Lawsuit against KY juvenile justice officials imperiled as plaintiff disappears
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Plaintiff in 2024 Kentucky juvenile abuse suit has disappeared, halting case progress
- Lawsuit alleged mentally ill teen girl was neglected and abused in filthy isolation cell
- State of Kentucky denies mistreatment but agrees mentally ill girl needed better placement
A lawsuit alleging that a severely mentally ill teenaged girl was abused and neglected in a filthy cell by the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice appears to be unraveling because the girl — now a 20-year-old woman — has disappeared, her lawyer says.
Lexington attorney Joseph Buckles asked Dec. 3 to withdraw from representing the plaintiff in the 2024 suit against a half-dozen Department of Juvenile Justice officials, including Tonya Burton, the former superintendent of the Adair Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Columbia.
In his motion, filed in U.S. District Court in Bowling Green, Buckles said he’s been unable to find or communicate with his client for months, making it impossible to effectively prepare for a possible trial next year.
“Based on information received, plaintiff is homeless or residing in a psychiatric facility in the Indianapolis, Ind., area,” Buckles wrote. “All attempts to contact plaintiff have been unsuccessful.”
The woman’s last known address was her brother’s house in Anderson, Ind., last June, Buckles wrote.
The Herald-Leader is not naming the woman because she was a minor in juvenile detention at the time of acts described in the lawsuit.
The suit, filed nearly two years ago, alleges that the woman spent much of the summer of 2022 locked — sometimes naked — inside a food-, filth- and garbage-strewn isolation cell in the state’s juvenile detention facility in Adair County, where security staff mocked her smell and ignored her cries for help.
Neglected for weeks, the girl grew increasingly confused and paranoid. She reached her hands through a narrow flap in her cell door and called out, “They are going to kill me,” according to the suit.
Two of the security staff “violently twist(ed) (her) arms and slam(med) the door flap on (her) arms while she screamed in pain and was suffering from underlying mental health trauma,” according to the suit. “Once her arms were back in, (one of the guards) screamed, ‘Nobody opens the f--king flap,’ as he kicked the door.”
Nurses and mental health professionals at the juvenile detention facility protested that the girl should be removed from isolation in favor of medical care. Some of the nurses filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the state, alleging they suffered retaliation for reporting this and other mistreatment of youths.
“Every day that she is in that dark filthy room, she has less chance of returning to us,” nurse administrator Deborah Curry wrote in a July 9, 2022, email to Department of Juvenile Justice supervisors
According to Christian District Court records, the woman later was held at Western State Hospital, a psychiatric facility run by the state of Kentucky in Hopkinsville. The woman “has suffered severe mental, physical and sexual trauma in the juvenile corrections system,” a psychologist wrote in a letter placed in her file.
Lawyers for the Department of Juvenile Justice officials have filed several motions to dismiss the case. But U.S. District Chief Judge Greg Stivers has denied most of their motions, so the case remained on track for trial.
The department has consistently denied mistreating the woman while she was a girl in state custody.
But speaking last year, a department spokeswoman acknowledged that because of her severe mental illness, the girl should not have been locked in a juvenile detention center.
She “was ordered detained by a judge, and DJJ had no choice but to obey that order,” spokeswoman Morgan Hall said. “Juveniles who suffer from severe mental health issues should not be placed in a detention facility because of conduct arising from their illness.”
The Herald-Leader has reported that the Department of Juvenile Justice sometimes holds youths who aren’t necessarily criminals, but who have physically acted out because of mental illness; or because they have been traumatized by abuse and neglect, or they’ve witnessed violence; or they have, as wards of the state, spent their childhoods bouncing between foster homes and private social-service agencies.
Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration has tried repeatedly to get funding from the legislature for a 16-bed mental health juvenile detention center in bills sponsored by state Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Paducah.
But such efforts have fallen short.
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating conditions inside Kentucky’s juvenile detention centers for possible civil rights violations. And a state watchdog agency, the Kentucky Protection and Advocacy Services Division, is suing the Department of Juvenile Justice for access to records related to the alleged mistreatment of youths in custody.
