CNN: Pattern of sex abuse at youth prisons David Edwards and Chris Tackett

Published: Friday April 4, 2008



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Print This Email This CNN recently looked into new allegations of abuse at a detention facility for female youths in Mississippi where the Department of Justice once found girls had been hog-tied and forced to eat vomit. Girls as young as thirteen say there were kept shackled for weeks at a time at the Columbia Training Facility, CNN reports. Erica, whose last name was withheld for privacy, is one of ten girls that are together suing the state for the alleged physical and mental abuse. Speaking of the abuse, she said, "I went to school in shackles, used the bathroom in shackles, ate in shackles and had to participate in recreation in shackles." "You don't treat people like that. You don't treat children like that," said Erica's mother Alicia. "They deserve an apology." CNN notes that Mississippi is among 11 states the Justice Department has sued for civil rights violations at youth lock-ups, which include the previous abuse at the Columbia Training School that included girls being tied-up, forced to eat vomit and held for days in a window-less isolation room. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has ordered the facility to be closed and all current inmates to be transferred to another site; however, as CNN reports, the DOJ is suing that facility as well, saying it has its own set of serious problems.





