TOWNSEND SAYS SHE WAS MISLED ABOUT CAMPS

Officials Had Told Her Abuse Of Delinquents Was Stopped Earlier;
'Didn't Make The Changes'

Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the leader of the state's criminal
justice efforts, defended yesterday her oversight of Maryland's
juvenile boot camps -- saying top state administrators misled her this
fall about violence at the facilities and their efforts to stop it.

In her first public comments after a week of rapid-fire disclosures
about widespread abuse of delinquents at Maryland's three juvenile
boot camps, Townsend said state Juvenile Justice Secretary Gilberto de
Jesus assured her in October that any such violence was isolated and
had been stopped after she had raised concerns.

"When I asked if the changes had occurred, I was told they had,"
Townsend said. "He said definitely there was no physical abuse.

"They didn't make the changes," she added. "That was
wrong."

A task force appointed by the governor and Townsend is scheduled to
question de Jesus this morning about what he knew about the violence.

The task force will also hear testimony from Jamie Woodring of
Frostburg, who worked as a child advocate for 15 years before leaving
last year. The state employee's job was to help make sure the teens in
the camps were safe.

In a telephone interview last night, she said she would testify that
she witnessed and reported violence at two of the camps from the time
they opened in 1996 and 1997. She said she was banned by officials in
Baltimore from watching "induction" days -- when delinquents arrived
at the camps and guards were their roughest.

Woodring said delinquents were often slammed to the ground without
provocation. "They were cuffed and shackled, taken off the vans and
passed from staff to staff," she said. "As time went on, they didn't
get passed, they got dropped."

Townsend declined to give a vote of confidence to the embattled de
Jesus, whose department is the subject of five investigations. Gov.
Parris N. Glendening has said he will decide the fate of de Jesus and
other state Department of Juvenile Justice officials this week.

The juvenile justice agency has been roiling since Dec. 5, the first
day of a four-part series in The Sun describing how guards at the
camps routinely assaulted teen-age delinquents -- punching, kicking
and slamming them to the ground.

Last week, the seven-member task force investigating the reports
determined unanimously that guards had been routinely assaulting the
teens for at least a year, continuing into this month. The task force
found that top officials in the juvenile justice agency have known for
months that guards were assaulting the teens but did little or nothing
to protect them.

Changes at camps

Yesterday, state officials continued to remove any trace of the
military-style boot camp program from the three Garrett County
facilities, the Savage Leadership Challenge, Backbone Leadership
Challenge and Meadow Mountain Leadership Challenge.

Savage -- the camp described in The Sun series -- was closed, with
juveniles transferred to the other camps and state facilities.

At the other two boot camps, which were turned over Saturday to the
commander of the Maryland National Guard at Glendening's order, the
delinquents -- called "cadets" at the boot camps -- are being called
"students." They no longer wear military-style uniforms, officials
said.

Around-the-clock monitors from social service agencies have been
assigned to the camps to ensure the youths' safety. Last night, 39
teens were at Backbone and 40 were at Meadow Mountain, the juvenile
justice agency said.

De Jesus visited the camps Saturday afternoon and yesterday, according
to the spokesman for his agency, Bob Kannenberg. He said de Jesus
wanted to work with the state's National Guard commander, Lt. Gen.
James F. Fretterd, to make sure the governor's orders were followed.

De Jesus refused to comment on the governor's order or criticism that
he misled Glendening and Townsend about conditions at the camps.

Courts in Baltimore City and Howard County (http://www.co.ho.md.us)
ordered 29 delinquents from their jurisdictions removed from the camps
Friday, and the state Department of Social Services has also pulled
teens out.

At least 15 guards have been placed on administrative duties and
ordered to have no contact with the camps or the teens who remain
there. State police and social workers are interviewing every
teen-ager who went through the camps, looking for evidence of child
abuse.

Camp supporter

Glendening has given Townsend responsibilities for oversight of public
safety matters, including anti-crime efforts and the state Department
of Juvenile Justice. Townsend, preparing to run for governor in 2002,
has taken credit for public safety initiatives and for a reduction in
reported juvenile arrests.

She also has repeatedly held up boot camps as a key to reducing
juvenile crime.

Townsend, who returned yesterday from a political and family trip to
Florida, acknowledged that she pushed to create the boot camps in 1996
and 1997.

In an interview in October, Townsend said she became a backer of boot
camps after touring one in Cleveland and walking away impressed. In a
study released in October by the U.S. Department of Justice, though,
the Cleveland camp's graduates had a higher recidivism rate than teens
released from juvenile jails.

Townsend said she had visited the Maryland boot camps several times
and had talked often with cadets outside the camps, but had not seen
evidence of abuse nor heard any such complaints.

Although some juvenile justice officials and social service workers in
Garrett County had reported evidence of abuse at the camps early this
year, Townsend said, her first indication of problems came in August
when a Sun reporter asked state officials about violence he had
witnessed at the camps.

Townsend said she told her staff that violence against cadets was
unacceptable.

In response, department officials assured her later that abuse had
stopped, she said.

The reality hit her that officials had misled her about abuse,
Townsend said, when she read

last week's Sun series that detailed abuses at the Savage camp and the
failures of the juvenile justice agency's after-care program for camp
graduates on probation, reports she called "deeply
disturbing."

"What I had not been told was that [abuse] was pervasive throughout
the camp," Townsend said.

"I think a lot of things went wrong," she said, when asked the causes
of the camps' problems. "We've got overzealous employees who went
overboard dramatically."

Advocate reports abuse

Woodring, the former child advocate, said she had reported to her
superiors in Cumberland and Baltimore that guards were manhandling the
teens on their first day at the camp, as early as 1996 and 1997, when
they first opened.

Her testimony could be important in part because the task force is
trying to determine how long ago the assaults at the camps began, when
top officials first knew about them and how they responded.

After reporting the assaults, she said, treatment of the teens seemed
to ease for a short time. But in February 1998, she said, Jeff Graham,
who ran the three boot camps before the National Guard took over,
approached her and told her she was no longer welcome at the inductions.

"He said it was nothing personal, but he didn't want me looking over
his shoulder, and that I was making his [guards] uncomfortable," she
said. "I said, 'This is what my job is.' "

Woodring called her supervisor in Baltimore, Joan McEntyre, and told
her about Graham's ban. Two days later, Woodring said, the supervisor
called her back and said that the order stood and that she was banned
from watching inductions until further notice.

McEntyre is the department's inspector general, whose job it is to
monitor the camps. She answers to de Jesus. Woodring said last night
that she did not know who in Baltimore upheld the ban.