Maine court rules for tortured student > $250,000 damage award against Bangor Job Corps upheld

PORTLAND — The operator of the federally funded Job Corps Program in Bangor must pay $250,000 to a young man who was tortured by a counselor who falsely promised him a “secret way” to join the Marines, Maine’s highest court ruled Monday.

“He was physically abused,” said John P. Jabar, a Waterville lawyer who represented William McLain. “He was assaulted. He accepted a lot of things under the guise of getting into the Marine Corps.”

McLain had been incorrectly told by a Training and Development Corp. job training counselor, Thomas Hebert, that he could get into the Marines through physical “tests,” even though he previously had failed the written entrance examination twice, according to Monday’s ruling.

“From February through April 1983, Hebert engaged McLain in several `progress reports’ and two `tests’ that required McLain to perform a number of bizarre physical activities and inflicted upon him substantial pain and humiliation,” the ruling says.

In a deposition, McLain said the “tests” included incidents in which Hebert blindfolded him, jabbed him in the chest and arm with syringes, poured hot wax on him and had him run around a track wearing nothing but boots.

“I did pushups, situps, and then he told me to take my shirt off, and he done the needles,” McLain said in recounting one incident in Hebert’s office. “And then he done the paddling. Told me to pull my pants down to the ankles, and I was supposed to say, `Thank you, sir,’ after each time he hit me with the paddle,” McLain said in his deposition.

The supreme court ruling says that “following the second test, performed according to Hebert in front of secret `recruiters,’ whom McLain neither saw nor spoke to, Hebert told McLain that his admission to the Marines was assured.”

But when McLain, who was 21 when he entered the Job Corps Program in 1983, went back to an armed forces recruiting center, he again failed the written test and was kept out of the Marines. McLain complained about the abuse at that point, and Hebert was fired.

McLain then filed his lawsuit, alleging that the non-profit TDC had been negligent in hiring and supervising Hebert and that TDC had been negligent in permitting the assault and battery of McLain. McLain also had sued the Penobscot Consortium, which along with TDC ran the federally funded Job Corps Program, but the consortium was dismissed as a defendant.

TDC appealed the award given to McLain in Penobscot County Superior Court, saying that McLain was partially to blame in the incident because he kept the abuse secret. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court unanimously turned down TDC’s appeal, saying defendants in assault cases cannot try to blame the victim by saying the victim’s negligence contributed to the situation.

TDC President Charles Tetro said Monday that his company could not have foreseen or prevented the abuse because it occurred privately. Tetro said that Hebert was fired immediately once the problems became known.