Officials accused of breaking rules Suit cites youth center confinement

PORTLAND – Court documents accuse top officials at the former Maine Youth Center of knowing that the center’s policies were being violated when a teenager was locked in confinement for weeks on end.

The documents, which were recently made public in a pending lawsuit, allege that the people responsible for overseeing the center in the 1990s approved of procedures that broke the rules for using force, restraint and isolation for juveniles assigned to the center.

The documents say one teenager, identified as Michael T., was held in solitary confinement for 87 days – far exceeding the youth center’s three-day maximum policy. The documents also allege that the same youth was tied down in restraints for 49 hours in a row, while the youth center called for a 30-minute maximum.

The documents are part of a lawsuit filed by Michael T. against 14 current and former state employees in Cumberland County Superior Court. The suit, filed in 2001, claims that Michael T.’s treatment at the Maine Youth Center resulted in permanent physical and emotional damage.

The suit conceals the plaintiff’s name because the alleged mistreatment took place when he was a child. Michael T., who is now 21, will probably never be able to hold a job or lead a normal life because of how he was treated at the center, said Thomas Connolly, one of his attorneys.

“He is constantly anxious, constantly vigilant – and that’s a lot to take,” Connolly said. “He’s not comfortable in his own skin. His mind is at war with itself.”

Allegations of inhumane use of restraints and isolation to keep an increasingly difficult inmate population in line were first made in 1998, when Amnesty International started a letter-writing campaign against the institution. Those allegations were confirmed the next year, when a consultant hired by the state said the youth center had a “prisonlike culture” that returned children to their communities in worse condition than when they came in.

Among those named in Michael T.’s suit are Lars Olsen, a former Maine Youth Center superintendent who is now superintendent of the Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland, and Long Creek Deputy Superintendent Richard Lancaster. The Long Creek facility opened last year to replace the Maine Youth Center, which housed Maine’s most troubled children for 128 years.

Olsen declined to comment, referring questions to Long Creek spokesman James McManus. McManus said that practices at Long Creek are far different from those of the old youth center. There is no isolation unit at Long Creek, he said, and restraint is used only for short time periods, if at all.

“Restraint is now measured by minutes,” not hours or days, McManus said.

He referred additional questions to Denise Lord, associate commissioner of the Department of Corrections. Lord said the Attorney General’s Office had advised the department not to comment because of the pending lawsuit.

The Michael T. case is the first lawsuit to result from past conditions at the youth center. According to the suit, Michael T. spent 29 months there during five separate periods from 1995 to 1999.

The suit says he was at the mercy of abusive guards, locked in a tiny isolation cell for months and denied mental health treatment and an education during his teenage years.