It started with a Crunch bar and escalated with a pillow. Alyson Baber thought it would end at home. But it didn’t.Ms. Baber, then 15, remembers hitting her mother in the backside three times with a pillow during an argument over the candy bar. Her mother called the police, and before Ms. Baber knew it, she was in front of then-Luzerne County Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr.
“He asked me how I would plead, and I thought, ‘I did hit her with a pillow, so I guess I did do it,’ ” Ms. Baber said. “Everyone thought it was just another one of my mom’s stupid little stunts for attention. No one thought I would ever go away.”
In January 2003, Ms. Baber was sentenced to 56 days in a detention facility.
She is one of thousands of juveniles sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since 2002. Those found guilty were often sent to private detention centers or to wilderness camps like Camp Adams in Jim Thorpe.
Earlier this month, Judge Ciavarella and former Senior Judge Michael T. Conahan pleaded guilty to accepting $2.6 million in exchange for facilitating the development and county use of two privately owned juvenile detention centers — the Pennsylvania Child Care Center in Pittston Twp. and Western Pennsylvania Child Care in Butler County.
Because juvenile records are sealed, The Sunday Voice relied on 11 young adults and five parents who agreed to discuss their experiences with the Luzerne County juvenile court system. Most admit the juveniles deserved punishment but feel their cases were handled unfairly.
Some feel like pawns, believing their sentences were simply moneymakers.
Some are suing the judges and their business partners.
Some cried when remembering their time away from home.
All expressed dismay with what they called a broken judicial system.
They want it fixed.
Alyson Baber, 21
Most of Ms. Baber’s sentence was spent at Camp Adams, a world away from her home in quiet Forty Fort. Many girls were there for stealing cars, dealing and using drugs, even armed assault.
“Then there was me, the pillow batterer,” Ms. Baber said. “That was a lifestyle I should never have been exposed to.”
The classes — they did word search puzzles in history, she said — left Ms. Baber far behind when she returned to high school.
It was difficult to maintain good hygiene.
“The shampoo made our hair come out in clumps,” she said. “I had my hair put in box braids so I wouldn’t have to wash it as much.
“My caseworker told me to take the braids out of my hair because Judge Ciavarella wouldn’t talk to kids with braids in their hair because he thought they had a bad attitude.”
After serving her time, Ms. Baber switched schools and moved in with her father in the Lake-Lehman area. The rumors followed her. She transferred again before her senior year, this time to Bishop O’Reilly High School.
“I think people who I went to high school with today still believe I stabbed my mom,” Ms. Baber said.
Ms. Baber is now a senior studying biology at Delaware Valley College. She wants to become a veterinarian. The few friends she’s told about her stint in Camp Adams hardly believe it.
“If you really think about it, I don’t think that’s a crime,” Ms. Baber said. “People get hit by pillows every day. I would never mean to hurt my mother.”
Bree McCabe, 20
Michelle McCabe is living a mother’s nightmare: her daughter is homeless and far from her friends and family. McCabe blames the years Bree spent in juvenile detention centers like Pennsylvania Child Care.
“She has no idea of how to function without someone telling her what to do from the moment she wakes up,” Ms. McCabe, who was interviewed on Bree’s behalf, said. “That’s going to make anyone a little crazy, when you’re torn away from your family and locked up. I firmly believe that had Bree been with me, she wouldn’t be where she is today.”
Bree was 13 when she was in a shoving match at Crestwood High School. It was her first offense. She violated her probation by smoking marijuana and would later spend five years in and out of various facilities across the country. Judge Ciavarella sentenced her every time, Ms. McCabe said.
Her mother believes Bree missed out on normal high school experiences. Instead of learning how to do simple tasks such as writing checks, she learned how to hustle cigarettes.
“She missed all these things, and it’s really taken its toll,” Ms. McCabe said. “She has zero self-esteem. She does wrong because she doesn’t know any different.”
Bree lives in southern New Jersey and has no job prospects. Ms. McCabe wonders if her daughter will ever lead a normal life.
“It doesn’t matter where you come from,” Ms. McCabe said. “You trust the system, and the system screws you.”
Jesse Miers, 19
Jesse Miers was 17 when a friend’s younger brother showed him a stolen gun.
Mr. Miers, of Exeter, considered himself a mentor to the 13-year-old boy, who wanted to threaten bullies with the gun.
“He wanted to take the gun and kill someone,” Mr. Miers said. “What if it happened? That would have been on my conscience because I could have stopped it. So I did.”
He took the gun away from the boy and gave the gun to his boss, who told Mr. Miers he would take care of it.
Months later, Mr. Miers was arrested for possession of a stolen firearm. He was ordered to appear before Judge Ciavarella and spent a week in the Pittston Twp. detention center, awaiting a hearing.
“Immediately, I wanted a lawyer,” he said. “I was charged with a felony. I wanted a lawyer to represent me. The hearing came; one never showed up.”
Mr. Miers wrote a note to Judge Ciavarella.
“He didn’t even read it,” Mr. Miers recalled. “He just put it next to him ... didn’t even bother with it.”
Mr. Miers was shackled and bused to Western Pennsylvania Child Care, where he was to serve three months.
“That place was horrible, fights everywhere,” he said. “I didn’t belong there.”
Mr. Miers was eventually released and put on probation.
“I feel I got in trouble for trying to do the right thing,” Mr. Miers said. “But I feel bad for half these kids. You went there thinking you were going to get a fair trial, that you were going to be heard. Then you got 45 seconds in front of the judge. You got brushed off.”
Paige Cicardo, 18
Paige Cicardo threw a sandal at her mom during an argument.
Judge Ciavarella threw six months back.
Starting in summer 2006, Ms. Cicardo spent her sentence at Western Pennsylvania Child Care and Pennsylvania Child Care. Her mom may have pressed charges to teach her a lesson, Ms. Cicardo said, but not to see her daughter sent away.
“I think it was wrong, because the case wasn’t that bad,” Ms. Cicardo said. “I could see, like, if he wanted to punish me, he could have given me probation or something.”
Going away was difficult, and Ms. Cicardo said she would have done anything to get back home with her family. She didn’t understand why she was locked up with girls who had used drugs, stolen or worked as prostitutes.
Everything was different when she was released. She felt unstable.
Then she moved with her mother to Mount Pocono. She enrolled in school, met her boyfriend and had a baby. Donnivan is 7 months old.
Ms. Cicardo is in her last semester of high school and working a part-time job.
She still thinks her sentence was unjust, but she’s proud of how her life has unfolded.
“I wouldn’t want to change anything, because I believe everything happens for a reason,” she said.
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More stories: http://www.thetimes-tribune.com/articles/2009/02/22/news/sc_times_trib.20090222.a.pg1.tt22cdjuveniles_s2.2323110_top3.txt
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