Be warned, this article has a lot of traumatizing details. Brief excerpt,

… what happened in the North Unit at Woodside was allowed to go on for years — much of it known to the most senior officials at the Department for Children and Families, including then-commissioner Ken Schatz, and the office of then-attorney general T.J. Donovan. Claims of violence at the hands of staffers, stays in what amounted to solitary confinement, administrators and medical personnel coercing children into withdrawing their complaints of abuse were all laid out in court filings, memos and emails from the children’s lawyers and in the multiple and damning reports by DCF’s own internal investigators of inhumane conditions and negligent care. A paramedic who had rescued the bloody and freezing girl even wrote directly to DCF about what she had seen — not only a child at risk of death but a staff ignorant of her history and unconcerned that a girl naked but for a smock was being dealt with exclusively by men.

The circle of knowledge, however, went well beyond the state’s child welfare and top law enforcement offices. At least six different Vermont judges heard cases alleging damage was being done to children at Woodside, and none of them intervened to demand meaningful investigations or order an end to the mistreatment.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20231026120524/https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/woodside-investigation-violence-and-isolation-at-vermonts-juvenile-lockup/Content?oid=39222023

  • Phanatik@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    How are people okay with this sort of treatment of children? They’re kept in cells and punished for acting out when their needs aren’t being met. They’re fucking children, you can’t do this to them and expect them to turn out healthy. It’s so sadistic and cruel and it makes me want to hurt the monsters running this facility.

    • AngryDemonoid@lemmy.lylapol.com
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      1 year ago

      If you haven’t heard of it, you should look up the Elan School. It’s thankfully shut down now, but I imagine there are still places just as bad.

    • SlikPikker@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Some will be sadist abusers.

      And otherwise much of Soviet don’t think of any child or person with mental illness, or who did a crime, as still fully a person.

  • radroot@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Ayut, Vermont gets away with a lot of bad shit because everyone thinks it’s a utopia, especially Vermonters.

    Source: am Vermonter

      • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        These people are told to take the settlement or keep proceedings going forever, in which case it eventually gets dismissed or worse. I don’t blame them in the slightest for settling.

        • girlfreddy@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Neither do I.

          But fuck the system for not throwing all those in power into jail for decades for what they did to those kids … judges included.

  • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    A little bird got stuck in a barbed wire. She tries to get out, but metal rods pierce her, bleed her out. She’s covered in blood, shit and piss, hurt herself to get attention. And an indifferent observer looks at her from a safe distance, through a small window in her cell. They discuss how it’s traumatic to work there, how it’s not good to their mental health to see that. As she flaps her ruined, broken wings, she loses her last breath, and they only wait to clean the room and seal another bird after her.

    Poor girl, no wonder it broke her.

  • quindraco@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Is there a shorter version around? This article is really long, and not all of its content is necessary for understanding.