[privatization results in corruption even for Judges]
Laurene Transue talking:
in the beginning, it was all about my daughter. So I don’t know that any of this other stuff is going on. What happened is, when they finally let me go from the room I was in immediately following the hearing, they allowed me—actually, they called my husband using my phone. And it was cold, very cold that day for April, and they sat me outside the courthouse in a metal chair and told me I was not allowed to come back in. So, as I sat there, I’m like, “But I don’t—I don’t know anything. Like, where is she? Where’s my information?” And they handed me a business card from the probation department with a man’s first name on the back of it and told me that that’s who I should contact. But I had no idea who that was.
So my husband came and picked me up. But you’re really in a state of shock when this happens, because it’s so ridiculous, so—just you can’t fathom it. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. So that first afternoon, my father, my stepmother came, my mother was calling me. They kept saying to me, “She had to have done something more. There has to be more to this.”
I said, “There really is nothing else.” And so I just cried and cried and cried and cried. And finally, my father said to me, “This is not the”—they call me Laurie in my family. He says, “This is not the Laurie I know. She wouldn’t just sit here and give up.” And I’m like, “But, Dad, this is a judge. Like, what am I going to do?” He goes, “Well, you’re going to fight.”
So I called the name on the back of the card, and it turned out it was a public defender in our county. And he laughed at me when I said, “You have to file an appeal. This is insane.” He goes, “Ciavarella doesn’t allow appeals.” So, I’m like, “Are you telling me that we can’t appeal or just that it’s pointless or it’s not allowed? Like, what are you saying?” He goes, “Well, it’s pointless, but Ciavarella wouldn’t even like schedule it for you.” I’m like, “OK.” So I called the public defender’s office in Harrisburg. Pennsylvania is a commonwealth, so things run a little bit differently in a commonwealth. I called the public defender’s office,
In the capital, Harrisburg. And they told me, “Well, no, of course juveniles can have appeals, but we’re not getting involved in a county matter. OK, so I called the governor’s action line. And they were like, “Oh, we’ll—you know, we’ll make note of this.” I said, “Well, who else can I call?” “Try the ACLU.”
So I called the ACLU. I explained the situation. They said, “Absolutely, you have a case here. She had a right to put whatever she wants on MySpace, especially a parody. And she put a disclaimer that that’s what it is. And we’d be happy to take that case, but we’re not going to get involved in this county placement thing and custody.” And I’m like, “But now what do I do?” “Well, we have some other numbers,” one of which was a woman at Rutgers in New Jersey. So I was like, “OK, I’m a Jersey girl. Maybe I’ll get lucky there.” So I called there, and the woman was so sympathetic, and she said, “Listen, I know somebody. A friend of mine works at Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, and since you’re in Pennsylvania, maybe they can help you.”
So I called Juvenile Law Center, and I kind of gave them the information. And the person I spoke to, his name was Laval, and he was very, very soft-spoken, not excitable at all. So I didn’t know how to read him. And he said that he would check with Marsha Levick, who was the head of the Juvenile Law Center, and find out if they could take Hillary’s case. So I said, “OK.” And he would call me back. Well, the next day, he hadn’t called back, and so my father said, “You give me that number,” and he called them.
The next thing I know, they were calling me, saying, yes, they were willing to take the case, but not for me. They would not be my attorney. They represent children, and they would represent Hillary as long as I was agreeable and Hillary was agreeable. Would I—would it be OK if they met with her? I’m like, “Yeah, absolutely.” And I said, “Listen, just let me know how much I have to pay, because, like, I do have a house. I don’t have much equity, but I can get some loans and get some money together.” And they’re like, “No, I don’t think you understand. We’re here for children. We want to help your daughter. Don’t worry about any of that.” I said, “OK.” So they went and saw Hillary. And for the first time, we had hope. I still couldn’t see her for three weeks. I was allowed a one-minute phone call.
that first phone call was the two of us sobbing, hysterical, both apologizing to the other. It was a conversation of “I’m sorry,” “No, I’m sorry, Mom,” “No, Hillary, it’s my fault. I’m so sorry.” That was our one minute, and then it was over. And then the next week, I think we got five minutes, and the next week was eight minutes.
But somebody is there listening, and if she started to talk about anything to do with a lawyer and getting out of there, they cut her off.
