State records: Juvenile detention chief resigned just ahead of being fired for misconduct
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Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice
The Herald-Leader has reported on serious problems inside the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice for more than four years.
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The longtime superintendent of Kentucky’s most controversial juvenile detention center resigned in November, just ahead of getting fired, after state officials said she failed to conduct important mental health assessments of youths in her custody and wrongly accused a teen boy of getting a handcuff key from one of her guards.
Tonya Rena Burton, 49, spent a decade running the combined juvenile detention center and youth development center in Adair County for the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice.
Under Burton’s supervision, that facility was the scene of a riot and rape in 2022 and assorted cases of abuse and neglect that have drawn the attention of civil rights investigators for the U.S. Department of Justice. In a 2023 complaint, the ACLU of Kentucky called living conditions at the facility “unsanitary and nearly uninhabitable.”
The Lexington Herald-Leader first reported on Burton’s resignation Dec. 19. At that time, Burton cited “medical issues” in a brief text exchange with the newspaper. (She did not respond to a request for comment last week.)
State officials declined to offer any further explanation.
However, according to personnel records since obtained by the Herald-Leader under the Kentucky Open Records Act, Juvenile Justice Commissioner Randy White decided on Nov. 1 to fire Burton for unsatisfactory performance of her duties, including failing to perform mandatory mental health assessments and making false statements.
In a memo to Burton, White said his decision followed two internal investigations substantiating her misconduct.
In the first case, the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet concluded that, with Burton’s knowledge, the Adair County facility failed to perform mental health screenings of youths as they were booked into state custody.
The 15-minute tests, called the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument-2, are meant to detect risks for suicide, anger management, addiction, depression and other mental health issues, so youths can be properly treated while in custody.
A facility employee, Kelli Morrow, told internal investigators that at least 32 screenings were skipped during the months of June and July, according to the investigators’ report.
Burton presented a spreadsheet of dates and times to investigators in an attempt to show when some screenings were done. But a review of security video, employee time sheets and staff interviews indicated that people who allegedly did some of those screenings weren’t on duty when they would have needed to be.
That raised questions about the spreadsheet’s accuracy, investigators wrote.
Burton said most of her employees weren’t trained to conduct the screening, and many were uncomfortable being involved in mental health care, investigators added.
They “wanted no part of it,” Burton wrote in an internal email included in the investigative report.
In the second case, Burton told internal investigators a teen boy held at her facility in June was sneaked a handcuff key by a guard, which the boy used to escape from his cuffs while taking a shower. The boy handed her the key later once she confronted him about it, Burton told investigators.
But investigators said Burton’s story was not supported by a review of security video, interviews with several of those present at the facility and a search of the boy and his cell with a metal detector.
Burton repeatedly stalled for time when asked to provide a picture of the key that she claimed she retrieved from the boy, investigators said.
Video did not show the boy handing Burton a key, investigators wrote. Rather, it showed both of her hands to be empty after her conversation with him, although she claimed she was holding the key under her thumb in one hand, they wrote.
The boy denied to investigators that anyone gave him a key. “Hell, naw,” he said.
Instead, the boy said, he was able to slip out of the cuffs in the shower because they were loose on his wrists, which were wet and slippery from soap.
The accused guard also denied Burton’s accusation, although he acknowledged he failed to adequately tighten the cuffs on the boy.
The boy told investigators that Burton pressured him into signing a statement accusing a guard of giving him a handcuff key. He said he was held in the facility’s intake area for several weeks without a mattress to sleep on, instead of getting a cell in one of the residential units.
Burton told him that if he would name in writing who provided him with a key to remove his cuffs, she would give him a mattress, he said.
Burton submitted her resignation by email on Nov. 21, effective Dec. 4, according to personnel records. She asked White to keep his disciplinary memo out of her state personnel file.
White accepted Burton’s resignation “with prejudice,” which typically means that an employee can’t return to work for the state because she resigned during a pending disciplinary action.
This story was originally published January 7, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
