June’s web version of The Nation featured a piece entitled ‘I Was Scared to Sleep’: LGBT Youth Face Violence Behind Bars. It details the struggles of kids caught up in Louisiana’s juvenile justice system, which despite recent changes remains one of the worst in the country for any child. Activists face a huge uphill battle in enacting any major reforms, and none of them were surprised to read the recent national study that found rampant sexual abuse in some of Louisiana’s juvenile institutions. If more isn’t done to protect these youths while they’re in the juvenile system, many of them will likely spend the rest of their lives bouncing in and out of prisons and other institutional settings.
Some adults find it difficult to sympathize with kids who are incarcerated or in other out-of-home placements due to “adjudication,” the juvenile justice lingo for “criminal conviction.” This is especially true for people who never come into contact with the kids. I worked with children in this system for almost all of 2009 as an attorney investigating rights violations against kids in state custody. Some of the kids I met were in custody because they’d committed horrific crimes, crimes that most adults wouldn’t even think possible of a peer, let alone a teenager. However, non-violent offenders comprise a majority of the population at Swanson, the largest youth prison in the state, and that statistic seemed to bear out throughout the system. Mostly, the kids I met got in trouble for fighting at school, extreme acting out at home due to trauma, kids who steal or run away or drink or use drugs — all things that we in white suburban Chicago did while adults looked the other way and saluted each other with that knowing kids-will-be-kids wink. It’s different when you’re poor. It’s different when you’re black. And in many ways, it’s different when you’re in Louisiana.
Approximately 6,000 kids enter some part of the juvenile justice system each year in Louisiana, many passing through a labyrinthine network of parish-run detention centers, privately contracted group homes, psychiatric hospitals and “secure care facilities,” otherwise known as youth prisons. The secure care facilities house only male youths; all females sentenced to secure care are held in temporary detention centers (no matter the length of the sentence) and group homes. Several years ago, conditions at Jetson Center for Youth in Baker, La. – then the largest youth prison in the state with a population of 220 boys – became so undeniably brutal that the notoriously slow-moving Louisiana legislature took action to shut it down. The closing of Jetson created an overflow of youth who were sentenced to secure care. The second largest youth prison, Swanson Center for Youth in Monroe, La., expanded its capacity to over 200 youth to handle the overflow, with predictably disastrous results. Jetson then re-opened with a smaller population of 90 boys.
Instead of enacting true reform and closing Jetson for good, state officials turned Jetson into Swanson and Swanson into Jetson. Even Dr. Mary Livers, current head of the Office of Juvenile Justice, admits that Swanson ought to be closed and would be but for the financial burden on the state. Overcrowding and understaffing, mixed in with a population of severely traumatized youth, adds up to a dangerous environment rife with abuses. Worse, kids waiting their turn to be incarcerated at Swanson are often sent to group home environments, where violent offenders are housed with non-violent offenders and even kids who are in residential placements because of their parents’ abuse and neglect. In these environments, a sensitive child – or one with a perceived weakness – rarely makes it out unscathed. Psychiatric hospitalizations are commonplace amongst these youths, as is the accumulation of additional (or first time) criminal charges. One “group home” I visited in rural Acadia Parish was more prison-like than some of the secure care facilities; the first thing I saw as I drove through the front gate was a group of children dressed in orange jumpsuits, hauling sandbags in 90 degree heat.
As bad as it is to be an incarcerated kid in Louisiana, being gay or transgender and locked up at Swanson is arguably worse. My focus while investigating rights violations at these facilities was not on LGBT youth per se but on children in state custody who were diagnosed with mental illnesses. What I found, however, was that often the two were conflated. State-paid mental health professionals – from psychiatrists to social workers to interns – often used a diagnosis of gender identity disorder as a proxy for the diagnosis of “homosexuality” that was removed from the DSM-IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, used to diagnose mental illness) in 1986. Exacerbating this problem is the fact that many of the facilities used to house Louisiana youth in state custody are overtly religious in nature. The United Methodist Church owns several group homes, as does the Catholic Church; neither accepts homosexuality as a natural variation of human sexuality. The ignorance of mental health providers mixed with the anti-gay religious dogma proves disastrous for kids who have no choice but to submit themselves to both.
According to the Nation’s report, the system’s official policy regarding LGBT youth was to subject them to “sexual identity confusion counseling,” a method promoted by none other than the now-famous George Rekers, he of the teenage bag handler. Instead of helping these kids cope with rejection from their families, bullying from peers, and the general stress of living one’s life while gay or trans in the Deep South, the official policy was to treat the children as if they had a disease that needed to be cured. Under this model, children could be punished for expressing their sexuality or gender identities in a way that does not conform to staff expectations. I can attest that while the policy may have officially been discontinued in 2007, it remains the unofficial standard of treatment to this day, for LGBT kids and for any gender non-conforming kid regardless of sexual orientation. Even outside of Louisiana, there have been numerous reports of LGBT kids being sent to private treatment centers to “cure” their homosexuality. Although gay rights have come a long way in some metropolitan centers, in much of the country being LGBT is considered a disease, a moral deficiency, a psychiatric disorder to be cured by any means necessary. Kids are especially vulnerable because they cannot direct their own psychiatric treatment.
Alongside the ex-gay treatment, kids are forced to cope with terrifying bullying from peers. Kids in public schools can be cruel enough when the teacher’s back is turned; in the juvenile justice system, the teacher doesn’t exist. Staff receive no specialized training in dealing with LGBT youth, and many times have little in the way of general education – many jobs in the Louisiana juvenile system call for nothing more than a high school diploma. These minimally trained staffers can turn a blind eye to bullying or worse, join in the torment. I worked with a child in a group home whose effeminate affect made him an easy target; staff members used their cell phones to videotape the other children beating him. Kids who are open about their sexuality or gender identities may be targeted for abuse because they are perceived as “asking for it,” according to an advocate in the Nation article. LGBT kids have reported constant taunting, assaults, beatings and rapes in juvenile detention and secure care facilities all over the country. Straight kids are also victims of these abuses, but LGBT kids are singled out for attacks because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. If they were not locked up, if they were not children, if they were not powerless, these kids would be treated as victims of a hate crime. At Swanson and other state-funded residential settings, they are “asking for it.”
Sadly, this will not be the first time many of these kids have been subject to brutality just because they’re gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Some kids are voluntarily offered up into state care by their parents or guardians because they are “ungovernable” – another juvenile justice code that often translates into various types of normal teenage behavior. In the case of several youths I met, both male and female, their “ungovernable” behavior was the refusal to give up a same-sex romantic relationship. LGBT youth face an increased risk of homelessness due to rejection from their families; the flip-side of this problem is an increased rate of incarceration.
Children caught up in the juvenile justice systems are often some of the most vulnerable members of our society, needing and deserving the best of care. They are often the same children who enter the child welfare system, or who would have if the state caught their parents first. Louisiana’s juvenile justice system is a disgrace in and of itself, but it is a veritable torture chamber for LGBT and gender non-conforming kids. Reforms should be immediately enacted to address these systemic problems before another generation of kids is subjected to its abuses.
Leslie Fenton | Contributor
Leslie M. Fenton is an attorney in New Orleans, Louisiana. Since graduating from NYU Law five years ago, she has successfully survived two different bar exams, one hurricane, four jobs and three cross-country moves. While she previously enjoyed brief professional flings with capital appeals and disability rights, she usually represents victims of domestic violence in family law proceedings. She and her wife are expecting their first gayby in February.
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