2011. Judge Ciavarella is charged, tried and convicted.
Sandy Fonzo talking:
I planned on being, and then when trial came up, I couldn’t get myself to go and sit there and look at him and hear the lies. And I kept myself away until the day of the guilty—you know, when he was found guilty, I wanted to be there. I was actually working, and I kept getting messages from everybody that he’s found guilty of this, he’s found guilty of that, you know, and I’m having a panic attack. And they’re going to take him. They’re going to shackle him, and they’re going to take him, and he’s going away today. So, every—I was a mess by now, an emotional train wreck. And everybody at work was like, “Go.” I just wanted to be there. I wanted to see him come out of there in shackles, and I wanted to see him go away.
And I don’t know how, I got myself there. Somehow I drove myself there. Nobody knew I was there. And I—everybody thought I was at work. I don’t remember the ride at all. I just ended up there. And I heard—while I’m standing out there, I learned that he is not—he’s going to be released to his daughter’s custody and that he won’t be going to jail. So, you know, I just lost all hope again. You know, it’s always—it always seems like you’re just let down all the time. And they were going to do a press release, and he was coming out with his lawyer, Al Flora To do a press conference On the steps of the courthouse. So when he was coming, I just went with all the media and everybody that was there. And I was just there, and I had no idea. But when, you know, they started, “Yeah, this was not ‘kids for cash,'” I just lost it. I don’t remember what I said. I don’t remember what came out of my mouth. All I know is that all I remember is being, you know, taken across the street after that, and that’s all I remember.
Robert Schwartz talking:
There was a whole legal community passing through that courtroom who did nothing over a five-year period. The public defender did nothing. In fact, later investigations showed that they just didn’t want to take on more cases, and they certainly didn’t want to take on Judge Ciavarella. The private bar was in the room. They did nothing. The prosecutors were there for every case. They saw kids being shackled and dragged out of courtrooms.
they have an ethical obligation to see that justice is done. That’s in the Code of Professional Responsibility. And they failed that code, as well. Probation officers saw that kids were being dragged out of the courtroom for really minor stuff. While the rest of the country was moving towards a treat-kids-in-the-community, de-incarcerate this juvenile justice system, in Judge Ciavarella’s court it was exactly the opposite. It was: Send kids away. And one after the other was sent away.
We knew that he had violated the rights of hundreds and hundreds of kids at the time we did our initial investigation. In the spring of 2008, we filed an application with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, asking them to reverse all of these adjudications of delinquency, these findings of guilt, and erase the kids’ records. We asked them to exercise what we call the court’s King’s Bench jurisdiction. It would enable them to act even though the time for appeal had lapsed.
After we filed that petition, the FBI called our chief counsel, Marsha Levick, and asked what did we know. Unbeknownst to us, they had started an investigation of their own of Judge Conahan, the former president judge of Luzerne County, because of his connections with organized crime. So, there were a couple of threads happening at the same time that intersected and finally came to the public—public light in January of 2009, when the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania issued the bills of information with some preliminary guilty pleas for Judge Ciavarella and Judge Conahan.
Judge Ciavarella was charged with theft of unlawful services—theft of lawful services—you know, the theft makes it unlawful—wire fraud, tax evasion. And the original bill of information that he and Conahan signed also spoke about a quid pro quo, that he was taking money to have kids locked up. But what we did know for sure was that he had taken money, or was charged with taking money and agreed in the original plea agreements, from the contractor who built a new detention center in Luzerne County and from one of the owners of the for-profit facility that was subsequently built.
Robert May talking:
we initially said, look, we’re not going to do this movie unless we can get access to both the villain and the victim, because it would just become another story with a sort of one-dimensional story. And the kids’ story seemed so obvious, and that there had to be more to the story. And we wanted to understand more what that would be.
I didn’t know the judges at all and never met them before. And once I figured out how to meet with Judge Ciavarella, the pitch was actually quite simple. I said to him, I said, “I think there’s sort of a one-dimensional story that is being portrayed, primarily by the media, that you are the kids-for-cash judge. You took money to send kids away. You traded kids for cash. That’s it. That’s what I see. That’s what I read. That’s all I see. I assume there’s another side to this story.”
we wanted to follow the active story here, literally, and follow him and the other judge through the prosecution, what was all going to happen. And our interview process is long. It takes a long time, and they’re very conversational. And we covered all sorts of things, from, you know, the time of the judges’ earliest memories all the way through the prosecution. And so, I think we developed a level of trust where he just started talking to us about all of it, and in great detail.
