Iowa boy who was locked in seclusion testifies: 'I know I was crying a lot. I felt violated.'

Jason Clayworth
The Des Moines Register

An Iowa boy with mental disabilities was left in a device that kept him almost completely immobile for more than 4½ hours.

Other boys — some suicidal and as young as 14 — are routinely forced into isolation for weeks at a time in filthy cells that “smell like piss” and have nothing but a sink, toilet and a raised concrete platform to sleep.

Those are among the pieces of testimony presented last week in an ongoing federal trial challenging the constitutionality of Iowa’s treatment of troubled youth at the State Training School for Boys in Eldora.

“It pretty much looks like a dungeon,” a 17-year-old boy named in court as KNX testified Friday, referencing the 6-foot-long and 9-foot-wide isolation cell he said reeked of urine.

The federal civil trial in Des Moines is scheduled to continue through June 19. Executives of the Eldora school are expected to testify Monday, and other boys who attended the school are scheduled to testify later in the week.

The boy — now in another state facility that was not identified in court Friday — said he often spent as much as 23 hours a day in isolation at the facility in the two years he spent at the Eldora school.

Child advocates contend such treatment is unnecessary, illegal and counterproductive to the reform of juvenile delinquents. A lack of mental health care and educational instruction further exacerbates the boys’ problems, according to testimony by Pamela McPherson, a child psychologist from Louisiana who reviewed dozens of Eldora case files.

But Iowa officials say their actions are justified.

The boys — sentenced to the school through court order following serious criminal and behavioral incidents — are often a danger to themselves, and sometimes the boys assault other students and the school’s staff, state representatives said.

A building at the Boys State Training School at Eldora.

Isolation and use of the “wrap” — a device that almost completely immobilizes the boys— are employed for protection and are within Iowa’s right, officials representing the state said in court or in depositions for the case.

Use of the wrap doubled from 89 times in 2015 to 178 times in 2017, state data presented in court Friday showed. And a point-in-time review in May 2017 showed that at least two-thirds of the school's students had been placed in isolation at least once, an increase from previous years.

The class action lawsuit was filed in 2017 by the congressionally chartered Disability Rights Iowa and a New York nonprofit called Children's Rights Inc. It does not seek monetary damages but, instead, asks the state to reform its future use of seclusion and restraints for the roughly 110 students who are at the school at any given time.

The lawsuit names as defendants Jerry Foxhoven, director of the Iowa Department of Human Services; DHS administrator Richard Shults; and the superintendent of the Eldora facility, Mark Day.

Foxhoven, then-director of the Neal & Bea Smith Legal Clinic at Drake University, led a task force whose recommendations cited excessive use of isolation at the Iowa Juvenile Home in Toledo, which served both boys and girls. Then-Gov. Terry Branstad cited those recommendations when announcing the closure of the Toledo facility in 2013.

Foxhoven distinguished between the Eldora and Toledo facilities in video depositions presented in federal court last week. Children in Toledo were generally not sentenced to the facility due to court directive, he said.

“I think there is a different standard,” Foxhoven said when asked about his justification for use of isolation at the Eldora school.

Officials from Disability Rights Iowa contend the Eldora facility is an anomaly in the juvenile justice system in Iowa. State regulations allow the school and its staff to follow less restrictive professional or licensing requirements as compared to facilities that are independent of a state agency, evidence presented in court last week shows.

Students like CPX — a second boy who testified Friday — suffered as a result of the school’s excessive use of isolation and restraint, Disability Rights officials said.

Among the most traumatic experiences CPX recounted: an incident when social workers cut his clothing from his body.

State officials said the effort was necessary for the boy’s protection, noting he was suicidal and refused to wear a smock intended to help prevent self-harm.

But CPX, who is now 18 and no longer at the school, said he felt anger from routine isolation at the Eldora facility.

He said he continues to have nightmares about his experiences at the school.

“I know I was crying a lot. I felt violated,” he said about the incident when his clothing was removed.

Judge Stephanie Rose of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa will rule whether the state’s actions are within constitutional bounds.