A state worker was sexually assaulted by a teen she was assigned to supervise in a hotel room, according to the head of the state employees’ union.
The social worker, who is pregnant, was one of two women — both with the state Department for Children and Families — overseeing the teen during a shift at the Hampton Inn in St. Albans on Jan. 18 when the assault occurred, according to Vermont State Employees Association executive director Steve Howard. The youth was in state custody, and he had no other place to go.
“I want to make it clear it was a sexual assault,” Howard said. “I don’t know if it fits the legal definition of sexual assault but it was not a typical assault where someone punches you. There was more to it.”
He said due to privacy reasons he would not go into further detail.
DCF Commissioner Sean Brown testified about the incident last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee but didn’t go into detail or describe the nature of the assault.
He also told the panel that the teen had to be kept in a hotel room because a transport couldn’t be arranged at the time to take the teen to another placement.
The teen was in state custody but was not a “justice-involved youth,” Brown said. As a result of the assault, the state would no longer put youth in motel rooms as they await placements.
Brown could not be reached for comment on Monday.
Howard said the union contacted Brown after learning about the assault.
“Immediately we reached out to Sean Brown and said that we thought these kinds of supervised situations were inappropriate and that our members should not be called out to do these things in hotel rooms,” Howard said. “He really had no choice, but he was good enough to end that practice.”
A St. Albans Police officer assigned to the case was not working Monday and could not be reached for comment. A message left for Chief Maurice Lamothe was not immediately returned Monday afternoon.
Franklin County State’s Attorney Jim Hughes also did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Howard said Monday the assault last month was not the first dangerous situation state social workers had been exposed to when proper placements for youth could not be found in a timely manner.
“We have had some social workers who reported literally having no place to go and having kids sit in the back seats of their car overnight,” he said.
Union points to Woodside closing
Howard blamed the situation on the state’s decision to close the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center in Essex, the state’s only juvenile detention facility.
The state closed the 30-bed facility last year, citing the declining number of youth at the center, which for months had been in the low single-digits and at times zero.
The Department for Children and Families has since been working with New Hampshire-based Becket Family Services to open a secure, six-bed residential facility for youth in Newbury. Brown, in his testimony last week, said the facility might not open until the end of the year.
Even though the youth involved in the assault last month had not been deemed delinquent by a court and wouldn’t have been eligible for placement in Woodside, Howard said the closing of that facility has had ripple effects throughout the community based system.
“What we’re asking is, and what we still haven’t gotten an answer to is, was there any kid in the whole state of Vermont who would have qualified to be at Woodside that is occupying a bed this kid could have been in?” Howard said.
He added, “When you have a system that is overloaded because you shut down Woodside you have kids backed up in hotel rooms, if you’re lucky to find hotel rooms.”
In the meantime, he said, the state has relied on community-based placements for youth. When secure placements have been needed the state has had access to a center in New Hampshire.
Howard and the VSEA strongly opposed the closing of Woodside, which employed 50 state workers.
On Monday, Howard reiterated his position that “privatizing” the services that had been performed at Woodside was shortsighted.
“Who is paying the price for that?” he asked. “This poor woman is paying the price for that. The kids are paying the price for that.”
Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Monday he has set aside Friday morning to take testimony on how to prevent such a situation from occurring again.
That section of the meeting is referred to on the committee’s agenda as a “roundtable discussion,” and is titled, “Aggressive Behavior of Juveniles/Danger to staff.”
In addition to Brown, others expected to take part in that discussion include Sarah Squirrell, commissioner of the Department of Mental Health, Marshall Pahl of the Defender General’s Office, as well as officials with Becket.
Sears said the state needed to address difficulties transporting youth in state custody to placements in a timely manner.
“There’s not much transporting going on these days due to Covid,” Sears said. “That’s why I wanted to meet on Friday to talk about how we’re dealing with these kids. That situation should never have occurred, obviously.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Teen in state custody sexually assaulted social worker in hotel, union leader says.