Mandel Crittendon was sent to Green River Boys Camp in Kentucky in 1974, he claims. He has never recovered from his experience there. Below are his comments:

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In 1974, I was 14 years old when I was sent to Green River Boys Camp. As soon as we arrived, A-Group came running to the car shouting "You thinking AWOL?" as they were jerking me from the vehicle. I had no clue what they were talking about, so I replied "no". To my reply, they responded with "Bullshit!"

All of this shouting continued as we were scurried to the Clothes Room, where my clothing was ripped off of me and I was issued state uniforms. Then they rushed me to the Tool Room to give me a GI haircut. They never stopped shouting "You thinking AWOL?", and "You think you're cool?", "You ain't cool!" etc. This was horrifying, but there was much worse ahead. The first night they asked me about the crimes I had committed.

Because I didn't know what they were referring to, they 'grouped' on me. Grouping is twelve to fifteen members standing around you in a circle and screaming things like "fess up" meaning to confess to something or confess that something is bothering you. Nothing was bothering me, nor did I have anything to confess. The counselor had my group take me to the shower. They forced me to scrub the floor tiles a wood handled scrub brush in each hand. As I was made to scrub using both hands, group members had their feet pressed against my behind, making sure that all my weight was pressed onto my arms. As a young boy, having never done anything like this, I could only support my weight for a few minutes & needless to say how much pain I was in at this point. When I couldn't hold myself up any longer, the group members took turns holding me up by my shirt collar, which made breathing extremely difficult. This torture went on for about two hours! I begged them to stop asking what they thought I had done. I told them I was hot and could not breathe. The Counselor then ordered the group to cool me off and they proceeded to throw buckets of cold water on me. This continued for still another hour before the Counselor told the group to ask me if Gary and I broke into a church. I answered "yes" hoping to end the torture. They had me confess to several things that I hadn"t done. At about two AM, they finally stopped, and gave me some dry clothes for bed. I believe this incident was the closest I've ever been to death. I couldn't get out of bed for two days; for them not to make me get up reveals how bad off I was.

It didn't take me long for me to figure out why Gary had lied about breaking into the places he confessed to. I learned that the purpose for grouping was to inflict enough pain on us to pressure us to confess to something we had done wrong, or something that had been done to us, even if we had to make something up. For example, grinning or smiling was a sign that we were thinking mischief? If we were caught smiling, a group member would be required to point us out, and then we were to tell the group why we smiled. We weren't allowed to say we were smiling because we were thinking of something positive, we had to say we were thinking of something negative, like "I was physically abused by my father," or "I sexually abused my sister," or something else radical. The whole process was insane. Since most boys that age don"t have experiences of this sort, we had to make up things with nothing real to confess. And then we played hell to remember the many lies because we had to exchange life stories with every group member. One around midnight, when we got out of big group (group with our Counselor; little group was having group without our Counselor), our Counselor, Mr. Courtney told us to go get Curtis in C-Group out of bed and find out why he wanted to get my brother to sell drugs for him. Curtis didn't even know my brother or me as he was from East Kentucky and we were from West Kentucky. But Gary had been caught smiling and told his group the reason he smiled was because he was feeling bad about Curtis and him going to solicit my brother to be a drug dealer. Unfortunately, Curtis was unaware of this diabolical lie.

Anyhow, we have Curtis outside in his underwear after midnight scrubbing; asking him why he hated my brother with me knowing this was all a lie. I still had to act like I was furious at Curtis and Gary for wanting my brother to do such a thing, because if I hadn't acted upset, Mr. Courtney would tell the group to find out why I didn't care about my brother. We all had made-up stories ready to use for when we were grouped on. But if we someone else used us in their story, and we didn't know how to play along, we were screwed - just like I was my first night and like Curtis was this time. Finally after two hours, Mr. Courtney let us give Curtis enough information to allow Curtis to confess. Hence, Curtis then had to explain why he wanted to make my brother a drug dealer. After about three hours, Curtis confessed that his daddy used to beat him and because of that, he was feeling bad and that made him want to get my brother to sell drugs. Then we were allowed to release Curtis. As he stood up, the skin on his knees peeled off. After three hours of torturing Curtis for this story that any sane person would know was obviously made-up, we were allowed to turn him back over to his group. Yet, it wasn't over for either of us. He then was required to confess to his group why he wanted my brother to sell drugs, and I was required to express to my group how hurt I was that Curtis and Gary wanted to use my brother like that. This is the hell we had to endure every day, even up until three AM and getting up at 5:30 to start the next day. We were always treated as a group.

