Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Carl Kondrach, 33, faces charges that he assaulted a 16-year-old girl. Click photo for larger image. Today / Part Four Preventing group home runaways a daunting task Chaos often takes over in residential facilities Foster care more effective, safer than group homes About the series and author Summaries of the incident reports reviewed for this series Inside the complaint process Part Three Restraints applied even when unneeded Hands-off policies ward off abuse Part Two Who's telling the truth? Part One One boy's history of broken bones Drug convictions no bar to working with abused and neglected kids Juvenile home incident-report flow rapped ONLINE CHAT Join Barbara White Stack in an online discussion about the issues in this series from noon to 1 p.m. tomorrow. Log-in here beginning at 11:30 a.m. to to post your questions early and participate in the discussion.

When the 16-year-old girl took the witness stand, her eyes already were red and puffy from crying.

She told of being molested by a worker at the Bradley residential treatment center in Mt. Lebanon, over about six months. It didn't stop until she revealed to a counselor what was going on.

It started in January, she said, rubbing her eyes. "When I was in gym and I had a purple thong on, and he said, 'Nice underwear,' " she recounted.

That escalated into a pat on the behind, kissing, touching, and finally, oral sex, she said.

The district judge held the suspended worker, Carl Kondrach, 33, of Wheeling, W.Va., for court at a hearing in July on numerous counts, including institutional sexual assault.

This girl is one of six children whose sexual assaults in Allegheny County group homes and treatment facilities have led to criminal charges against workers in the past three years.

An unknown number of other children were molested by workers, but criminal charges were not filed, including a case at The Academy in Pittsburgh in 2003.

And those are just the cases in which children came forward. No one knows how many times they didn't, not in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania or the nation.

The U.S. Justice Department conceded as much after it surveyed inmates and juvenile delinquents in prisons and reform schools, seeking information on sexual assaults.

"Administrative records alone cannot provide reliable estimates of sexual violence," said the July report. "Due to fear of reprisal from perpetrators, a code of silence among inmates, personal embarrassment and lack of trust in staff, victims are often reluctant to report incidents."

Group homes and reform schools filled with disturbed teenagers and inexperienced workers can be a volatile mix. To prevent sexual abuse in those settings, institutions must take aggressive steps, including intensive education of workers and children, experts say.

And, critics of governmental oversight of the child welfare system say licensing agencies, such as the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, need to be much more vigilant in ensuring that institutions actually take those steps.

Flirting leads to worse

Sexual abuse often starts with flirting.

	Special to the Post-Gazette David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, says group homes can take steps to prevent sexual abuse of children. Click photo for larger image.

The 16-year-old Bradley resident described how she teased Kondrach and made sexual advances toward him.

The girl recounted Kondrach tossing her a mint, which she slipped down her pants and invited him to retrieve.

"He did, and then he put it in his pants," she testified. Next, she said, she reclaimed it.

David Finkelhor, professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire and founder and director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center there, is familiar with such scenarios.

"I am not sure staff get enough training or have requisite personal skills to anticipate this and not get drawn into the allure of that this kind of stuff has," he said.

"I think we underestimate the challenge that there is for staff. I think it is just inevitable when working with people in close relationships in an environment that involves residential settings with beds and toilets and lots of intimate contact that these kinds of attractions come up and crushes occur and [there are] exaggerations and preoccupations," he said.

As in the Bradley case, the relationships may be actively pursued by the children themselves.

"A substantial number of kids who have been abused, including sexual abuse, tend to be sexualized," said Finkelhor, who has studied sex abuse since 1978.

		Recent incidents These sexual assaults in group homes, residential treatment facilities and other institutions for youngsters in Allegheny County in the past three years led to criminal charges against workers: June 2002 James E.D. Hawkins, 30, of McKeesport, is charged with raping a 16-year-old girl at Auberle. On Oct. 9, 2003, he is found guilty of several charges, including indecent assault and endangering the welfare of children. October 2002 A 34-year-old Swissvale man is charged with molesting a 13-year-old at a Three Rivers Youth shelter. He is acquitted in March 2004. November 2002 Tyrone Jones, 35, of Penn Hills, is charged with having sex with a 16-year-old at Holy Family Institute. He pleads guilty to several charges including voluntary deviate sexual intercourse in February 2004. January 2003 Latell Lamar Brimage, 25 of Forest Hills, is charged with molesting a 15-year-old girl at Holy Family Institute. His trial is scheduled for Oct. 6. May 2003 Theodore Washington Jr., 56, of Stanton Heights, also known as Theodore Woodson, is charged with raping a 16-year-old girl he was supposed to be driving from her group home to a visit with her parents. He worked for a transportation company hired by Allegheny County's Office of Children, Youth and Families. He pleads guilty to corrupting the morals of a minor on Sept. 16, 2004. July 2005 Carl Kondrach, 33, is charged with sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl at Bradley's Mt. Lebanon residential treatment facility. He is held for trial in a hearing Aug. 25.

"Kids who have been sexually abused have learned to trade sex for other things. Kids who are neglected and emotionally abused become sexualized because it is one of the few sources of power they have," he said.

"Some kids discover they can use sexual charm or behavior to get attention or manipulate to get the things they want or to feel important or desired," he said.

As a result, these encounters often appear voluntary.

The girl from Bradley told the district judge during the hearing that the kissing and touching and sex were consensual.

Defense attorney David B. Chontos asked her if was her idea to touch Kondrach.

"Yes," she said, she did it because she wanted to.

