JLARC Faults Study of Sexual Abuse of Juvenile Offenders
by Frank Green
January 30, 2010
The General Assembly’s watchdog agency yesterday challenged a federal study on sexual abuse in juvenile correctional centers in Virginia and across the country.
This month, the Virginia Senate Finance Committee asked the state’s Joint Legislative Audit Review Commission to review the study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. That study, a first-of-its-kind report, found that 12 percent of 9,189 incarcerated youths surveyed across the U.S. alleged they had been sexually victimized behind bars.
Officials with the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice were stung that two of its four facilities included in the report — the Culpeper and Bon Air juvenile correctional centers — ranked among the 13 said to have the highest rates of victimization in the country.
JLARC’s report, presented to the Finance Subcommittee on Public Safety yesterday, concluded that “there may be sexual activity occurring in [Virginia’s juvenile] facilities, but the BJS report falls short of accurately describing its extent.”
The Bureau of Justice Statistics study was titled, “Sexual Victimization in Juvenile Facilities Reported by Youth, 2008-09.” Most of what the study found in Virginia and across the country was sexual activity between female staff and male youths — some 18 or older — and most of that did not involve any force.
In a telephone interview this week, Allen Beck, one of the federal study’s authors and a Bureau of Justice Statistics statistician, defended the report, saying it did not equate sexual victimization to violent rape.
“What we’re looking at is a whole range of things,” he said. Among them are “relationships that emerge between youth and staff, particularly boys and female staff. . . . Whether the youth initiated it or whether the staff initiates that sexual contact, it shouldn’t happen.
“It’s illegal, it threatens the security of the facility, it threatens everyone involved,” he said, adding: “I wouldn’t diminish the seriousness of this. I think it’s quite serious.”
Sexual victimization, as defined in the federal report, includes any forced sexual activity between youths, as well as all sexual activity between youths and staff. Sexual activity involving staff — reported five times more often than activity involving only youths — is a crime under all circumstances. The report did not mention specific cases of criminal charges against staff.
The definition of “force” used in the report includes receiving favors or special treatment in return for sexual activity — not just physical force or threats of force. The report does not specify the nature of the “force” used in reported incidents.
Among other things, the JLARC study said that although distinguishing between allegations and actual events is fundamental to the criminal justice system, “a key weakness of the BJS report is that this distinction is often not made.”
JLARC said the “treatment of allegations of sexual misconduct as if they were actual events is a key flaw in the report, and may lead readers to draw inaccurate conclusions about the extent of such activity.”
JLARC also said the Bureau of Justice Statistics report did not compare similar juvenile populations across the states and did not try to account or control for those differences.
Barry Green, director of the state’s Department of Juvenile Justice, said the BJS study found that generally the older the juvenile and the longer they were held, the more likely they were to report an incident. The Virginia juveniles participating in the study were older and held longer than the national average, he said.
Beck readily agrees — and his report points out — that the survey is based on allegations. “It’s what the kids are telling us, not what kids have reported [to authorities] and have been subsequently investigated.
“The survey can never rise to the level of an investigation, and I think we know that some of these allegations may not be entirely true,” he said.
But, he said, the U.S. Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which requires the Bureau of Justice Statistics to study sexual assault in prisons and juvenile facilities, also required the BJS to rank facilities. “We took care in analyzing data,” Beck said, adding that controls were used and other measures taken to test the credibility of what was reported.
Beck said that even if the population surveyed in Virginia may have been older and more male than in other states, “it doesn’t eliminate the fact that these things are going on.”
“It’s a little hard to claim that kids in a specific facility are disproportionately making false allegations,” he said. On the other hand, Beck said, “I think one should acknowledge it isn’t a gold standard for truth; these are simply allegations.
“Some kids may have been giving false reports, other kids may not be coming forward. But even if half the kids in these facilities in Virginia are not being truthful, you still have very high rates, and it’s not trivial,” Beck said.
Green, too, told legislators yesterday that he does not deny sexual activity has occurred and did not wish to minimize the import of the federal study. “Know that we are taking this very seriously,” he said.
Green said further action has been taken to reduce and better detect such activity. Among other things, the department is further explaining to new wards how to report sexual abuse and boosting training for therapists, counselors, medical staff and parole officers on how to identify sexual abuse.
Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or fgreen@timesdispatch.com
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