The Oregon Youth Authority is under heightened scrutiny following a wave of lawsuits alleging sexual abuse and a culture of neglect in the state’s youth correctional facilities. The agency, which has faced criticism for mishandling abuse complaints, now has a new appointed leader — Michael Tessean — who takes over from interim director Jana McLellan. That’s after Gov. Tina Kotek fired longtime director Joe O’Leary earlier this year over a backlog of unaddressed abuse reports.
OPB politics reporter Lauren Dake joins us to discuss the recent lawsuits, the agency’s troubled history and what new leadership could mean for the future of juvenile justice in Oregon.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We start today with the Oregon Youth Authority. The agency which is part of the state’s juvenile justice system is under heightened scrutiny right now after a wave of lawsuits alleging sexual abuse and a culture of neglect in the state’s youth correctional facilities. Governor Tina Kotek fired longtime director Joe O’Leary earlier this year over a backlog of unaddressed abuse reports. A few weeks ago, a new director was named.
OPB politics reporter Lauren Dake has been covering all of this and she joins us now. It’s good to have you back.
Lauren Dake: Thanks, Dave.
Miller: I want to start with the firing of the former director of the OYA. Joe O’Leary was fired right before a report was released showing the mishandling of thousands of abuse complaints. What exactly did that report find?
Dake: The report showed that there were these complaints made by children in the state’s custody that were not properly being handled. So there was basically this massive backlog. Some of the complaints were simply never investigated. I think there were more than 700 that fell into that category.
Some of them were investigated, but they didn’t receive the final sign-off from the chief investigator. So they didn’t go to wherever they were supposed to go for their next steps. There were 3,000 in that category.
And we know there were at least two reports in which an Oregon Youth Authority employee was accused of sexually abusing a child in custody, and those were not reported to the State Police. So basically, it showed a general mishandling of thousands of complaints, some stretching back quite some time.
Miller: Even before that report came out, the governor had already put O’Leary on administrative leave. Why?
Dake: Interestingly, O’Leary was actually the person who initiated the investigation into the backlog of complaints a couple of months before all of this became public. He asked for a peer audit by the Oregon Department of Corrections to look into his office’s professional standards office. That was the office that oversaw the complaints.
That office was led by a man named Raymond Byrd, but Byrd resigned during this audit. Byrd reported to O’Leary and O’Leary was the head of the agency. He was put on administrative leave once it became clear what a big problem this was going to be.
Miller: What did O’Leary say after he was fired?
Dake: Well, actually, when he was put on administrative leave, he said he was “floored,” according to an internal investigation. He did not see that coming. He had been with the agency for years. He was surprised himself at how big the backlog of complaints had become. And like I said, he initiated this outside review hoping for a better understanding of the system and how to make these changes. But presumably the governor just felt like that was too little too late.
Miller: So that’s one big issue here. Another is that the same day that O’Leary was fired back in early March, 10 men who had been held in custody when they were minors, when they were children – this was at the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility – sued the state. What did they allege?
Dake: Yeah, like you point out, the timing of this was really something. So O’Leary got fired the same day this lawsuit was filed accusing a longtime pediatrician of repeatedly abusing boys who, at the time, ranged in age from 12 to 16. They said that they were repeatedly sexually abused by the top pediatrician at the facility.
This was a doctor who had worked for the Youth Authority for more than four decades. The March lawsuit alleged that he abused these 10 boys, but also said that the abuse was so widespread that people knew about it and there was just this culture of indifference that allowed it to continue.
Miller: Where does that case stand right now?
Dake: I just spoke to the attorney actually and he said they’re in the discovery phase. So he’s pushing the state to turn over documents about what was known about this doctor, whose name is Doctor Edward Gary Edwards – what was known about him, if anything was known about him and what was done.
Miller: When he announced the suit, the lawyer representing these former OYA youth said that he thought it would be the tip of the iceberg with many more to follow. Has that happened?
Dake: It has. He has filed, since then, a couple of other lawsuits. And he’s even said, since he started this, his phone has just essentially been ringing off the hook with a lot of people who want to share their stories about their time in custody.
His most recent lawsuits accused a group life coordinator and a former correctional officer of sexual abuse. They also include more allegations from more people against the pediatrician. He said he didn’t feel like this was a case of a few bad apples, but that it was a larger system-wide problem that protected predators and silenced victims.
Miller: But OYA is not just facing civil suits right now. Can you tell us about what the Marion County District Attorney is doing?
Dake: The district attorney in Marion County said she’s going to investigate the conditions at MacLaren Youth Authority, which is the largest facility within the Oregon Youth Authority system.
She said her office received more than 100 complaints or things that she could investigate as potential criminal conduct in just the past 12 months. Those things range from contraband possession, physical assaults on youth, on staff, and she said, in her words, “The whole thing was overwhelming.”
Miller: Just to take a step back, what does the Oregon Youth Authority do?
Dake: It’s our state’s juvenile justice system. So it has nine secure facilities, five are correctional facilities – prisons for kids – and four are transitional facilities. The biggest one is the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn.
Children who have been convicted of serious crimes before they’re 18 serve their sentences out at an Oregon Youth Authority facility. Sometimes kids are incarcerated as young as 12. They can serve there until they turn 24. Some of them then get transitioned to the adult correctional facilities.
Miller: But just to be clear, this is totally independent from the Oregon Department of Corrections, which handles adults, and also DHS, which manages the foster care system?
Dake: That’s correct, a separate agency.
Miller: But you spent a lot of your reporting time over the last big number of years looking into Oregon’s child welfare system and into DHS. Do you see parallels between these two offices, these two agencies?
Dake: I do. I mean, they’re two separate agencies, Oregon Youth Authority and Child Welfare. But they’re both dealing with kids who have experienced a lot of trauma. They’re dealing with vulnerable populations of kids that society tends to forget about at times and not think much about. They don’t have a lot of power or influence.
And there’s also some real cultural similarities being raised within both of these agencies. I’ve heard a lot of similar themes about Oregon Youth Authority right now, just having this sort of apathetic or passive response when kids try to raise issues, just as indifference to their experiences.
Miller: Has the agency, Oregon Youth Authority, announced any policy changes?
Dake: They’re working through the backlog of complaints. I also know that the governor appointed an ombudsman, so there’s a person now who is supposed to work independently to help identify issues within the agency, to help families navigate the system.
The ombudsman ultimately reports to the governor’s office, so that always raises some questions about true independence. But people seem to feel that is a step in the right direction.
Miller: I imagine that it might be hard because of the various lawsuits and investigations. I mean, the agency has to be careful about not implicating itself.
Dake: Yeah, state agencies tend to just have this universal blanket policy that they don’t comment when there’s a pending lawsuit. So they’ve been careful there. What they’ve tried to say is that a lot of these lawsuits do deal with allegations that span back many years. They point out that they have a lot of newer staff and that they are doing everything they can to be transparent and helpful to ensure that this is not actively happening.
Miller: Well, speaking of new staff, they’ve got a new director. What can you tell us about him?
Dake: Michael Tessean was most recently the director of the Colorado State Board of Parole. Before that, he worked at the Colorado Department of Human Services. So, to our point earlier, about children placed in foster care and those in the juvenile having some intersection, it’s interesting that he has a bit of background with both of those populations. He is expected to start later this month.
Miller: Lauren, thanks very much.
Dake: Thank you, Dave.
Miller: Lauren Dake is a reporter at OPB focused on politics and state government.
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