VivirLatino

Hello,
My name is Dionne and my husband is a pediatrician in Lubbock, Texas. My 10-year-old son (now 11 and STILL not investigated, tried for, or convicted of any crime) was falsely accused of a crime and held for 10 days at the Lubbock County Juvenile Justice Center.

While this is not a TYC facility, it is a state-administered facility nonetheless. While being detained there, my son faced some of the same kinds of abuses suffered by those held at TYC. He was locked in his room for 3 hours at a time for "not shutting a door correctly." On yet another occasion, they turned off his electricity and water, stripped his bed and took all the letters and pictures off of his wall.

My son, who is very small, was hazed repeatedly by the detention officers and was threatened and told not to tell anyone. One guard told my son to go to his room, lean against his wall and get ready for a cavity search; He didn't even know what that was. He was also placed in the middle of their pod by a guard who pulled out electric clippers and told my son they were shaving his head. He wasn't even allowed his weekly phone call home.

When he didn't eat all of his food they threatened to make him wear a dress.Upon being admitted they insisted he receive a shot but we were never notified or asked our permission. These are just a few of the things that we know about. After a little research I found out that in the past 2 years there have been 2 suicides and at least one allegation of rape.

When I complained to the Director, Les Brown, about how my son was treated he had me banned from the building as an attempt to muzzle me. I reported the Lubbock County Juvenile Justice Center to the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission but it took them almost a year to investigate and file a report. The report agreed that my son's rights were violated, but not all of these violations rose to a "significant level." Gov. Perry also agreed that these violations and abuse did rise to a level requiring action and he would be contacting the DOJ, we never heard from either again. Sadly, only one individual was ever disciplined (one detention officer received a three-day suspension), with no other consequences to anyone else.

Ironically, my husband does many of the physicals for kids entering the S.T.A.R. program here (a long term boot camp for juveniles) so he has heard from other parents about how their kids were mistreated at the juvenile justice center and whose parents, like myself, were "banned" from the premises when they complained. Apparently, the leaders of the Juvenile Justice Centers - charged with helping and supervising our kids - would rather ignore problems at their sites or, sadder still, disregard the victimization our kids might be going through.

I hope the investigation into TYC will lead to other investigations of the institutions that our children are locked in but I'm not holding my breath. The Texas House and Senate members serving on the Juvenile Justice & Family Issues and Criminal Justice committees, respectively, can not claim ignorance on these issues because we have sent each of them a packet detailing the abuses that occurred in Lubbock. I sent all of these via certified mail and received all tags back. The only interest I ever received was from my Texas State House member, Carl Isett. Representative Isett does not even serve on these committees but offered his assistance nevertheless.

If you have a way to bring these abuses to a larger audience, my family and I would greatly appreciate it. We were fortunate to have the means to hire attorneys and experts but most held there are poor minorities forced into a system stacked against them with court appointed lawyers who are so overburdened they don't even know their clients or the cases until court.
We owe our children something better than this, they need us to use our conscience.

Thank you,
Mrs. Dionne McNutt and Dr. Steven McNutt