan Walsh Children’s Village in Florida told staff that two older teens had dragged him into an empty room, where they attempted to strip off all his clothes. “As Alex struggled to move, he said he could feel the teen’s penis grinding against his butt.” Alex got away and said nothing for days, but they kept harassing him. So he went to a counselor for help.
“But Alex’s report did not trigger a child sexual assault investigation, including a specialized interview designed to help children talk about what happened, as child abuse experts recommend,” ProPublica reports, even though a counselor confirmed there was surveillance footage of him getting dragged into the next room.
“Instead, the shelter waited nearly a month to call the police. When it finally did, a police report shows, the shelter’s lead mental health counselor told the officers ‘the incident was settled, and no sexual crime occurred between the boys like first was thought among the staff.’” Police, ProPublica continues, “closed Alex’s case 72 minutes after responding to the call.”
Staff also took three weeks to notify the boy’s mother, who was already living in the U.S. and is undocumented. Police had not been notified yet, and, infuriated, she briefly considered telling the police herself. But she had heard that immigration officials were arresting people who stepped forward to potentially sponsor detained children, and said nothing, though it broke her heart. Following ProPublica’s investigation, “a Miami-Dade police spokesman said the department was reopening the case.”
In other children’s facilities across the U.S., staffers have been fired and charged with assaulting kids, including one former Southwest Key employee who has been accused of molesting eight boys over a one-year period.The “non-profit” has also been forced to give up licenses for two of its Arizona facilities after failing to show proof of background checks for employees.
Southwest Key, the New York Times reported, received $626 million in federal grants this year alone. Following revelations that several top executives—including the founder’s wife—were getting massive salaries thanks to those federal grants, the company will now conduct a “comprehensive internal review.” $1,000,000 salary for the Southwest Key vice-president, but no money to conduct thorough background checks for staffers?
This absolutely cannot be the best that we can do, and it's going to take all of us to keep pressuring newly-empowered Democrats in the House next year to stop funding the jailing of children and to end these taxpayer-funded contracts, beginning with the massive prison camp in Tornillo, Texas, which currently jails nearly 3,000 children. Enough.