Wyoming Boys' School, staff sued for civil rights violations

ALM Law and Rathod|Mohamedbhai, on behalf of Charles “Rees” Karn, Blaise Chivers-King, and Dylan Tolar, filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Wyoming Department of Family Services (“DFS”), the Wyoming Boys’ School, the Superintendent of the Wyoming Boys’ School Dale Weber, and nine Wyoming Boys’ School staff who they claim significantly harmed plaintiffs while they were in Wyoming’s care and custody.

WYOMING BOYS’ SCHOOL

Currently the Wyoming Boys’ School houses boys from 12 to 21 with Superintendent Dale Weber saying the average ages are 14 to 18.

According to Wyoming State Statute 7-13-101 “upon his first conviction of a felony, any male offender, under the age of 18 years may be sentenced to imprisonment in the Wyoming boys’ school.”

In an interview with the Joint Judiciary Committee in the fall of 2021, Weber said, “We’re not a prison, we don’t have fences with razor wire, we don’t have guards, we don’t have cells with bars. We are the highest level secure placement for adolescent males.” He added that that they do have locked facilities. “We are not a treatment facility,” he said but added that Boys’ School is “the end of the line in corrections for adolescent males in the state.” In 2021 Weber was the deputy superintendent.

In an earlier interview with the Northern Wyoming News, Weber said the only reason restraints are used is if a student is demonstrating that he “is unsafe to himself or someone else. That’s it. We don’t use physical restraints, we don’t use solitary confinement as a means of influencing behavior. We don’t punish them by doing those things. The real reason that we would ever use those is that they are either hurting themselves, or they are hurting someone else or they are destroying property.” “We have a good oversight system with regard to our physical management of students,” he said.

“We also have that backed up with video evidence because most of our areas are on video,” Weber said. He said the video is only kept for so long but if there is a significant restraint incident the video will be burned to a CD or copied to a more permanent file.

“We can demonstrate the why of any type of physical restraint and demonstrate that it is always because of safety,” Weber said.

He said it is documented every time a staff member has to touch a kid and what led up to that. “We review every single physical restraint incident,” Weber said. He said there is a debriefing by the management team, review of the video and the security supervisor reviews and critiques the techniques used with the Right Response Training that each staff member undergoes when they are hired.

He said sometimes students are hurting themselves or trying to break a window, or they go after a student or staff member.

“The reality is that some of the students have the capability and desire to hurt other people at times, and a demonstrated history of it,” Weber said.

PLAINTIFFS

Rees Karn was held at the Wyoming Boys’ School from 2017 to 2019, when he was 13 to 15 years old, and again from 2019 to 2021, when he was 15 to 17 years old. During his time at the Boys’ School, the suit claims that staff subjected Rees to extreme and protracted solitary confinement, including for 30 and 45 days in a row. The suit also claims that staff cruelly strapped Rees’ wrists and ankles to a restraint chair and starved him. According to a press release from the law firm, the allege that staff subjected Rees to excessive force, including one instance during which staff broke Rees’ wrist; improper and painful restraints; and psychological abuse.

In 2022, Karn, according to court records and articles in the Northern Wyoming News, was bound over to Washakie County District Court on two counts of manufacturing a deadly weapon, two counts of making/obtaining/ possessing contraband while incarcerated; one count interference with a peace officer; two counts of battery; two counts of property destruction $1,000 or more and two counts aggravated assault and battery with a deadly weapon for incidents at Wyoming Boys’ School.

Karn pleaded guilty to taking contraband into a penal institution or correctional facility and to interference with a peace officer as part of a plea agreement. He was sentenced to 180 days on each count, sentences were suspended and he was placed on one year probation for each county to run consecutively. The sentence was ordered on March 29, 2022.

He was also ordered to pay restitution to the Boys’ School in the amount of $4,630.64 and to the Washakie County Detention Center in the amount of $270.43.

According to District Court documents, six counts stemmed from incidents on June 14, 2021, Aug. 21, 2021 and Sept. 10, 2021. Those charges are two misdemeanor counts of battery for allegedly assaulting two staff members at the Wyoming Boys’ School in June, two felony counts of destruction of property for allegedly breaking windows at the Wyoming Boys’ School in value of $3,312 and destroying the fire suppression sprinkler system with a value of $1,500.45 in August 2021; and two felony counts of aggravated assault and battery for an incident in September where Karn allegedly assaulted two staff members with the metal part of a three-ring binder.

