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State child welfare officials have removed all juvenile state wards from a troubled south suburban residential treatment center after Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart angrily complained that girls were frequently running away, then being sexually assaulted or lured into prostitution.

Dart sent his Child Protection Unit to inspect the 15-bed all-female Sadie Waterford Manor in response to the Tribune’s “Harsh Treatment” series, which found the Crestwood shelter and treatment center had nearly 2,000 police service calls in 2013, including 994 runaway reports. Last summer two Sadie Waterford runaways, ages 14 and 15, reported being sexually assaulted outside the facility in separate incidents, the newspaper found.

When Dart’s team arrived at the center on a late December evening, four of the nine girls on Sadie Waterford’s roster were missing and presumed to have run away, according to interviews and records obtained Monday by the Tribune.

In a letter last week to Gov. Pat Quinn and Department of Children and Family Services acting Director Bobbie Gregg, Dart described one 14-year-old runaway who had tried to return to Sadie Waterford on Dec. 27. Authorities suspect the girl was being trafficked by a pimp, records and interviews show.

“Sadie staff actually turned this child away, saying she had been gone too long and was no longer on the roster of girls allowed inside,” Dart wrote.

Dart’s team worked for two days scouring known prostitution hangouts and hotels before finally finding and retrieving that youth, interviews show. Dart’s account was confirmed in government records obtained by the Tribune.

DCFS removed all six wards from Sadie Waterford the day she got Dart’s letter, Gregg said. DCFS also has stopped placing new wards at Sadie Waterford and is evaluating “whether this facility is equipped to provide the appropriate care for our wards” in the future, she said.

For now, the former residents have been sent to other shelters and facilities while DCFS searches for more appropriate placements.

Cook County Public Guardian Robert Harris, who has repeatedly complained to DCFS about the safety of young wards at Sadie Waterford, said he was concerned about where DCFS would send the former residents next.

“We need better planning than just closing agencies and moving kids willy-nilly,” Harris said. “I am not against shutting bad places. But it is frustrating when we don’t have good places to put them and it’s worse for the kids.”
Children attacked, abused at taxpayer-funded living centers
Children attacked, abused at taxpayer-funded living centers

Sadie Waterford CEO Lester Harris could not be reached for comment on Monday but previously told the Tribune that the facility offered close supervision and engaging therapy and activities to the wards placed there. “And yet if they choose to go, they’re going,” he said of the many runaways.

Sadie Waterford is one of about 50 residential centers across the state where about 1,400 juvenile wards are housed on any given day, at a cost to taxpayers of well over $200 million a year. Hundreds more youths cycle through the centers each year. Youngsters who suffered abuse or neglect are placed for months or years at one of the 10- to 150-bed facilities, which promise skilled therapy and constant supervision.

The Tribune found 428 reports of sexual assault or abuse of wards at Illinois facilities from 2011 through 2013, as well as 1,052 physical assaults and 29,425 runaways. Some of those runaways survived on the streets by committing crimes ranging from burglary and carjacking to drug trafficking. Others were sexually assaulted or lured into prostitution. Dozens have never been found.

Still, officials kept sending youths to the most violent facilities and did little to act on reports of harm, the Tribune found.

Gregg, Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner, state lawmakers and other authorities have vowed sweeping reforms to improve safety at the centers and to overhaul Illinois’ tattered mental health programs for impoverished youths. And DCFS has placed intake holds on four other troubled facilities. A bipartisan state House-Senate hearing has been scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Bilandic Building at 160 N. LaSalle St. in downtown Chicago to examine the problems uncovered by the Tribune.

Sadie Waterford is run by a nonprofit that reports government revenues of about $1.9 million per year, records show. With more than 80 percent of that money coming from DCFS, the department’s decision to remove wards could jeopardize the facility’s ability to remain open.

Child welfare officials have expressed warnings about Sadie Waterford for months. In one letter sent to DCFS in August 2014, Harris recounted the case of a second 14-year-old runaway who allegedly had been raped on the streets nearby. She made her way to the police station in Robbins, and officers there called the facility to pick her up. But facility officials refused, Harris wrote, saying they were not responsible for the child because she had been gone for more than 48 hours.

DCFS also would not pick up the girl, Harris wrote. He added that his staff “expressed outrage that no one would claim responsibility for the well-being of a 14-year-old girl who had been raped, leaving her to be re-traumatized by spending the entire night at a police station.”

In a follow-up letter to DCFS on Dec. 9, one of Harris’ chief deputies recounted that some Sadie Waterford runaways had sought refuge in several nearby homes, including at least one residence where sex trafficking was suspected, but a Sadie Waterford supervisor denied there was any such problem.

“It appears that little is being done to address the safety of our clients,” Yvonne Zehr, a chief deputy at the public guardian’s office, warned in that letter.

In his letter to DCFS, Dart noted that more than 80 arrests had been made within a half mile of Sadie Waterford during the previous six months, resulting in 18 felony charges, and the immediate vicinity was home to about 20 registered sex offenders. “The very location of Sadie is concerning. The second a child steps outside those doors, they are in danger,” Dart wrote.

And the problems weren’t just on the outside, Dart’s letter added. “Sadie’s ‘recreation room’ consisted of beaten and stained furniture that could have been picked out of an alley along with stacks of tattered, garage sale books and magazines more than a year old,” he wrote. “The sleeping rooms appeared more like dreary cells. … Shut down this travesty.”

Source: Chicago Tribune