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Fired
youth services officials say reports on abuse at center one-sided
August 5, 1998
RAY PIERCE
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
The two former Youth Services
Division officials fired last week in the wake of allegations of
abuse against youths in state custody said Tuesday that only one
side of the story has come out.
Gary Rogers of Little Rock, former director of the Observation
and Assessment Center in North Little Rock, said there have been a
lot of untruths circulating about his actions at the center.
"I am appalled," he said. "It seems the media is going with only
one side of the story. There are more things to be told."
Percy Nash of Little Rock, the former program support manager at
the center, said his firing was based solely on the testimony of one
person -- Gary Staggs, the former security chief at the
soon-to-be-closed North Little Rock center.
"It's really been a one-sided story," Nash said. "The people
really affected by this haven't had a chance to tell their side of
the story."
Interim Department of Human Services Director Richard Weiss
fired Nash and Rogers last week. Weiss said he took the action on
the basis of what he had read in Arkansas State Police investigative
reports.
Allegations have been raised against Nash and Rogers that they
worked to cover up reports of abuse of youths at the center to the
point of discouraging employees at the center from making reports.
Letters notifying the two men that they had been fired were sent
out the same day that Staggs testified to a joint House and Senate
Children and Youth Committee. The panel was investigating abuse
allegations and who was in a position to know about the allegations.
Staggs, now an internal investigator with the department, said he
personally raised concerns about abuse at the center and told Nash
and his supervisor, Rogers, about other allegations.
Those concerns often were met with resistance, Staggs testified.
Rogers said he didn't want to talk much about the situation
until he had had time to confer with a lawyer. Nash was not so
inhibited.
"This has all been blown out of proportion," Nash said. "I've
been painted as a villain, and it's not true."
Staggs testified that Nash had asked Staggs to amend a report in
which Staggs had made a child-abuse allegation. Nash agreed that he
made such a request. He said he did so because Staggs' report was
inaccurate. The report said an employee choked a youth who was in
the state's custody. Nash denied that the worker choked the boy.
Nash said that when he spoke to Staggs about it, Staggs said the
worker had the youth by the collar.
"I said, 'But Gary, you said he was choking him,' " Nash said
Tuesday. "He just threw up his hands."
Nash said he did recommend the termination of the Youth Services
Division worker. Staggs testified that the worker was fired, but he
said it wasn't because of that incident but because his time as a
temporary worker was up.
On another issue, Nash didn't deny an allegation in a state
police report that he had thrown a boy against a wall. But Nash said
he had good reason. He said he was trying to break up a fight
between boys in rival gangs.
"But this came up as me being abusive," Nash said. "When you've
got gang wars going on, what are you going to do, say, 'Now y'all
stop that fighting?' You can't do that."
Nash insisted that any time an abuse allegation was reported at
the center, Rogers or his secretary reported it to the state child
abuse hot line. "If the hot line accepted it, it was investigated,"
he said.
Nash said that in every allegation of abuse that could be
supported, he recommended the worker be fired.
"If people will check the record, they'll see that every time I
did," he said.
Nash suggested that there may have been some biased motivations
behind the negative accounts coming out of the center.
Although he wouldn't go into detail, Nash said that most of the
abuse allegations came from a few white employees at the center.
Nearly all of the Youth Services Division workers at the center were
black.
Nash said that he has been portrayed incorrectly as the No. 2
man in charge at the center. He said that position belonged to Don
Nehus, a white man. Nash suggested that Nehus has avoided any
allegations against him because he is white.
Nehus supervised the clinical operations at the center.
Department spokesman Joe Quinn said that at the Observation and
Assessment Center during Rogers' tenure, there was no clear-cut "No.
2" man. He said Nash, Staggs and Nehus were "direct reports" to
Rogers, meaning there was no one in between their positions and the
center director.
Quinn said, however, that Nehus became acting director of the
center whenever Rogers went on vacation. "But that should not be
construed to say that Nehus was the No. 2 out there," he said.
Nash also suggested political motivations were behind the way
the story of abuse has been told to reporters, trying to protect
those higher up in the chain of command.
"There are some people who are trying to protect [Gov. Mike]
Huckabee," he said.
Huckabee has maintained that he was not aware of the specific
nature of the abuse until he was told about what Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette associate editor Mary Hargrove had uncovered
during a year-long investigation of Youth Services.
Although Huckabee's liaison to the Human Services Department had
written in a report to the governor in August 1997 of "founded cases
of abuse" at the center and an alleged rape at the center, Huckabee
said it wasn't until April 1998 that he learned of the specifics.
State Sen. Mike Beebe, D-Searcy, said last week that he didn't
believe that people like Nash and Rogers should bear the brunt of
the blame.
"I think the blame will go up the chain," he said after last
week's committee meeting, without mentioning any names. "It
certainly wouldn't stop at the officials at the Observation and
Assessment facility."
In July 1997, Nash admitted to "serious mistakes" without
admitting any of the specific allegations that were made against him
in a administrative review report. In that proceeding, he accepted
reassignment to the Alexander Youth Services Center. He said he was
placed in charge of the center's teachers and medical staff and also
supervised the managers of the four cottages at the center.
It was in March 1998, at his request, that he was transferred to
the division's central office in Little Rock and placed in charge of
the maintenance operations and the warehouse, he said.
"That was my choice, though, because I wanted to get out of
direct care," he said.
Nash said he began working with youth in trouble in 1975 at the
old Wrightsville training school. He said his early experiences with
children like that taught him some valuable lessons about how the
boys can work the system.
He said he tried to establish a strong rapport with the boys,
but he knew he wasn't dealing with "choir boys."
"We tried to stay on top of situations," he said. "We didn't
just come in to whip kids."
Sen. Bill Lewellen, D-Marianna, has asked that Nash be placed on
the witness list for the Children and Youth Committee meeting Aug.
24. An agenda showing who is to testify at that meeting has not been
released.
"The truth of all this will come out," Nash said. |
