Jamal Odum - 2003

The then 9-year-old Newport News boy was sent to a residential treatment center in South Carolina named New Hope when the staff for some unknown reason restrained him for 7 minutes which caused his death.

The tragic event was investigated by the police and 3 staff members were charged with homicide by child abuse.

What makes his death a disaster was the fact that it was known that placing the weight on his torso would risk killing him. Yet the staff members were not fully trained to restrain the children in a somewhat less dangerous way.

Lack of training are often a result of the management focusing on profit but this quest for money puts lives of children in danger, which this tragic death so clearly illustrate. It was far from the first case involving incidents at this facility but this turned deadly for the only 9-year-old boy.

May he find peace where he is now.


Sources:

• Tape Called Strong Evidence In Boy's Death (Daily Press)
• New Hope child died of 'asphyxiation' (Group State News)
• Deaths at residential teen programs (Residential Treatment Center Abuse)

Omar Paisley - 2003

The life of 17-year-old Omar Paisley could have been saved. All it would take was to grant him an examination in a sickwing. The employees at Miami Dade Regional JDC failed to grant him this and as result of this he died a painful death due to ruptured appendix.

Only two nurses were charged but the failure was within the entire system. Each guard, each superintendent could have made the ruling to demand an examination of this young man. Efforts were made to change the system but the problem was rooted in the number of teenagers sent to detention facilities inside this state. There were simply too few options to juvenile detention.

So teenagers continue to die in the system.

It is not the legacy this young man deserved.

May he find peace where he is now.

Sources:

• Youth died amid chaos, confusion (Project Nospank - from Miami Herald)
• Nurses indicted in death of teen at Florida facility (CNN)
• Staff disciplined after jailed Florida teen’s death (Miami Herald)

Jerry Trivett - 2003

Jerry Trivett suffered from an illness which was costly to treat. Tumors grew in his system. His mother couldn't afford proper treatment of the illness and he ended up being thrown around the foster care system. The illness affected his behavior and even foster families often had to return him so he could go to a new place.

He ended up in an over-crowded for-profit facility named High Pointe in Oklahoma. Here he got into a fight with another patients and he got slammed to the ground. He suffered a lot of pain over the next days but his pleas to be taken to the hospital just down the road for an examination was ignored. When they in the end allowed him to be transported to the hospital after losing consciousness they didn't mention the fight, so he was not treated in the proper way.

Maybe he had suffered internal damage and was slowly bleeding to down. We don't know because none tend to have paid an interest in him. Only when he died the system who send him to the facility started to look for fall-guys. While the facility was closed 9 months later only people on the ground suffered consequences due to his untimely death.

It seems that the system was meant to cost him his life. Where were the support for the foster families so they could have taken care of him with extra help to their homes? Where was the support for his birth mother in the first place so she could have taken care of his treatment appointments so he didn't have to be placed in the foster system?

15 years was all he was allowed before he died.

May he find peace where he is now.

Sources:

• From Pennsylvania to Oklahoma - and the end of the line at age 15 (Philadelphia Media Network)
• DHS has far to go to protect these kids About 200 live in out-of-state centers that the Phila. agency still struggles to monitor. (Philadelphia Media Network)

Daniel Jack Matthews - 2003

Daniel Jack Matthews was 17 years of age when his mother called the cops on him. For a number of months he had become violent due to personal issues.

His mother hoped that the arrest would enable her to get help for her child. In a system where the proper placement for him would be evaluation and properly detoxing a treatment center, the system only could offer her a placement in the local detention center where he would enter a youth population consisting of a mix of criminal youth and youth suffering from either addiction or mental issues.

This lead to his tragic death when a fight broke lose between him and another inmate at the understaffed and overbooked facility.

It is a terrible loss for a mother to receive when all she did was to reach out for the only service the society could offer her regarding her sons struggle.

Addiction - in his case according to media reports cold pills and content from spray cans - is an illness. Illness should be treated - not punished.

But that was what the society could offer her. He lost his life. His mother lost her son.

May he find peace where he is now.

