| Dark secrets |
| Dark secrets lie in the back streets
of many of our major cities. They seldom see the light
of day because the typical resident doesn’t care
about what goes on in our nation’s juvenile
detention centers. Juvenile delinquents, and what
“they” do with them, are not a mainstream
item in typical parents’ agenda because it
usually involves other peoples’ children, not
theirs. This is natural because less than one percent
of all crimes adjudicated, involve juvenile offenders.
It’s “out of sight, out of mind!” |
| Two books |
| There are two books written about,
amongst other things, what goes on behind the closed
doors of the Roslindale Detention Center. One book, Stubborn Child, [1] written by Mark D. Devlin, [2] tells an awful story about his abuse meted out by employees of the Youth Service Board (YSB), now the Department of Youth Services (DYS) at Roslindale’s horrific Detention Center at 450 Canterbury Street. Mark died in 2005, having never come to terms with the abuse served upon him by the state of Massachusetts and its Youth Service Board. He spent most of his adult life as a solitary homeless soul seeking the reason for his existence. Another book, Abominable Firebug, [3] written by Richard B. Johnson, [4] gives a similar account from a slightly different perspective. [5] Richard survived to become a successful Engineer, Pilot, Musician, and Writer. |
| Devlin’s account |
| When Mark Devlin was admitted to the
Roslindale Detention Center near Boston in 1956, he was
locked in a room where it was pitch-black and he began
screaming for his mother. When he heard a jingle of
keys, he was convinced she had come to collect him.
Instead, a face looked in through a small opening,
warned him in brutally obscene terms what would happen
to him if he didn’t shut up, and told him (with
an additional obscenity thrown in) that his mother
wouldn’t be seeing him again for a good long
while. He was seven years of age at the time. |
| Johnson’s account |
| Johnson recalls his entrance to the
Roslindale Detention Center; After being stripped and
insulted by a guard to be called a
“Master,” he was escorted naked upstairs
past a room filled with boys sitting on the floor in
underclothing, and lining its walls, down a corridor,
also lined with half-naked sitting boys, to a
shower-room where he was sprayed with cold water from a
garden hose. After he was completely cold and wet, he
was tossed a tee shirt and oversize underpants. He was
told to use these as a towel and then wear them. Then
he was led back to the boy-filled room, given a pair of
stockings, and then told to get down on the floor with
the rest. This was his introduction to the Roslindale
Detention Center where he was to spend the next three
months of his life. Johnson was fifteen years of age at
the time. The large room was called the “dayroom” because that was where the inmates spent their days. The sleeping quarters consisted of a small concrete room containing two iron bed-frames embedded in concrete. These had been fashioned out of welded angle-iron and steel plate. A thin mattress with no inner-springs was placed on this frame. Each boy was given a single blanket, no sheets, and no pillow. Although designed for two boys, these rooms often contained more than two, with the extra boys sleeping on the floor. The entrance to the room was guarded by a thick oaken door with an industrial strength observation window containing embedded wire mesh. It had a lock that required a massive key which the masters often used as torture devices as well. Each room also had a window to the outside that consisted of an iron frame with embedded mesh glass. The windows would only open a small distance so escape was impossible. Toilet facilities were not provided in the rooms, so boys who needed to urinate, would try to aim their stream out the partially-opened window which was shoulder high. Passerby may observe the rusty urine stains on the outside walls formed from the corners of the windows. If the masters would unlock the doors, boys could be escorted to the toilet facilities. Unfortunately, in the nighttime, the masters were usually otherwise occupied. |
| Sexual perversion and abuse |
| After the boys would vacate the
dayroom in the nighttime it became the central area
reserved for the masters’ perversion. Masters
would select young boys and rape them on the floor of
this room. This is the area from which the screams
came. There came Johnson’s screams as well until
as he says, “I was fortuitously injured and taken
sick to the infirmary.” He had become bloody,
weak, and feverish. As told in his book,
Abominable Firebug, [3] Johnson spent his last month
at the “center” in and out of delirium, but
eventually recovering enough to leave for the Lyman
School for Boys. [9] |
| Sadism and physical abuse |
| As sexual perversion was reserved
for the evening, in the daytime the staff consisted of
sadists who delighted in grabbing young boys by the
throats, tossing them against the walls, and pummeling
them with fists and feet. Johnson says, “Many
boys who lay on the floor beside me in the dayroom had
bodies broken by the masters.” As Johnson’s book describes, [3] typically a detainee would be verbally assaulted first. He would have his family members defamed by the master as; “Your mother’s a f——ing whore. She f—ks all the sailors -right?” As the boy would feebly respond, “No,” the master would continue, yelling epithets and then hitting the boy. “What do you mean saying NO,” the master would retort, while grabbing the boy by the neck, slamming him against the walls, kicking him in the groin, or stomping him once he was on the floor. The pattern repeats. Many boys had never heard such words before, having lived a “sheltered” life in a small community. Johnson recalls, “We would sit or lie in a state of suspended animation watching the blurred image of a black and white television set entrapped in a cage. If any boy would show a spark of light in his eyes as he started to return to awareness, he would be beaten senseless by the masters until he returned to a vegetative state.” Here the boys would wait until there was an available bed at one of the reform schools without ever having been provided a trial. |
| Standard disclaimers |
| Of course, the modern references to
the same detention center, while admitting that there
may have been problems in the past, show surprising
restraint as they parrot the diatribe that everything
is fine now. [6]
Now and then some government-authorized pervert gets
caught killing kids, but for the most part, the crimes
against our teens, sequestered away from public view,
and left unaccounted for, remain in the dark. The few
who know these things often refuse to tell, and those
who tell are usually considered either liars or
carriers of some infectious mental disease.
