PENDLETON, Ind. — Just as a federal study has found that the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility has the second-highest rate of sexual abuse among facilities surveyed, four of the facility’s employees are on suspension over allegations of sexual abuse.

The U.S. Department of Justice released a study Thursday that detailed youth-reported sexual abuse in juvenile facilities and found that among 195 facilities, Pendleton has the second-highest rate of reported sexual abuse.

Of Pendleton’s 127 juvenile inmates surveyed, 36.2 percent reported having been sexually abused by a staff member or fellow inmate.

Just over 31 percent of Pendleton’s inmates indicated that they’d been abused by a staff member.

Doug Garrison of the Indiana Department of Correction said the facility suspended four female employees in December amidst allegations of sexual abuse.

Garrison is barred from releasing the names of the employees by state law, he said. The investigation is ongoing and criminal charges have not yet been filed.

Despite this, Garrison said the state’s own reporting on the issue of sexual abuse does not reflect such a high incidence of sexual abuse at the facility as the federal study reflects.

In 2008, a sample of 26 inmates revealed that 10 percent, or three inmates, reported sexual abuse while in state custody.

The standard study conducted by the state surveys only about 10 percent of the population, he said.

The all-male juvenile detention center currently houses about 270 inmates.

Of 15 allegations of sexual abuse filed by inmates in the past two years, only one allegation was substantiated, Garrison said.

Others have led to convictions in prior years.

In July 2007, 19-year-old inmate Shawn Helmig was convicted of molesting a 13-year-old inmate at the Pendleton facility.

In 2003, the facility’s chaplain, Billie Jo Pena, was convicted of sexual misconduct for performing oral sex on a 17-year-old inmate.

Garrison said the federal study may have been wrong to compare the Pendleton facility to others due to its high level of inmates who are sex offenders.

“They’re putting this facility up against other juvenile facilities where the demographics are different,” he said. “We just don’t know whether you’re comparing apples with apples.”

Garrison said about 40 percent of Pendleton’s inmates are older sex offenders, age 17, 18 and 19. “You would grasp that the 40 percent facility with sex offenders is going to be different than a facility with none.”

While 16.8 percent of those surveyed at Pendleton reported sexual abuse without force, 18 percent indicated force was a factor in their abuse.

Though some acts between inmates and staff members may have been consensual, sex cannot be considered consensual in a prison setting, Garrison said, because sex is against the department policy.

“Any kind of sexual contact between offenders, coerced or uncoerced, between offenders and staff, is against the law,” he said.

Pendleton Police Chief Marc Farrer serves on the Community Advisory Panel for the facility and said he was not aware that the facility faced a high incidence of sexual abuse reports.

Farrer worked at both the Henry and Madison county juvenile correctional facilities before becoming police chief and said he never witnessed or learned of sexual abuse while working at those locations.

State Sen. Tim Lanane, D-Anderson, also serves on the advisory panel for the facility and said he’s concerned by the report.

“These are juveniles in the custody and protection of the state of Indiana.”

The facility’s rank is alarming, he said.

“If I understand correctly, we are like second from the top, which is a distinction we do not want to have ... That’s a high number.”

In response to the report, Garrison said, the state is dispatching a team of interviewers to the Pendleton facility in the coming weeks to interview each individual inmate about their own experience with sexual abuse at the facility.

Garrison said the state hopes to find out why the federal numbers were so much higher than state reports.

“If the answer is somewhere in between, then we aren’t getting it all reported ... If there’s a disconnect between what’s happening and what we’re learning, we hope to change that.”

Contact Brandi Watters: 640-4847, brandi.watters@heraldbulletin.com



The Department of Justice survey

The study identified six facilities where the survey found at least three out of every 10 inmates said they were sexually victimized while in custody: Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility in Indiana; Corsicana Residential Treatment Center in Texas; Backbone Mountain Youth Center in Swanton, Md.; Samarkand Youth Development Center in Eagle Springs, N.C.; Cresson Secure Treatment Unit in Pennsylvania; and the Culpeper Juvenile Correctional Center, Long Term, in Mitchells, Va.

Another seven sites reported nearly as high levels of sexual abuse or victimization: Victory Field Correctional Academy in Vernon, Texas; Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility; Shawono Center in Grayling, Mich.; Woodland Hills Youth Development Center in Nashville, Tenn.; L.E. Rader Center in Sand Springs, Okla.; Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center in Virginia; New Jersey Training School in Monroe Township, N.J.



By the numbers

270 number of inmates at Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility

36.2 percent Inmates who reported being sexually abused at the facility

127 Number of inmates surveyed

2nd Pendleton’s ranking compared to 194 other juvenile facilities

9,000 Inmates surveyed nationwide