Sources:

• Sent to jail for help, teen killed (St. Petersburg Times)
• Pinellas County teen dies after fight in detention center (The Florida Times-Union)

Cindy Gilbert Sohappy - 2003

While having been born in Denmark we understand and respect that some countries have another age limit for alcohol consumption than here in Denmark where the purchase limit is 16 year of age.

But a law is one thing. Putting teenagers in holding cells while they are so intoxicated that they are unable to walk is playing with their lives. And they played with the life of 16 year old Cindy Gilbert Sohappy. She came to the Chemawa Indian School in Salem Oregon to get an education – not to be placed in a holding cell to die.

Whenever laws are made to make something interesting teenagers will investigate with a curiosity as cats and some will go too far as Miss Sohappy unfortunately did. She needed medical attention because such a young body has not decades of experience with alcohol. She didn’t get it. Instead the employees treated her as a hardened alcoholic and this decision killed her.

Fortunately they no longer use the holding cells but if the death of this woman should have any lasting impact they should start treating teenagers who consume too much alcohol as patients, not criminals.

Miss Sohappy never got to live an adult life. May she find peace where she is now.


Sources:

• Testimony of Corinna Sohappy before the United States Senate Finance Committee September 21, 2004
• INDIAN TRIBAL DETENTION FACILITIES (HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION ON OVERSIGHT HEARING ON ISSUES AND PROBLEMS RELATED TO THE CONDITIONS IN INDIAN TRIBAL DETENTION FACILITIES)

Corey Baines - 2003

A simple tree killed 16 year old Corey Baines while he was placed at a wilderness program named Catherine Freer. He is just one out of three teenagers who have died at this particular program which makes it one of the most deadly wilderness programs still in operation.

There are many parents out there. Some seem determined to fix problems within their families at home. It was sadly not the case with Corey Baines. For some reason he was shunned by his family when he fell into problems and they let so-called professionals do a kind of dirty work.

We don't know what kind of problems he had and it doesn't matter because the cure became his death which sadly is the case so many times.

16 years was all he got and it is a waste of so much potential.

May he rest in peace.

Sources:

• Victims 2000-4 (Fornits WIki)
• Catherine Freer Wilderness Program (Fornits WIki)
• Utah wilderness therapy deaths (The Salt Lake Tribune, OCTOBER 11, 2007)

Orlena Parker - 2003

The death of 15 year old Orlena Parker was just one of the many cases where restraints led to death of the teenagers who were victimized by this act of powerplay by the staffmembers.

Orlena Parker was 15 years old with black hair more than 2 feet long. Her middle name was Leatrice. She was a member of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community of Arizona.

At some point she got a depression and for her to be cured she was sent to the Devereux Cleo Wallace residential treatment facility. She wasn't cured. She died there instead while being restrained by no less than 7 people.

An investigation was launced and the treatment center was cited but it didn't change the fact that she died and never saw her family again.

It is just one of these unheard tragedies no families with children suffering from depression want to to hear about but these tragedies do happen and apperently nothing is done to stop them.

Orlena Parker did only live 15 years of her life which should have been so much longer.

May she rest in peace.

Sources:

• Pinned Down (by Kathryn Eastburn, Colorado Springs Independent, July 24, 2003)
• Victims 2000-4 (Fornits Wiki)
• Corporal Punishment, child welfare and restraints (By Carrie Ann Lucas , Disability Pride)

Autumn Sun Bear - 2003

March 1, 2003 the authorities was called to a treatment center in St. George, Utah because the school told them that they had a girl who was ill and should be tranported to the hospital. When they arrived at the Red Rock Canyon School they discovered that the employees were conducting CPR on the girl who had been ill for some time.

The girl had only seen the nurse employed at the treatment center. Mostly it is a secure facility for privately paid children sent there by parents who don't want to take responsibility for their own children. They don't want to take the children outside the treatment center unless they believe that the reason is seriously. However, this girl was sent there by the reservation where she used to live.

This time the illness was serious for the poor girl and the decision to handle the illness inhouse ended in the death of the girl.

May she rest in peace.

Sources

• Victims 2000-4 (Fornits Wiki)
• Red Rock Canyon School (Fornits Wiki)
• Police investigate schoolgirl's death (Deseret News, March 7 - 2003)