O'LOONEY-DFACS CASE: SEE NO CRIME, DA SAYS

Marijuana Flushed

No crime was committed when former Clarke County Department of Family and
Children Services Director Gwen O'Looney flushed marijuana found on a
juvenile DFACS client down a toilet, Western Judicial Circuit District
Attorney Ken Mauldin said Tuesday.

"We've had nothing referred to us," Mauldin said, responding to a story in
Monday's Atlanta-Journal Constitution which stated the matter was being
probed by Mauldin's office.

O'Looney, who headed the Athens DFACS office since 1998, was fired May 18.
No one from DFACS would comment on the reason for her termination, citing
the secrecy of personnel records.

In an interview Tuesday, O'Looney said she had been at loggerheads with
DFACS for some time concerning the agency's operations, and that she
believed the marijuana incident was a "convenient excuse" to get rid of her.

O'Looney said the juvenile client was found in possession of marijuana on
two occasions, and both times she instructed subordinates to dispose of the
drug by flushing it down the toilet.

According to O'Looney, the decision to dispose of the marijuana was made
after consultation with other Clarke County DFACS officials, including its
legal affairs expert, who found there were no policies requiring the
incidents to be reported to Clarke County Juvenile Court officials.

"When I was informed that the marijuana was already at the office, my
concern was the best interest of the child and the integrity of the agency,
so my decision was to dispose of it," O'Looney said.

She said both marijuana incidents, in October and February, were documented
in the girl's DFACS files and would have been issues to be considered when
her case came up for a routine six-month review. That review, scheduled for
March, was never held for a variety of reasons, O'Looney said, including
the fact that the same month as the scheduled review the girl entered
counseling and had been placed into a new foster home.

"I never talked about it with the court, but I did speak informally with my
superior at DFACS," O'Looney said. "I was not trying to hide it. I said
that if you want to develop a policy (regarding DFACS children caught with
drugs) I would be glad to work with them."

Even prior to the marijuana incidents, O'Looney said she believed she was
falling out of DFACS's good graces because an employee filed a formal
complaint charging that O'Looney failed to report that a DFACS client had
made "terroristic threats" for having cursed at the employee.

"We wanted our employees to be respected by the kids, but this was a child
with some very serious problems" that could have been dealt with outside
the juvenile justice system, O'Looney said.

Mauldin said his staff researched the law and found that while there are
reporting requirements within DFACS for certain infractions, such as the
possession of drugs, "I don't see penalty provisions in that law for
failing to meet that requirement."

O'Looney, a former Athens-Clarke County mayor, said many of the differences
DFACS had with the way she ran the Athens agency was because under its
current leadership, "there is much more emphasis on adolescent behavior
interpreted as criminal behavior."

"I really don't think it was the marijuana," she said. "A lot of things
happened between October and my dismissal. I think I was just being the
squeaky wheel."

Since being fired by DFACS, O'Looney said she has done some traveling, but
would like to once more involve herself in "improving the lives of children."

Before being elected Athens-Clarke mayor, O'Looney was director of the
Youth Division of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency and
assistant director of program services for the Boy Scouts of America. Prior
to that, under then-Gov. Jimmy Carter, O'Looney assisted in the
deinstitutionalization of patients when the state mental institution in
Milledgeville closed, and she originally came to Athens to help develop
alternatives to suspending children from public schools.