The other five charges Karn is facing stem from a Sept. 22, 2021 incident at the Washakie County Detention Center, according to court documents.

Charges from that incident were two felony counts of possession or manufacturing a deadly weapon; two misdemeanor counts of taking contraband into the detention center and one misdemeanor count of interference. Karn was placed at the Wyoming Boys’ School out of Laramie County for charges that included terroristic threats, according to the affidavit of probable cause for the initial six charges. Karn had stated it was his second time at the Boys’ School. According to the APC, Karn has said he has “homicidal thoughts every day” and that he did not want to be at the Boys’ School as he feels with his “thoughts and aggressive behavior toward staff and younger, weaker boys and his age” jail would better suit him.

OTHER PLAINTIFFS

Blaise Chivers-King was held at Wyoming Boys’ School from 2020 to March 2021, when he was 15 years old, and from May 2021 to May 2022, when he was 16 years old. During his incarceration at the Boys’ School, they claim staff placed Blaise in solitary confinement approximately 20 times, with each period of isolation ranging from days to weeks. They allege that staff also subjected him to improper and painful restraints, excessive force, deprivation of medication, and ruthless psychological abuse.

According to the press release, Blaise became so distraught during his time at the Boys’ School that he regularly contemplated suicide.

Dylan Tolar, who appears by and through his mother, was held at the Wyoming Boys’ School from

June 2020 through February 2021, when he was 17 and 18 years old. At the Wyoming Boys’ School, the suit claims that Dylan experienced discrimination based on his disabilities, including being locked alone in his room for hours on end; emotional and psychological abuse, including being called a “clown” and a “slow zombie”; and denial of necessary medical care. For instance, they allege staff withheld Dylan’s leg brace, causing long-term damage to his leg. At the Boys’ School, the suit alleges that Dylan began experiencing grand mal seizures due to the stress the staff inflicted on him.

The Wyoming Boys’ School is a state-run juvenile correctional facility overseen by Wyoming DFS. Many of the residents at the Boys’ School suffer from trauma, disabilities, and some form of mental illness, according to the release.

“Rather than providing the rehabilitative and restorative treatments that the Wyoming Boys’ School promises, staff at the Boys’ School unlawfully subjected the young people who were sent there to cruel and harsh punishments,” Allison Mahoney, founder and managing attorney at ALM | LAW said in the release.

DEFENDANTS

The defendants include Wyoming DFS, the Wyoming Boys’ School, Wyoming Boys’ School Superintendent Dale Weber, and current and former Wyoming Boys’ School staff, including Elsa Olsa (a dorm director and the Prison Rape Elimination Act Compliance Manager), Tate Adams (a dorm director), Thad Shaffer (a security guard), John Schwalbe (dorm staff), Mike Nelson (a dorm supervisor and dorm director), Mark Nelson (a security guard), Kevin McGenty (dorm staff), Margaret Dahlke (a nurse) and Amanda Turner (a dorm director).

The suit alleges in the release that “The defendants caused plaintiffs to suffer significant harm. As a result, the plaintiffs left the Boys’ School more damaged and traumatized than when they first entered the facility.”

The suit also alleges inadequate training and discipline were “deliberate choice.”

No specific amount has been specified in the suit. They are seeking a jury trial.

“The Wyoming Boys’ School was entrusted to care for these three vulnerable boys, but utterly failed to do so,” said Allison Mahoney, founder and managing attorney at ALM Law. “No child should ever endure the horrors of abuse that Rees, Blaise, and Dylan experienced, especially within a system meant to rehabilitate and support them.”

“No human being should be subjected to solitary confinement. Blaise, Rees, and Dylan are forever changed because of the cruel treatment they endured while in Wyoming’s custody. It is astonishing that the abuses our clients suffered have been shielded from the public’s knowledge for so long.

Wyoming must take a hard look at how children are being treated,” said Ciara Anderson, an attorney at Rathod | Mohamedbhai LLC.

With the suit filed on Monday, defendants have not had the opportunity to respond to the lawsuits allegations.