Michael Conahan, when he was—when he was judge, you know, he really was—had an immense power. He was the so-called president judge. He really did. And he was also a judge that never gave a comment to the media. He just never spoke to the media. So it was very unusual for us to get him, really. But he, too, felt that the story was portrayed as one-sided, and he wanted to take the opportunity to, you know, share his side of the story.
Robert Schwartz talking:
Zero-tolerance policy came into favor in the 1990s. Even 20 years ago, Congress passed the Gun-Free Schools Act to keep guns out of school, but school districts went much farther. They were expelling kids for very, very little. After Columbine in 1999, it got even worse, not in terms of legitimately dealing with the gun issue, but illegitimately dealing with trivial offenses in school, so administrators could get rid of kids that they didn’t want in the classroom.
There’s been a gradual backlash over the last five to 10 years, and this story is part of that backlash. Parents’ advocates, children’s lawyers, the Dignity in Schools Campaign and many of our colleagues have worked to undo really quite silly zero-tolerance policies. And in early January, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and the Department of Education in Washington, the federal agencies, issued guidance to the 15,000 or so school districts in the United States, saying, “You really have to be careful, because zero-tolerance policies are being applied incorrectly, without fairness, with implications for racial and ethnic disparities in our systems, in ways that are really hurting kids.” And for the first time, we have the federal government saying, “Slow down. What seemed reasonable 20 years ago, in practice, has turned out to be remarkably unreasonable and unfair to children and to families and to community.”
Robert May talking:
I was most surprised by the fortitude of the families and the kids, and how smart they really are, the families and the kids. And, you know, these are families, I think, that Judge Ciavarella judged as—you know, as not worthy or something. It’s hard to say. I mean, you know, the stigma of this kid did something wrong, and so therefore this kid is flawed. And spending time with the kids and families has been amazing for me, because these are really smart people. They’ve been—these kids have been deprived an education—not all, but most. Hillary is the exception. She has a great education. She narrowly escaped not having that, however. And so, I think that in society we think that if a kid gets into trouble, especially if they’re labeled a juvenile delinquent, we think, “They’re just a bad kid. I don’t want my kids to be associated with them.” I mean, I have two teenagers. So, I used to think that way. I used to think, “Well, that kid’s a troublemaker, gets into trouble. I don’t want my kids near that kid,” because I judged that kid as just a bad kid—and the parents, too. They’re all bad.
The other thing that I learned is it wasn’t just the kids that went through the trauma. It’s the parents, as well. It’s the families. The families have gone through tremendous trauma. So—and often, you know, the kid gets punished for things, in some cases, that the parents are doing, as well. So, it’s a combination of things. But I think all of the families that we followed in this film, even including the ones that didn’t make it into the film, as we followed other stories, as well, will be certainly forever in my heart. I care about them all.
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Judge Mark Ciavarella is currently serving a 28-year sentence, and President Judge Michael Conahan is serving 17 years, for taking $2.6 million from two private prisons. Ciavarella is serving his sentence in Illinois, Conahan in Florida. Both judges spoke to filmmaker Robert May before they went to jail. In October, the private juvenile detention companies at the heart of the kids-for-cash scandal in Pennsylvania settled a civil lawsuit for $2.5 million.
— source democracynow.org
Laurene Transue, her daughter Hillary was convicted and sentenced to juvenile detention at the age of 14. She called the Juvenile Law Center seeking help after seeing her daughter shackled and led out of the courtroom. Her action sparked an investigation that led to the kids-for-cash scandal.
Sandy Fonzo, her son, Ed Kenzakoski, was sentenced to 30 days in a juvenile boot camp by Judge Mark Ciavarella for a minor charge of having drug paraphernalia. Kenzakoski was 17 years old at the time and a star wrestler at his high school. Fonzo says her son’s sentence started him on a path to the adult court system that culminated in his suicide. She dramatically confronted Judge Ciavarella outside the courtroom when he was on trial for taking kickbacks
Robert Schwartz, executive director of the Juvenile Law Center.
Robert May, director and producer of the new documentary, Kids for Cash. His past films include The War Tapes and the Oscar-winning Fog of War