The Easter morning tour of Shuman Juvenile Detention Center in which a 13-year-old says guards roughed him up wasn't the first "scared straight" event gone awry there.

		Online Chart: Past violations at Shuman Juvenile Detention Center

Two years earlier, a Shuman supervisor cuffed and shackled a child brought to the lockup for a walk-through, although the center had specifically prohibited yelling at, intimidating or forcing youngsters on tour to wear Shuman's blue uniform.

The supervisor got a reprimand. And Shuman Director Alex Wilson recounts sending workers a memo saying, "This kind of behavior is not going to be tolerated, plain and simple."

But the tours continued, and according to Anthony Donald Jr., 13, the aggression escalated in his case. Donald says, on Easter morning, guards threw him to the ground, stripped off his jeans, choked him, cursed and spit at him, and solicited detainees to poke and taunt him.

After police filed criminal charges against the workers, Shuman fired them.

Through their lawyers, the five guards have said they were innocent of hurting Donald and would stand together, none testifying against another.

Records of regulation violations at Shuman in recent years show everything the teen says guards did to him also has happened to detainees, including the choking and forced stripping.

Juvenile detention experts say questions about Shuman are raised by the scared-straight incidents, the regulation violations and other problems at the facility last year, including citations for dilapidated conditions and sexual harassment.

The experts recommended two solutions. One is additional citizen involvement in the center. The other is an assessment of its operation.

"It is not an overreaction if you have incidents that result in harm to suggest an evaluation by an outside agency," said Earl L. Dunlap, executive director of the National Juvenile Detention Association and one of two national experts who examined Allencrest Juvenile Detention Center in Beaver County in 1997 after guards there were charged with sexually molesting detainees.

Repeated violations

Shuman must report to the state everything that happens to detainees there, from knees scraped in basketball to restraints by guards.

The state Department of Public Welfare investigates some of those reports, and since 1998, it has cited Shuman 13 times for violating state regulations.

These included several instances in which investigators decided that guards had pushed and choked children, once allowed a group of youths into a boy's room to "rough him up," ordered teens to remove their clothes and remain in their rooms, and spit and cursed at youths.

The violations average two a year for a facility housing 100 teenagers charged with serious crimes on any given day. In each instance, some disciplinary action was taken, ranging from retraining to firing.

It's a small number of infractions in a large facility, Wilson says.

But others are skeptical of the number.

In two years -- 2000 and 2001 -- the Welfare Department found no violations.

Dunlap is skeptical of that. "The Department of Public Welfare overseeing Shuman is like the fox guarding the henhouse," he said. That, he said, is because the state knows a detention center is vital to a county's juvenile justice operation, so closing it for violations would create serious problems.

Dunlap raised concerns about the department's supervision of detention centers when he analyzed practices at Allencrest in 1997 with David W. Roush, director of the center for research and professional development at the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. Roush and Dunlap found multiple violations of state regulations at Allencrest that the state Welfare Department had not.

"Something is terribly wrong when an outside consultant team is able to find many deficiencies that easily could have been cited in an annual inspection" by Welfare, Roush and Dunlap wrote in that report.

Wilson said it was possible workers don't always report incidents. "In any facility, you will have incidents where you will have people who try to get over and not follow the policy and procedures."

He said, though, when he catches up with those people, he takes action.

What goes unsaid

Paul Neidhardt, a former deputy director of Shuman who remains close to many staff members, said failure to report was hard to detect, and even when there's a report of abuse, it's hard to prove.

Shuman has cameras, but they don't videotape. So when an allegation is made, it's the word of an accused delinquent against that of an adult guard.

The reports that get through to Welfare and that Welfare finds to be true are a fraction of what occurs, said Neidhardt, who was forced out of his job, along with 30 other county officials, in 1995 when former county Commissioner Larry Dunn became chairman.

First of all, he said, it's risky for a youngster to report an incident because he might face retaliation. Or, Neidhardt said, the detainee may be bribed with extra snacks or privileges to keep quiet.

Also, Neidhardt said, if a child makes an allegation and a staff member investigates and asserts it didn't happen, no one will believe the child.

And, like workers in other institutions, he said, Shuman guards will cover for each other.

That is suggested in the state regulation violation reports.

In a case where a child said a guard pinched and smacked her face, leaving scratches and bruises, the state investigator wrote that workers refused to take witness statements from youngsters and gave them the message that "what happens on this unit stays on this unit."

In another case, where a guard choked a child, a supervisor neglected to mention in his report on the incident that he saw the guard "place his hands around the youth's throat," and that he ordered the guard to stop.

In a case in which a child said a worker punched him in the eye, the state investigator wrote of one staff member's report, "It also appeared that [the guard] was coached in writing about the incident."

Despite those incidents, Neidhardt said he believed that 90 percent of workers were good and that 90 percent of the time, youths at Shuman were safe. "It is just a few workers on ego trips or who don't like the kid or the kid did something to them," he said.

No injury acceptable

Still, no injury is acceptable to child advocates.

"No child should be subjected to any harmful treatment," said Marcia Levick, legal director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia. "The principle is that children have a right to be treated decently, fairly and humanely," she said, even if they've been accused of crimes.

The Welfare Department is responsible for ensuring that detention centers, reform schools and group homes do that. In addition to checking reports of problems, the department inspects facilities annually to determine if they're meeting licensing standards.

Wilson has pointed out that Welfare rated the 31-year-old Shuman in full compliance with licensing standards for the past 23 years.

Nonetheless, last year, the Welfare Department found numerous problems at Shuman during that annual inspection, including insects in two living areas, water leaks, holes in the ceiling and exposed wires where ceiling tiles were missing, cracks in walls and peeling paint, plaster repairs needed, broken toilets and a recreation room used as a storage area.

Wilson said he arranged for repairs at the facility.

How many of such problems get to the attention of those ultimately responsible for Shuman isn't clear. County Chief Executive Dan Onorato didn't know the state issued violation reports. Advisory board member Mary K. McDonald said Wilson reported some of those violations to the group, but did not give the specifics the reports do. She knew Shuman permitted tours, but she thought it was for classes, not individuals.

"I guess we have to ask," said McDonald, whose board has not met in half a year.

Detention experts see lack of advisory board and citizen committee involvement as a problem.

"If the community is not actively engaged in the operation in some form or fashion and good information does not flow from the detention facility to the community, then there is something to hide. It is just that simple," Dunlop said.

After investigating Allencrest in Beaver County, he and Roush recommended monthly reporting by the center administrator to the county commissioners, creation of a citizens advisory group that would meet monthly, and establishment of a group of stakeholders, such as public defenders, police officers and mental health professionals, who would meet at least quarterly.

Such oversight would be wise for Shuman, he said. "Facilities get in trouble where they operate in isolation, when they do not have a neutral party like a board that can offer insight and direction," he said.

In addition to that, though, he and others said an evaluation of the facility by experts might be wise.

The regulation violations in combination with the "scared straight" incidents are disconcerting, said Paul DeMuro, who served as Pennsylvania's commissioner of children and youth in the state Welfare Department during the 1970s and who now is senior consultant on delinquency matters for the Casey Foundation.

"If the county believes harsh conditions can scare somebody straight, perhaps that is an implicit or tacit approval of harsher conditions," he said.

The individual events don't prove anything, DeMuro said, but they do suggest the need for a thorough investigation: "Should we shine the light of day in there? Yes, we should."