For thousands of Maine kids who have grown up in the child welfare system, labels are a fact of life. Rootless teens are often known for their case histories and psychological diagnoses first, their names and personalities second.

When two teen-age boys from KidsPeace New England, a residential care center on Graham Lake in Ellsworth, hit the road in September for a misadventure that ended in an armed standoff with police, the center residents were referred to as delinquent and dangerous.

The statements angered the youngsters at the center, even those whom one might expect would be accustomed to labels by now.

“I read some of the stuff people say about KidsPeace, and none of it’s true. We’re not convicts. We’re not murderers or killers,” said Thomas (not his real name), a soft-spoken 15-year-old who has made Graham Lake his home for nearly five years.

“These kids get painted as delinquent,” said George Russell, executive director of KidsPeace New England. “But they’re not dangerous. In fact, they’re rather sad.”

Some neighbors view the campus as a correctional facility for troubled teens; others see KidsPeace as a halfway house for mentally ill youths; and some believe the center is a private residential school for students that need one-on-one attention.

It is all, and none of the above.

“The majority of the community doesn’t know what KidsPeace’s function is,” said Lt. Harold Page of the Ellsworth Police Department. “Most people don’t know what the place is, or what the kids are there for.”

The vast majority of the 51 Maine boys and girls, ages 11 to 17, who live in the lakeside dorms at any given time are victims of failed families. All but a handful have been removed from their homes by the state Department of Human Services to stop ongoing physical or sexual abuse.

A paper trail of failed institutional and foster placements follows most of the kids. Each is receiving treatment for some level of mental illness. And many have been forced to grow up before their time, living alone on the streets – angry and frightened – with no one to trust, he said.

Russell points to the highly publicized September incident. When 17-year-old Scott Noble and 16-year-old Michael Murphy ran away from KidsPeace, they allegedly stole $50 and a handgun from a local business, but didn’t harm or threaten anyone, he said.

Noble “picks up a gun, and everyone says, ‘Oh my God!’ But what does he do? He points the gun at himself,” Russell said.

“When kids this age have seen some of the horrors that they have – they’re terrified,” he said. “They can feel like the whole world is out to get them.”

Reality out that door

KidsPeace New England, the Maine headquarters of a national child welfare organization centered in Bethlehem, Pa., is a typical example of Maine’s shift toward more homelike, community-based treatment for troubled children during the past decade, said Peter Walsh, deputy commissioner for the Department of Human Services.

Walsh helped draw the organization to Maine in 1991 when DHS saw a gap in the treatment options available for troubled children. As mental health hospitals shut down during the late 1980s, finding beds for troubled children became a challenge, he said.

Today, KidsPeace New England, a 12-acre wooded campus, operates one of the few residential youth treatment centers in the region without locks on its doors, Russell said. The facility offers students more individual responsibility than watchful, staff-secure residential treatment centers like Sweetser and Spurwink in Maine, but more structure than a traditional foster home.

“We don’t want to poison them with protection,” Russell said. “An open campus is more reflective of normal life. The notion is that giving kids contact with everyday life helps them to understand that reality is out that door,” he said.

Eleven children at a time can live in KidsPeace’s diagnostic wing, undergoing intellectual, physical and psychological evaluations over a period of about 45 days.

And as many as 30 boys and 10 girls eat, sleep, attend school and receive counseling in KidsPeace’s 24-hour residential treatment program. The average stay is nine to 12 months, but some may live on campus as long as five years, Russell said.

The nonprofit program’s cost is covered by Medicaid for any student who is a ward of the state. It totals about $100,000 to sustain one student for a year. So, most of KidsPeace’s residents are supported by government funding – 35 percent state and the remaining 65 percent federal, said Korel Roberge, finance director for the center.

Administrators claim a 76 percent success rate nationwide and believe that KidsPeace’s black-and-white world of rules and consequences gets kids back into the community by introducing structure to their lives.

“A number of them have grown up in a highly unpredictable environment,” Russell said. “An adult might have come over and said, ‘I love you,’ and then smacked them.”

Tisha, a 15-year-old with curly blonde hair and freckles, had been supporting herself on the streets before she entered KidsPeace two years ago. When Tisha arrived, after being kicked out of several other treatment programs, she was angry. Staff physically restrained her almost daily to keep her from injuring herself. Today, she’s slowly building bonds with her biological family, and preparing for a career in education or medicine.

“Two years ago, I would have trashed this place,” she said. “Those other places didn’t teach me nothing. They didn’t give me any rules. I still feel upset, but I can see what this place has done for me – my violence, my aggression, my stealing – it’s all changed.”

Staffers also cite an environment of mutual respect where students learn that tantrums and manipulation don’t work. Rather, they earn freedom through mature behavior, said education supervisor William Breton.

“We allow them to vent their anger,” he said. “We’ve been screamed at, we’ve been spit at, we’ve been kicked – you name it – but we don’t react to the rage.”

James, a 17-year old, who landed at KidsPeace two years ago following difficulties in school and a stint at the Maine Youth Center, likes the low-key atmosphere, where he can go outdoors alone and walk off his aggression.

“It’s not like jail where you’ve got bars on the doors and windows,” he said. “It’s a home to some kids who’ve never had homes.”

