CENTRAL OHIO Probe into corrections center for girls shows signs of abuse

More changes are needed at the facility, the consultant said.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- About a dozen workers were fired and guards were banned from using a wrist grip that can break a girl's arm after two independent investigations into accusations of sexual assault, beatings and inadequate medical care at Ohio's only corrections center for girls, officials said Thursday.
More changes are needed, especially in treating mental illness among girls who come to the facility from homes where they were abused or kicked out, said the consultant hired by the state to investigate conditions at the Scioto Juvenile Correctional Facility.
"You can call it a juvenile prison or juvenile correctional facility, but what it is, is really a mental health facility for many of these girls," said Fred Cohen, who helped write national guidelines for the treatment of incarcerated juveniles.
"There's still hope for them. It's going to cost a lot more to deal with them in prison than do something at this level."
Conditions
The Department of Youth Services hired Cohen after receiving a letter outlining the accusations from the Covington, Ky.-based Children's Law Center, a regional nonprofit agency that advocates for children's legal rights. Girls interviewed by center's attorneys said they had been hit, slapped and shoved by guards, put in straitjackets, touched sexually and discouraged or threatened if they filed grievances.
"If you believe even a small amount of what these kids are saying, it's very bad," Law Center director Kim Brooks Tandy said Thursday.
The girls had little access to attorneys and no real system for complaining about conditions, she said. "The conditions in this facility cry for some establishment of a legal services system as well as correcting the abuses there."
The Law Center filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Columbus on Thursday, seeking a court order to create such a system, Tandy said. The department legal staff had not yet seen the lawsuit, spokeswoman Andrea Kruse said.
The Ohio public defender's office asked the Law Center to investigate last year after girls discussing their criminal appeals with defenders complained about conditions at Scioto. The facility about 15 miles northwest of Columbus in Delaware County houses an average of 120 girls ages 12 to 21 who have been convicted of all types of felonies.