By Candace Rondeaux
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The Maryland Department of Juvenile Services is investigating the background of the new head of the Victor Cullen Center for juvenile offenders in the wake of a disclosure that he ran a youth boot camp in Montana that closed amid child abuse allegations, state officials said yesterday.

Chris Perkins was hired in May as superintendent of the Frederick County detention center, a once-crumbling facility that recently underwent a $16 million renovation. Perkins, 38, was also recently promoted to director of detention for the state's beleaguered juvenile facilities.

Tammy Brown, a Juvenile Services spokeswoman, said yesterday that the department is looking into Perkins's professional history and that Juvenile Services Secretary Donald W. DeVore only recently learned of a state investigation that found violations at the private Montana youth facility Perkins headed for much of the three years before it closed in February 2006. Although the investigation is ongoing, Brown said the inquiry thus far has "exonerated" Perkins of wrongdoing in the Montana case.

Montana's Public Health and Human Services Department began investigating allegations of abuse at the Swan Valley Youth Academy in November 2005 after the Montana Advocacy Program, a nonprofit civil rights organization, raised concerns about the facility.

The Montana agency found 19 licensing violations at Swan Valley, according to a January 2006 agency report. In one instance, a youth was kept in seclusion for five days, according to the report. The report said Perkins and other staff members did not always report complaints of abuse, as required.

Perkins said in an interview yesterday that he became acquainted with DeVore in 2003 when the two were in Philadelphia working on a project for VisionQuest, a private youth rehabilitation program. Perkins said he was program director at Swan Valley from October 2003 to July 2005, left to take a position with the facility's parent company, then returned to work there from October to December 2005. He said Montana authorities dismissed the case against Swan Valley last year, effectively clearing him and his staff of wrongdoing.

"There's no smoking gun," he said. "There's no skeleton in the closet."

Although records show that the abuse allegations were "substantiated" by the Montana agency, a state hearing officer later dismissed the case against Swan Valley when state health officials failed to show up for a December 2006 hearing, Montana records show.

Perkins said that that outcome "exonerated" him and that he did not feel compelled to tell his new employers in Maryland about the allegations because the ruling meant it was "as if the allegations didn't exist."

Julie Fink, a residential program care manager with Montana's Department of Public Health and Human Services, said her agency accepted a plan of correction suggested by Swan Valley's Colorado-based parent company, Cornerstone Programs, in January 2006, but the facility closed a month later without undertaking the reforms.

Andr¿e Larose, a lawyer with the Montana Advocacy Program who filed the original complaint against Swan Valley, said youths at the facility were sometimes forced to remain in seclusion for days at a time. She was surprised to learn that Perkins had been hired to such a prominent position in Maryland.

"I don't know whose references they checked, but if they had checked in Montana, they would have found out that the facility he ran had quite a few problems," Larose said.

Marlana Valdez, director of Maryland's Office of the Independent Juvenile Justice Monitor, said she finds the abuse allegations "troubling," adding that Perkins's appointment raises serious questions about Juvenile Services' hiring practices.

"The findings of the state of Montana against him are quite serious," Valdez said yesterday. "He had an ethical obligation to disclose his background."

The reopening of the 48-bed Cullen Center in July, along with the hiring of Perkins to the $76,000-a-year job, was supposed to signal the beginning of a new era of reform under DeVore, who was appointed by Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D). O'Malley campaigned on a promise to repair the state's broken juvenile detention system. The once-overburdened facility houses male youths, most of whom have been charged with minor offenses.

Maryland has struggled for years to reform its troubled juvenile detention system, which houses up to 800 youths at facilities across the state. In 2005, the U.S. Justice Department found that conditions at some of the facilities violated residents' constitutional rights. Federal officials cited a pattern of a "deeply disturbing degree of physical abuse" by staff members.

Under a settlement with the Justice Department, the state is required to improve suicide prevention, mental health care and special education services for juveniles in its care. The independent monitors issue regular reports on the state's juvenile justice facilities.

Brown said Juvenile Services officials became aware of the Montana allegations after Baltimore City Paper reported them this month. She said Perkins had received "glowing recommendations" from former employer VisionQuest, which has programs in Pennsylvania and several other states.

Gerry Fox, lodge director for VisionQuest in Pennsylvania, said Perkins worked in a management position with the organization from last December until May and left in "good standing."