For treatment to be successful in an open setting, each child must be able to understand and seek help for a problem, be it depression or a history of violence, said Ed McSweeney, admissions director at Graham Lake. So, KidsPeace does not accept students who have been adjudicated for violent or sexual crimes, children who are acutely suicidal, or those whose primary treatment need is overcoming an addiction to alcohol or illegal drugs.

“The bottom line is whether we can keep the child, the campus, and the community safe,” McSweeney said.

Absent without leave

But for an organization that prides itself on its children’s safety, an alarming number run away from the facility each year and are found attempting to walk or hitchhike out of town. For those like Noble and Murphy, who don’t find security in KidsPeace’s structure, the center is easy to escape.

Since Ellsworth police began keeping computerized records in January 1994, officers have responded to 153 minor complaints involving KidsPeace residents – most of which were reports of runaways, Lt. Page said. Some years, the tally has been fewer than 10 incidents. So far this year, Ellsworth police have responded to 41 KidsPeace incidents, he said.

Russell avoids the term runaway, preferring the military phrase “absent without leave,” since most students don’t escape; they simply leave the voluntary program and wander out through the woods, he said. When students leave campus, Russell immediately reports their absence to local police and the state and their parent or state-appointed guardian, who help search for the student. Most are returned to campus within hours.

“We have more watchdogs than a kennel,” he said. “But we have a human staff. We can’t prevent this 100 percent of the time.”

Each kid has a different way of acting out. Some yell, some punch walls and some are runners, said program supervisor Terri Gallant. Anything from a period of sunny weather to a failed romantic relationship to a psychological breakthrough can spark a desire to run, she said.

Russell recalled a boy who left campus and hitchhiked to a Bangor truck stop. When police found him, they asked why he’d left, and he answered that he was scheduled to go home the next day, and hoped that breaking a few rules might lengthen his stay.

“This is like our own little town,” Thomas said, explaining some residents’ fear of the world beyond KidsPeace. “You don’t know what’s out there.”

Tisha has been “absent without leave” from KidsPeace countless times since she arrived – but never for more than a couple of hours. “I find my own way to go off, then I come back and deal with the consequences,” she said.

Consequences typically involve a loss of freedom – perhaps being restricted to a bedroom or to the campus, according to Russell. But for someone who really wants to go, the restrictions aren’t a deterrent, Tisha said.

According to Tisha, most AWOLs are couples who escape to the woods for time alone or kids who need a break from the center’s around-the-clock staff supervision. At KidsPeace, bedroom doors must remain open, and dating couples are permitted no more physical contact than a staff-observed hug – though most manage to evade the restriction, residents said.

“Sometimes kids just want some freedom – that’s how teen-agers are,” Thomas said.

Occasionally, a report of theft or vandalism comes from local police or businesses after a student leaves campus, Russell said. But KidsPeace residents commit a fraction of the overall juvenile crime in Hancock County, Page said.

When simple AWOLs are removed from the equation, the number of complaints dwindles to just a few per year. And most of these serious KidsPeace incidents occur on or near the campus, Page said.

Not against the kids

A handful of reports of property damage or burglary complaints in the neighborhood have been linked to KidsPeace over the years, but every violent offense reported has occurred on campus – either two students fighting or a student assaulting a staff member, Page said.

For example, five students went AWOL in early November. Four were recovered without incident. The fifth, a 16-year-old boy, struck a KidsPeace staff member with a 4-foot piece of wood and was consequently arrested and removed from the center, Page said.

Nonetheless, neighbors of the center are beginning to voice their concerns.

After the September incident, neighborhood residents requested a meeting with the center’s administrators. Russell invited neighbors to visit the center and arranged a meeting that included a KidsPeace resident.

“The big deal is to give them an insider’s look at what we do here,” he said.

Becky Austin, who lives in Hallbrook Way, a development just across the road from the KidsPeace center, attended the meeting to find out exactly who lives in the quiet dormitories by the lake.

“You don’t want to be scared going to bed at night,” Austin said. “The kids over there definitely have some problems.”

The Austins have seen several AWOL KidsPeace residents running through the woods bordering their yard.

Neighbors have added alarm systems to keep their vehicles and garages secure. The Austins’ kindergarten daughter watched through the screen door as a counselor from KidsPeace took a runaway into custody in her backyard one afternoon.

“She saw him get tackled,” Austin said. “At 5 years old, you don’t want to go into why that happened.”

After touring the center and talking to its staff, Austin feels more at ease – just knowing that the kids aren’t violent was a relief, she said.

“We’re not trying to shut the place down, by any means,” she said. “We’re not against the kids – they’ve had a rough road.”

But Austin fears that KidsPeace administrators have been secretive in the past, and that they aren’t necessarily being forthright now.

“I think there are a lot of things kept hush-hush,” she said. “You just don’t know – that’s the scary thing.”

Austin hopes that the open communication between KidsPeace and the neighborhood residents will continue. Being informed when a student goes AWOL would make her feel more comfortable, she said.

Russell said that he expects the neighborhood meetings to continue. They give community members the opportunity to hear the reasoning behind KidsPeace policy, and they allow neighbors to hear the perspective of the kids themselves – and not simply base their opinion of KidsPeace on rumors and newspaper accounts of the exceptional situations.

“Over the past few weeks, we’ve had a few problems,” said Geoff (not his real name), a serious 17-year-old who is preparing to return to his adoptive family after years of residential care. “But doesn’t everybody have problems?”

NEWS reporter Shawn O’Leary contributed to this story