ustxtxb_obs_1969_01_10_50_00015-00000_000.pdf

:arlimrpor4wasaF;:apramirW -4,or.allialikda.i His left eye was black. He was in a coma, and there was an armed guard outside his room.” .The story they were given, Evans said, was that the boy had been attacked by two Negro boys with sexual motivation, but when Evans started asking what had happened to the two assailants, “I couldn’t get a straight answer out of anybodyof any kind.” As he pressed for answers, he said, the two assailants became only one, and then it was admitted a guard had hit Kellar, who was then 15. Kellar was in a coma a week; then he was taken to John Sealy Hospital. He was hospitalized a total of 56 days. Kidney damage required extensive medical care, according to Evans. However, he added, the TYC will not let the boy’s mother or her lawyer see the medical or any other records on the case. At first, the Evanses said, the hospitalized boy was terrified, and would not tell them what happened, but then he said that in a class, a Negro boy had flipped a pencil that hit his ear, and they rose to fight, but neither struck a blow. Then, the boy told his stepfather, a guard beat him severely on his head, chest and stomach and he was forced to run several hours around a track, carrying shovels of sand, until he collapsed and fell unconscious. The mother’s petition asks $75,000 damages of the TYC and specified personal defendants, including a guard whose name is given. Evans said he saw this guard stlil on duty at Gatesville recently, “settin’ there with his cowboy boots on.” Mrs. Evans said, after the hearing, that when she saw her son in the hospital, he was “nothing but knuckle marks,” his genitals were severely bruised, and there were bruises down at the base of his back. While he was still in a coma at John Sealy, she would lie down beside him and pat him to comfort him, and, she said, he would speak out, “I can’t see for the sand in my eyes,” and he would say, “Mama, let’s get out, we’re gonna drown,” and, “Ain’t I worked enough for just a drink of water?” Turman told the house investigators the lawsuit was filed to get the boy out of reform school. The stepfather said it was filed because they couldn’t get any information out of the school authorities and the boy might be permanently injured. Turman said doctors who examined the Kellar boy “found not a scratch on himnot a one.” This suit led to the initiation of an investigation by two television journalists with KIII-TV in Corpus Christi, Robin Lloyd, the news director, and Tad Dunbar, the news producer. They have aired ten-minute reports, which they have coalesced into an hour-long report they discussed with the house investigators last week, in advance of its showing in Corpus Christi this week. ON THE FIRST day of the hearings, Mrs. Shirley Tyler, a junior high school teacher in Houston, said she regu larly visited inmates at Gatesville for six years and obtained knowledge of 200 cases of brutal punishments. She said severe beatings were “daily routine” at Mountain View, Gatesville’s maximum security unit. “They are beaten for smiling; they are beaten for not smiling,” she said. “They are beaten for not standing up straight enough; they are beaten for standing up too straight.” She reported cases in which, she said, youngsters were beaten with whips, mop and broom handles and two-by-four boards. Guards put boys in pairs into an open sewage basin and require them to smear human excrement on each other’s faces, she said. According to Mrs. Tyler, youths incarcerated there have their heads knocked against walls repeatedly; one was beaten for refusing to wear shoes too small for him; karate and judo strokes are used on boys’ necks by one guard. But, she said, few of the boys would testify: those who are still there fear reprisals and those on parole fear being sent back. Turman called Mrs. Tyler’s document about her charges “a collection of rubbish,” in essence the boys’ lies, passed along without evaluation or investigation. “Everything humanly possible is done to root out any vestiges of human brutality, and I categorically deny the alle.. gations parroted to this committee today,” said Turman, the chief officer of the Youth Council \(not to be confused with the former speaker of the Texas need for us to kick them around,” he said. “They’ve been kicked around by experts before they ever come to us.” Turman said the FBI, the Dept. of Public Safety, and other agencies investigated reports of brutality at Gatesville and none had found any irregularities. However, he conceded that more than 43 guards have been fired in the last five years for “losing their temper and hitting the boys.” “We have a lot of allegations. .. . Actual brutality we have little of,” he contended. The charges, he said, came from a few people who were on a campaign to discredit the agency. Mrs. Tyler and Lloyd had both been refused TYC approval to take paroled boys from the system into their homes, he said. Rep. Vernon Stewart of Wichita Falls, chairman of the house committee on juvenile delinquency which was conducting the hearings, told Turman things might MEETINGS THE THURSDAY CLUB of Dallas meets each the Downtown YMCA. 605 No. Ervay St., Dallas. Good discussion. You’re welcome. Informal, no dues. CENTRAL TEXAS ACLU luncheon meeting. We’re moving again. Spanish Village. 2nd Friday every month. From noon. All welcome. AUSTIN WOMEN FOR PEACE /WOMEN STRIKE FOR PEACE meet twice monthly. Call 477-1282 for more information. ITEMS for this feature cost, for the first entry, 7c a word, and for each subsequent entry, 5c a word. We must receive them one week. before the date of the issue in which they are to be published. go on he, Turman, didn’t know about. Youngsters who might have been mistreated might be too scared to admit it, fearing retaliation, Stewart pointed out. Stewart said he talked with an exparolee from his legislative district who had been confined in Mountain View. “He told me,” Stewart said, “they were marched into the gym and forced against a wall with their hands in their pockets and repeatedly hit in the face with a tennis shoe. Then the guard would throw away the tennis shoe and start hitting them in the stomach, and if one was unfortunate enough to fall on the floor, he was kicked and stomped.” The second day, Lloyd and Dunbar gave the committee a partial script for their documentary: They had told Turman they wanted to do a documentary on Gatesville, but not that it would look into brutality allegations. Turman gave them permission. At Gatesville, with Sen. Ronald Bridges, Corpus Christi, along with them last September, they were told by officials of TYC, \(not including Turhad been instances of brutality, but it was the exception, not the rule. Clinton Kersey, the director of paroles, wrote them subsequently telling them that during the five years from September, 1963, to September, 1967, 18 guards at Mountain View and 69 at Gatesville had been fired or asked to resign for violating rules regarding the use of force on the boys. \(Turman had conceded that at least about half of these guards had Lloyd referred to “a record of firing guards at a little better than one a month” as evidence that beatings were the rule rather than the exception. Lloyd thought that of 23 cases he and Dunbar, knew of, perhaps a dozen of the boys involved would testify. Dunbar spoke of guards deliberately working over boys with the hands and fists, of pulling a boy’s jacket clown behind his shoulders and pummeling him, and of guards carrying flexible metal pipes wrapped in cloth in their booth, contrary to regulations. In one case the TV newsmen related, a guard beat up a boy and was fired but came back every night for a week and beat up the boy again and again until the guard who was letting the fired guard in was himself ‘fired. According to Dunbar, when one boy was asked what he learned at Gatesville, January 10, 1969 15 CLASSIFIED ANNE’S TYPING SERVICE: Duplicating \(multiPublic Notary. Specialize in rush jobs, including Sundays. Formerly known as Marjorie Delafield Typing and Duplicating Service. Call HI 2-7008, Austin. BOOKPLATES. Free catalog. Many beautiful designs. Special designing too. Address: BOOK-PLATES, Yellow Springs 8, Ohio. 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