[7] |
| Politics and self-promotion |
| Jerome Miller, [8] an established self-promoter
and story-teller, became the DYES commissioner in 1969. Miller closed
all the good places that helped children, such as the
Lyman School for Boys [9] in Westborough, and kept the
Roslindale Detention Center exactly as it had been.
After the damage, Miller left the DYES to accept a position in Illinois.
In January 1973, he was succeeded by Joseph Levy who
lasted until January 1976. Best Replica Watches |
| Why the children are here |
| Most residents of this detention
center are awaiting trial. They have not been found
guilty of anything. Most who eventually go to trial
will not be found guilty because they were picked up
en-masse by the police at some crime scene for which
they took no part at all. Replica Tag Heuer Watches Some will be found guilty of such “heinous” crimes as using or distributing marihuana, skipping school, or experimenting with drugs or alcohol. Others may be found guilty of participating in gang activity for which they really had no choice. Children are not given the option into which families they are born, where they live, the neighborhood environment, or the schools they attend. These things have been decided for them, often before they were born. As initially conceived, the Roslindale Reception-Detention Center was to be a place where children went for evaluation after a judge had determined probable cause. After the 1948 “Youth Service Act,” the judges of the juvenile courts were not allowed to make findings of guilt or innocence, only that there was probable cause that the youth was delinquent. Upon such a finding, the probable offender was remanded to the custody of the Youth Service Board where tests and evaluations were to be accomplished. One of the things that should have been accomplished at the center was whether or not a crime had actually been committed. Note that the apprehension of a child by the police was sufficient for a determination of “probable cause.” Basically, if the police grabbed you, you went to Reform School -no doubt about it. Although the 1948 Youth Service Act may have been the finest instrument of it’s time, it was never fully implemented. The act removed juveniles from the control of the courts in so far as direct verdicts and sentencing were concerned. Adjudication of guilt or as a delinquent child resulted in the youth being sentenced as a juvenile delinquent to the Youth Service Board for an undetermined sentence for evaluation, treatment and incarceration, if necessary. [10] Instead of tests, treatments, or evaluations, the boys sent to the Roslindale Detention Center were simply warehoused until there was an opening in one of the several Reform Schools. Evaluation consisted simply of determining the age of the victim. Young boys went to the John Augustus Hall in West Boylston, mid-teens went to the Lyman School for Boys in Westborough, and those in their late teens were sent to the Industrial School for Boys in Shirley. Some boys were sent to the Institute for Juvenile Guidance in Bridgewater if they did not “adjust” well to the horrific Roslindale Detention Center environment. Reform Schools such as Lyman and Shirley had a “credit” system wherein boys who had committed severe crimes needed to earn more credits for parole than those who had committed lesser crimes. However, the credits meted out by the Youth Service Board served only as a throttle to keep the Reform Schools overcrowding at a manageable level. Therefore, in the time-frame of Johnson’s incarceration, most inmates of the Lyman School, the State Reform School in Westborough, received 700 credits to be served until release. It is unlikely that the board, meeting only once weekly, even knew what crimes for which the children were being charged. They received a report from the masters detailing any problems the inmate may have encountered during his detention. If there were any problems reported, the inmate would likely be sent to the Bridgewater Reform School or the mental institution in Mattapan, the Mattapan State Hospital. [11] |
| Keeping the secrets |
| As described in his book,
Abominable Firebug, [3] Johnson eventually moved to an
institutional home in the South End of Boston, the
Morgan Memorial Charles Hayden Goodwill Inn, and
attended High School in Roslindale. The goings-on at
the Roslindale Detention Center were a well-kept
secret. None of his classmates at “Rossi
High”Breitling Navitimer Replica Watches
believed the stories that he told them
about what was happening about a mile from the High
School. He learned to keep quiet. |
2. Mark D. Devlin
3. Abominable Firebug book
4. Richard B. Johnson Abominable Firebug author and contributor to this article
5. Excerpt from Abominable Firebug book
6. The history of the DYS, written by the DYS
7. News article about teenage “boot camps”
8. Miller’s fictitious accounts of the Lyman School
9. The Lyman School for Boys in Westborough
10. The history of the Youth Service Act and subsequent changes
11. Boston State Mental Hospital at Mattapan
Wikipedia article on youth detention centers
Juvenile delinquency in the United States
National Criminal Justice Reference Service
More about Reform Schools