Chontos was suggesting there was nothing wrong if both people agreed, but the district judge decided a 33-year-old worker having sexual contact with a child in his care could constitute a crime.

Finkelhor said a child's flirtatiousness doesn't give a worker permission to take advantage of her vulnerability.

"It is particularly troubling when you are dealing with a group who have had a really hard time of it and do not have family and other supports most kids have and are disempowered in very important ways.

"They are a group of kids who do not exercise very good judgment about who it is wise to have sexual relationships with," said Finkelhor, an Allegheny County native and son of the late Common Pleas Judge Marion Finkelhor.

A Montgomery County police officer described just such a situation last year when he filed charges against Randy Jones, 33, a worker at the Meridian Home in Pottsgrove, for having sex with a girl at the facility. "Randy Jones has preyed on the vulnerability of a 17-year-old girl with a history of sexual and physical abuse," wrote Upper Pottsgrove Acting Detective Barry Bertolet.

Dr. Mary Carrasco, who examines abused children, particularly molestation victims, at the child advocacy center at Mercy Hospital, said that while some teens may try to entice adults, others are simply victimized.

"Many of those kids already are vulnerable. That is part of the reason they become victims," she said.

"These are kids who, when they come in, you can pick them out. You know they will become victims again. We have seen some kids two and three times. Some have a victim mentality. Perpetrators know how to pick them out. Some of those perpetrators could be working in detention centers and residential facilities. A certain portion of them do like the power and position," she said.

Mistrusting their stories

Abusers sense something else about the children as well, Carrasco said: "The perpetrators know that no one will believe these kids."

Credibility is an issue in virtually all sex crimes but is more so when the allegations are made by teenagers in treatment centers and delinquents in reform schools.

The Justice Department survey of sexual misconduct found when adults made allegations against staff, they were nearly three times as likely to be believed as children. Nearly 43 percent of the inmate allegations were substantiated while only 16 percent of the child allegations were.

Carrasco said she'd treated children who said they'd told staff several times that they had been abused and still nothing was done.

That may have occurred recently at one Allegheny County facility.

Pyramid Healthcare's Hickory Lodge in Bridgeville reported to the Welfare Department on Aug. 19 that five boys there had accused a worker of touching them improperly and of giving them privileges and cigarettes in exchange for sexual favors.

Pyramid has refused to discuss the incidents, but the parent of one of the victims says she told Pyramid a month earlier and that nothing was done because officials suspected the boys of lying.

The parent, who first name is Monique but whose last name is being withheld to protect the identity a sexual assault victim, says she told Pyramid director Sharon Flucker in July there was a problem after her 14-year-old son disclosed to her that four boys were having sexual contact with the worker.

"They blew it off and said the boys were doing it out of spite," Monique said. Then, she said, Flucker called her Aug. 19 to say that her son was one of five victims.

Monique is furious because she feels her son could have been spared if Pyramid had believed the boys the first time. "No teenage boy is going to fake that allegation," she said.

Fatalistic attitudes

Unlike Monique's description of a delay at Pyramid, Bradley took action immediately in the case involving the teenage girl. It fired Kondrach and significantly changed staffing to try to prevent a recurrence.

	Special to the Post-Gazette David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, believes, that institutions should be working hard to close their doors to predators and train and monitor staff once they're hired. Click photo for larger image.

Some agencies believe, however, that sexual assaults can't be avoided. Kevin Jenkins, executive director of Holy Family Institute in Emsworth, said, "Unfortunately, incidents like this do happen in a facility like ours."

"We open ourselves up to people who can prey on children," Jenkins said, noting that similar incidents occur in places such as churches and day care centers.

Finkelhor believes, however, that institutions should be working hard to close their doors to predators and control staff once they're hired.

Agencies need to conduct extensive background checks, he said, and "it should be more than just a criminal background check."

Once a person is hired and a child is admitted, institutions must educate both about the risks, enforce a strict code of conduct and reign in workers whose behavior may be questionable, Finkelhor said.

Teens should be evaluated immediately, Finkelhor said, to determine who may be vulnerable to sexual assaults. Then institutions should make special arrangements for them -- including treatment that may reduce their sexual behavior and education about how to spot and stop sexual aggression aimed at them.

In addition, Finkelhor said, institutions must educate all children and staff about sexual issues.

"Kids who have consensual relationships with adults need to understand more about the inadvisability of that and what is wrong with that and the kind of trouble they and the adults can get into with that," he said.

Lack of sanctions

While the institutions have a responsibility to keep children safe, they can be fairly sure little will happen to them if they don't.

The state Department of Public Welfare almost never sanctions group homes where staff sexually assault children. An example is New Morgan Academy, a Berks County treatment facility for delinquent children with mental illnesses, where nine workers sexually assaulted 12 children in 14 incidents over a year's time. Still, the department permitted it to continue to operate until it relinquished its license voluntarily in 2002.

Such lax enforcement isn't unique to Pennsylvania.

To force changes in Illinois, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in federal court in 1988. One of the enforcement tools it received as a result was an investigator who is independent from the state. Since his appointment in 1994, the investigator has forced numerous changes, including the closing of one home.

Benjamin Wolf, associate legal director of the ACLU of Illinois, said his organization sought the monitor because it didn't trust either the homes or the state to enforce the rules.

"We had no faith in the typical mechanisms for oversight," Wolf said.

Closing a home may be the only solution in some situations, Finkelhor said. "Sometimes this behavior becomes institutionalized. It's a culture that gets established, and something very radical needs to be done like closing down and trying to start anew."