If on person did wrong, we were all punished. So we were all constantly punished since things little natural things such as smiling was considered wrong doing. The staff at Green River twisted their motives by claiming that we brought punishment on each other. This obviously was not true. We quickly learned that no matter what we did, the staff will always found a reason for us to torture someone daily. Most days, several group members were tortured with tactics such as thought previously mentioned. The second time I was tortured was because I had a toothache for approximately a week. It was abscessed and I was in severe pain before they had me seen by a dentist. He gave me Penicillin for the infection and Darvocet for the pain and told me to stay inside until returning to have my tooth pulled. That night in big group our Chaplin told the group to find out why I was manipulating the group by not working. Even though I informed them that the dentist had ordered me to stay in, the Chaplin insisted that the group find out why Mandel was manipulating the group, which started them to group on me, and force me to scrub the floor. When I could endure no longer, I tossed the brushes. This was a dumb move, since I already knew what would happen if I refuse to scrub; the group stands me up, bends me over to where my hands are a few inches from the floor, and someone holds my knees while others put there weight on your back. This caused severe pain in my legs in a matter of seconds as I begged to scrub, but the group held me in this position until the staff member was convinced that I was ready to scrub again. I have had pain in my legs ever since. I don't know what happened to my legs, but the pain has never gone away. It is very difficult to sleep, even today, because the pain is worse when I lie down. My second wife talked me into seeing a doctor in 1987 to see if he could find out why my legs were always in pain. The doctor asked if I had ever injured my legs. I told him no and I couldn't bring myself to tell him what had happened at Green River.

We were in school four hours a day, and worked another four hours of the day. I acknowledge that the teachers took no part in our torture as they seemed to be nice people. Daily, we each would retrieve a shovel, axe, and a pick from the Tool Room and then we walked about one and one half miles down River Road, where we dug up stumps. The stumps were previously dug around, causing the holes to be filled with ice and freezing cold water, since the temperature was below freezing. We stepped down into the icy water to dig up and chop the stump until it could be turned over and buried. This was my first day introduction to work at Green River. The group working beside us had a group member with a bloodied face tied to a tree. The forms of torture they had come up with were designed not to leave marks on us, although when a staff member was mad enough, marks didn't matter. On a particular day, E-Group made the mistake of permitting visitors to see some of what was really going on. As they burst through the door, Raymond Berry's shirt was torn open revealing his black and blue left side as many ribs must have been broken. At first, I was thankful that our parents saw this, but when they turned back around and I saw the horror in their eyes, I was truly sorry that they had witnessed this. Later, when Raymond went AWOL and the cops pursued him, he drove his stolen car into a river and drowned. It was common knowledge that he committed suicide since he drove the car into the river when he saw the police approaching him. He probably had no desire for further help after experiencing the help tactics of the Green River staff. At the time, I didn't feel sorry for him. I believed he was better off because he had been grouped on for weeks and death seemed so much better then the torment he would have encountered if he had been sequestered.

One person I've corresponded with has suggested that by making us participate in torturing others, we became too ashamed to talk about it. I don't know why it is so difficult for me to talk about it. I have been silent except for one incident I told my second wife in 1985 when my brother died from cancer. Afterwards, I started thinking of Larry Rittenour, another boy that went AWOL during my stay at Green River. The Superintendent had another camp member and me to torture him on the way back after he was found. The Superintendent, Mr. Thompson, instructed us to find out why Larry went AWOL. Larry responded that his sister was dying of cancer and that he wanted to see her. The pain in his eyes and his tears made it obvious that he was telling the truth, but Mr. Thompson had us to beat him all the way back to camp. After all these years, I have never gotten Larry's pain out of my mind. By 1992, I was having nightmares and flashbacks of Green River. Many children don't survive these behavior medication camps as is exposed by web sites such as ParentAdvocates.org or Coalition against Institutionalized Child Abuse. But for those of us that do survive, we never become normal mature adults, for a part of us will always be those little helpless children being tortured. Death seems our only escape...

After all these years, I still live in the reality of yesterday, and cannot understand why this country carelessly continues to allow children's lives to be permanently damaged?
Mandel Crittendon

Comments from victims and investigators of teen boot camps

SERIES; UNSAFE HAVENS; KENTUCKY'S JUVENILE TREATMENT CENTERS; ...POINTS TO ABUSES IN THE ENTIRE STATE JUVENILE-TREATMENT SYSTEM

THREE state-run residential treatment centers -- where juvenile offenders are supposed to get help and rehabilitation -- have a history of abuse and mistreatment dating back for years, a Courier-Journal investigation has found.

The centers are the Rice Audubon and Central Kentucky treatment centers in eastern Jefferson County, and the Green River Boys' Camp in Western Kentucky. Boys between the ages of 14 and 19, entrusted to the centers for safekeeping, have been physically abused, cursed and humiliated by staff members who sometimes escaped punishment.

