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Court orders kids out
Teenagers called it a blanket party — a hazing ritual that left a 16-year-old Suffolk boy injured at a Westchester County home for troubled youths after he was wrapped in a blanket and allegedly pummeled by a group of boys who live there. As a result Tuesday, Suffolk County removed 11 teenage boys and girls from the Hawthorne Cedar Knolls Residential Treatment Center in Hawthorne, where the Family Court sends local youths as part of mandated treatment programs. The Suffolk Department of Probation, which is responsible for overseeing the children, was alerted by the injured teen's mother on July 14 about the alleged beating, and quickly began an investigation, said John Desmond, the county's probation director. After the department visited the center and submitted to the court the results of its probe and a petition to relocate the children, Judge David Freundlich ordered the children removed Tuesday. They were placed in local group homes until the court can reassign them. The state Office of Children and Family Services, which oversees child protection in the state, is investigating the incident, said Brian Marchetti, an agency spokesman. Nassau County currently has six children at the center and is conducting its own review. Sources familiar with the probe said they were concerned the assault might have been prompted by gang activity. The boy, who was a recent placement there, was taken to a Westchester hospital and treated for bruises and cuts. His identity is being withheld because of his age, probation officials said. “We don't take these things lightly and we try to be vigilant in these matters,” Desmond said Wednesday, adding that the department was not notified by the Westchester facility of the event. A spokeswoman for the center, which is operated by the Manhattan-based Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, said the agency was taking the matter seriously and reviewing the claims. She said she couldn't confirm whether the center notified Suffolk at the time of the incident, which occurred shortly before the parent called the county. “We have no reason to believe this is an instance of gang activity,” said Mindy Liss. “This is a highly supervised and well-trained program committed to high quality care.” She said supervision exceeds state standards, with one staff member to every five children. The county pays about $80,000 a year for a child to receive treatment at the center, set on a grassy 100-acre campus that includes a school and residential cottages, with about 15 children per unit, according to county officials and a contract provided to Newsday. The center, which houses about 100 children, is about 45 minutes north of Manhattan. The alleged hazing comes as both local and state lawmakers, as well as child advocates, have questioned the practicality of using of out-of-area treatment centers for emotionally troubled children. Both counties have made an effort in the past two years to keep children at home or in programs closer to home, officials said. “There has been a lot of effort through prevention to keep the numbers lower,” said Karen Garber, a Nassau social services spokeswoman. “We've been intervening before cases have to get to that stage.” The state Assembly and Senate passed a bill this year known as Billy's Law, calling for more frequent inspections of out-of-state centers for children with psychiatric and developmental disabilities. It has not signed by the governor. The Suffolk children who lived at the Hawthorne center are known as “persons in need of supervision,” a designation assigned by Family Court for children who haven't been convicted of juvenile crimes but who suffer from other problems that cannot be treated at home. Many of these children are runaways or truants, or have psychological problems, officials said. Parents often petition the courts for the PINS designation, seeking the court's supervision. Suffolk probation officials said 257 children — both juvenile delinquents and those with the PINS designation — were placed in residential treatment in 2003. Nassau did not have current numbers Wednesday. But in 2002, nearly 1,000 Long Island children were institutionalized for psychiatric problems and juvenile delinquency. Most of those placements were out of Nassau and Suffolk because of a lack of local facilities. Troubled children are often placed upstate or as far as Florida and Pennsylvania, which critics say leaves them with little contact with their families and community — and the counties with little oversight power. In the past few years, several out-of-area centers have come under scrutiny for incidents involving Long Island youths. In 2002, two Suffolk teenage girls were sexually assaulted by a worker at the upstate St. Anne Institute in Albany after being sent there by a Family Court judge. And later that year, a 16-year-old Great Neck girl hanged herself, six weeks after being referred to the KidsPeace Residential Treatment center in Whitehall, Penn., by her school. Neither the school nor Nassau County knew that the center had two previous deaths. At the Hawthorne center two years ago, a 19-year-old female resident was charged with sodomizing a 14-year-old girl who lived there, according to Westchester law enforcement officials. The woman pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct and was sentenced to a year in jail, said Nydia Negron, a spokeswoman for Westchester District Attorney Jeannine Pirro.
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