BENNINGTON — A 15-year-old girl accused of bludgeoning her father with a handgun is being held without bail at the state’s only women’s prison because Vermont currently doesn’t have a juvenile detention center.
The Bennington teenager, who is being prosecuted as an adult, faces two felony charges: aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault with a weapon. She pleaded not guilty in Bennington Superior criminal court last Thursday.
VTDigger generally does not name criminal defendants under age 18. The girl is named in court documents and has appeared in open hearings.
The teen has been detained since late last week at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington while waiting for a weight-of-the-evidence hearing that would determine her custody status in the case.
The court is allowing her to see and hear adults who are also held at the prison, while remaining in her own cell, until — as state officials hope — she can be transferred to a juvenile facility in New Hampshire next week.
At a hearing last Friday, Deputy Commissioner Aryka Radke of the Department for Children and Families said the state currently has no options for juvenile detention centers.
“We do not have that level of secure placement available at this time,” Radke said. “Therefore, we do feel it's most appropriate that she's placed where she is.”
Defense attorney Fred Bragdon objected to her being kept at the adult prison, where she is in a cell by herself, watched all day by a guard and getting no human interaction.
“She wants to be with other people,” Bragdon told the court. “So what, we kill her emotionally to protect her from herself? What foolishness. What lack of insight.”
Police allege that the girl severely injured her father when she repeatedly struck him on the head with a pistol while in his driveway on May 20.
A couple of witnesses told state police that the teen drove to her father’s home in Glastenbury with her mother and two other minors that evening. After the parents got into an altercation, the mother and her three companions began hitting and kicking the father, according to a sworn statement by Detective Trooper Kipp Colburn.
In his affidavit, Colburn said the 15-year-old girl “bludgeoned” her father, who was found covered in blood, with multiple deep lacerations on his head “shaped at right angles.”
As the father was being assaulted, a male passerby entered the melee to stop the fight, the police report stated. While the passerby was trying to grab the handgun from the 15-year-old, “the firearm discharged beside his head,” according to the affidavit.
It also said a teenage boy who lived with the father told Bennington police that, during the altercation, the girl pointed the pistol at him.
Her charge of aggravated assault with a weapon is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon carries a maximum prison sentence of five years.
The teenage girl’s mother, a Bennington resident, has pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of domestic assault. The offense is punishable by up to 18 months in jail.
Court records show that the girl’s parents have been undergoing divorce proceedings since April.
Her mother is free from jail, provided she complies with conditions set by the court.
The daughter remains in custody because she is considered a threat to herself and to others, according to a court order.
In the written order last Friday, Superior Judge Cortland Corsones listed the reasons the 15-year-old needed to be kept in a “locked facility.” Among them: She ran away from a hospital where the court ordered her to undergo an evaluation on May 20 and remained on the run until her arrest last Thursday.
The judge also said she’d fought with the hospital security personnel, has acted out in self-harm and has acknowledged using “hard drugs.” A person whose name has been redacted from the document expressed concern that, while the teen was on the run for nearly a week, she’d visited drug houses in Springfield, Massachusetts, and was involved in gang-related activity. The person was worried the girl could be exploited if she remained free in the community.
But where to place her has been a big question.
Vermont no longer has a juvenile detention center. The state shuttered its 30-bed Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center in Essex in October 2020. The reasons cited for closure included the dwindling number of young people receiving services there.
The state has proposed setting up a facility in Newbury that would replace Woodside, but that proposal has run into local opposition. The Newbury Development Review Board rejected a permit request last fall.
Meanwhile, the state government has contracted with the Sununu Youth Services Center, located in Manchester, New Hampshire, to serve as Vermont’s juvenile detention center.
However, the Sununu center doesn’t have space for the 15-year-old girl right now. The earliest the facility could have an opening is June 10, Judge Corsones was told at the Friday hearing, when the teen appeared remotely from Chittenden Correctional.
Radke, of the Department for Children and Families, said her agency has also checked out facilities in neighboring Massachusetts and New York.
Bragdon, the public defender, asked the judge to place the teen in the care of the Department for Children and Families rather than adult prison.
“You should put her in their custody,” he said, “and you should tell them they should do their darn job and keep her safe both from other people and from herself until we can assess how best to help my client.”
The judge ruled that, because there’s no viable alternative, the girl should remain at the women’s correctional facility until an appropriate juvenile detention center becomes available or she is “stabilized” enough to be moved to a facility with lower-level security measures.
Corsones also ordered that the girl be allowed “sight and sound contact with other adult inmates,” but remain in her own cell.
The court has scheduled a hearing for June 9 to get an update on space availability at the Sununu center and to assess the weight of the evidence in her case.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Girl, 15, accused of assault, is detained at adult prison because state has no juvenile detention center.