Investigations of allegedly abusive staff members by the state Cabinet for Human Resources, which operates the state's 12 residential centers, sometimes have been woefully incomplete and might have allowed abusers to escape punishment.

Those are the newspaper's central findings, based on dozens of interviews and a review of thousands of pages of documents obtained from the cabinet under the state open-record law.

The cabinet scrutinized the documents, too, and reached essentially the same conclusions. Secretary Masten Childers II said he is moving swiftly to ensure that there will be no repetition of the state's shoddy oversight.

In one case, no one bothered to interview the Central Kentucky employee who alleged that resident Jason Decker had been beaten there in May 1991. Nor did anyone interview Decker's three alleged abusers, according to state records. Not surprisingly, no abuse was substantiated. But abusive employees constitute a minority of staff members at the 12 residential centers. And Peggy Wallace, the cabinet's commissioner of social services, said she thinks the number of children abused while in the state's care is relatively small. But Wallace stressed that she does not condone even one case of abuse.

"I feel devastated. I feel a lot of pain that we would have such things going on in our system," Wallace said. "At the same time, I don't think it's widespread. I wouldn't be part of a system like that. I won't tolerate that type of behavior."

The newspaper found that even in cases in which the evidence of abuse seemed strong, state investigators at times tended to side with accused employees. In 1988, for example, two Rice Audubon employees told a cabinet investigator that they had seen fellow staff member Michael Smith use unnecessary force on resident Kenny Addison during a camping trip.

Smith denied it. And the investigators found only that he "may have" abused Addison, according to state records. No action was taken then against Smith. In 1990, the cabinet fired him for physically and verbally abusing at least three residents. Smith denied abusing anyone, and he appealed his dismissal to the state Personnel Board and to Franklin Circuit Court. Both dismissed his claim, which is now pending in the state Court of Appeals. The records also show that some boys have been physically restrained and verbally abused by fellow residents in the presence of staff -- a violation of state policy.

Others have been kept in isolation cells for days at a time for petty offenses -- another violation. Some alleged victims who complained -- their right under cabinet policy - - were intimidated by staff. In several cases, victims said more abuse followed. Some staff members who witnessed suspected abuse apparently ignored it, in violation of the law. For example, state investigators concluded in August 1990 that Rice Audubon staff member David Tapp had abused Tracy Bruederle two months earlier in a car taking Bruederle to another residential center, according to state records. But there is no evidence in the records that the Rice Audubon employee driving the car ever reported anything amiss. There also is no evidence that the cabinet ever sought to discipline Tapp for abusing Bruederle.

Several abusive staff members were high school dropouts whose work experience consisted of pumping gas, driving a truck or doing maintenance. Then they were hired for the sensitive and difficult job of working with troubled, often violent, youths. The hours were long and irregular and the work is stressful.
When Tapp was promoted from the Rice Audubon maintenance staff to juvenile treatment assistant in August 1988, his salary increased by just 25 cents an hour -- to $10,212 a year.

Tapp himself is a former Rice Audubon resident who had dropped out of North Hardin High School and worked at a service station before joining the cabinet. Tapp, who no longer works for the state, refused to be interviewed. Childers hopes that residents and their families will take heart from the cabinet's new resolve.

"We will send a clear message that these changes will make a difference, and that we mean business," he said.

But any changes come too late for Dean Rodewald and Chuckie Nichols. Now 21, Rodewald was physically abused by Michael Smith at Rice Audubon at least twice before Smith was fired, cabinet investigators found. On July 18, 1990, according to state records, Smith grabbed Rodewald and shoved him over a wooden chair with such force that the chair broke. Smith, who later denied wrongdoing, then took Rodewald into a closet and continued to verbally assault and physically abuse him, according to the records. When Rodewald complained and investigators interviewed him, he pleaded: "Will you all be back? Can you do anything for us?"

Three days later, Smith was at it again. According to the records, he tripped Rodewald to the ground, straddled him, berated him for complaining and told him:

"I know this game. My game is to see how bad I can hurt you without leaving a mark on you. If I don't leave a mark, they can't prove nothing."

Smith, who later claimed he'd been joking, did leave marks -- some seen, some unseen. Rodewald said in a recent interview that while the 6-foot-4-inch Smith was holding him down, angry memories of his childhood came back to him.

"It brought back the whole thing, my resentment of authority figures. I told (Smith) I was gonna get him."

And he did. Smith was fired partly on the basis of Rodewald's testimony, which was corroborated by other witnesses. Rodewald, who now lives in Northern Kentucky , finished serving a prison term in April for burglary and escape. The abuse he incurred at Rice Audubon, he said, was far worse than anything he experienced behind bars.

Chuckie Nichols, 25, spent virtually all of his teen-age years in state residential centers, including Central Kentucky and Green River. He's now in prison, serving 15 years for the murder and robbery of a southern Jefferson County man. Nichols said the centers did little to help him.

"They say kids are in there for treatment, but they just make things worse," he said. "I ain't asking for nothing -- I just want (the abuses) stopped."

Otherwise, "the kids that are in there now are going to wind up where I am -- in the pen." State hopes changes will take it off 'automatic pilot'

This month the state Cabinet for Human Resources will have around-the- clock monitors in the three centers where The Courier-Journal identified deep- seated problems over the years: Rice Audubon and Central Kentucky treatment centers, both in eastern Jefferson County, and the Green River Boys' Camp in Western Kentucky. The cabinet division responsible for the residential centers will be reorganized; a new director for that division has already been appointed. Procedures for investigating, processing and tracking complaints will be overhauled. Cabinet employees will be instructed to take a more aggressive, thorough approach to allegations of wrongdoing and patterns of misconduct.

"There is room for substantial improvement," said Masten Childers II, who became cabinet secretary May 2, and who served as general counsel and deputy secretary after joining the cabinet in 1992. "There's obviously been an attitude problem, and there's enough blame to go around.

"A large part of the collective responsibility (for the problems) should be borne by the secretary's office of this cabinet. Top management has just been too out of touch for too long. It's as if CHR has been on automatic pilot for the past 10 or 12 years."

Whether Childers' proposed changes will have the far-reaching and lasting impact he envisions is unclear. The Cabinet for Human Resources has been the focus of at least two major reform efforts during the past 20 years; neither achieved its goals.

Moreover, the cabinet has long had in place rules and regulations designed specifically to curb many of the abuses brought to light. Often, those rules and regulations have been circumvented or ignored.

LARRY GRAY painfully recalls how a state co-worker pinned a boy to the ground and then jabbed his knees and elbows into the youth's face, stomach and chest.

"He was lying there begging him to stop, crying and bleeding," Gray said of the 17-year-old. "He was spitting blood." At first, Gray didn't report the 1988 incident because he feared retaliation. There was, he said, an unwritten code of silence among staff at Rice Audubon Treatment Center in eastern Jefferson County.

But months later he did step forward because "it ate at me and ate at me."

Shortly after he complained, he said, someone left a death threat scrawled on a piece of note paper in his mail slot at Rice Audubon, one of 12 centers for juvenile offenders run by the state Cabinet for Human Resources.

The anonymous note said, "You're a dead m----f----."--- -

Gary L. Smith received a more direct response last year after he reported to the state a youth's allegation that the boy was beaten by staff at Central Kentucky Treatment Center. Smith was a counselor there.

Complaints are supposed to be confidential. But the following day, the center's director berated Smith for filing the complaint, suggested that he would make up an accusation of misconduct against Smith and told him he should transfer to another facility, according to state records, which include a three-page memo that Smith submitted in June 1993. "I was threatened by my program director, essentially forced to request a transfer, and my sense of job security has been jeopardized," says Smith's memo to Charles Babb, who oversees the cabinet's juvenile centers. State law requires that workers at residential centers who learn of alleged abuse report it immediately to the cabinet's Office of Inspector General.

Cabinet officials say it is critical that employees feel free to report alleged abuse because they are most likely to know it. Cabinet Secretary Masten Childers II said in a recent interview that the cabinet needs to create a more open atmosphere, and he said he will not tolerate reprisals against employees for speaking out. But the experiences of Gray and Smith -- as well as other cases outlined in state records -- are evidence that staff members at some residential centers have worked in a climate in which reporting of abuse is discouraged and retaliation is feared.

More Comments

On December 8, 2003 Kentucky Governor Paul Patton commuted the death sentence of Kevin Stanford to life without parole.
The United States Supreme Court has declined to hear Kevin Stanford's petition arguing that the juvenile death penalty violates the Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment. When the Court decided not to hear Kevin's case, the Kentucky Attorney General requested Kentucky Governor Paul Patton to set January 7, 2003 as the execution date for Kevin. This date passed without Governor Patton signing the death warrant. The Governor has now publicly stated that he will not sign a death warrant for Kevin given his age at the time of the crime.

Please read Justice Stevens' dissent from the Court's denial to hear Kevin's habeas petition. He, along with Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer, found that the practice of executing juvenile offenders "is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society."

Click here for a selection of clemency letters.
Kevin Stan

IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE AT NASHVILLE

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