Although Glen Mills Schools remain closed, Pennsylvania’s auditor general said the school’s administration has adopted measures he recommended over the summer.

In the meantime, at least 800 males have begun filing class action lawsuits and other court actions to hold Glen Mills accountable for the physical and sexual assaults, and the school’s enabling of their abusers, including allegedly covering up the abuse. Survivors of this alleged abuse may receive damages for physical, emotional, and mental problems that could affect them for the rest of their lives.

Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale performed the audit in June to help provide guidance to the 194-year-old institution that shut down in April 2019 after multiple allegations of sexual and physical abuse that went back decades.

Auditor General Recommendations

DePasquale made a number of recommendations to the school in an effort to make the school a safer place, and in Nov. 2020, DePasquale said he is pleased with the changes the school has made. Among the new policies Glen Mills said it has adopted are:

• Making sure every person who might have direct contact with a student to receive required training regarding the prevention of child abuse and the mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse;
• Ensuring students have a path for reporting incidents of child abuse;
• Instilling a procedure to ensure background checks for employees, contractors and volunteers are obtained and then maintained in the future.

DePasquale stopped short of recommending the school reopen, but said he believed it was important to report to the public that Glen Mills Schools administration followed through with what was requested of them.

For decades, Glen Mills operated as a residential educational facility where young males ages 12 through 21 from around the United States were placed through orders of juvenile courts. The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services ordered the school closed when regulators found evidence that several staff members committed systemic abuse, which was accompanied by the children being intimidated into staying quiet about their suffering. The toxic environment was so pervasive that regulators felt they had no choice but to shut down the school.

Sexual and Physical Abuse Part of Glen Mills’ Past

Allegations of abuse came to light in September 2018 when two former counselors at Glen Mills were charged with assault.

Patrick Jameson Raquet, 34, and Christopher Medina allegedly body-slammed a 17-year-old student to the ground. Medina was reportedly 320 pounds at the time and allegedly positioned himself so that his entire weight laid on the boy’s elbow. Raquet then purportedly hit the student’s head.

Local ABC affiliate Channel 6 reported that Delaware County District Attorney Kat Copeland said at the time, “As witnessed by about 30 people and recorded by several cameras, they literally beat the breath out of him.”

Glen Mills Schools Adopts Ukeru

Acting Executive Director Dr. Christopher Spriggs appears to be hoping for a re-opening of the school, based on marketing of the trauma-informed approach that would be the center of a new “pilot program” of no more than 20 students.

In the last couple of months, the Glen Mills website had undergone changes that promoted a transformation of the school’s policies and approaches to children who have suffered traumatic events. However, as of late July, the URL for the Glen Mills website results in a 404 Error, and the school’s Facebook page, also recently active, appears to now be deactivated.

Glen Mills reportedly is training employees in Ukeru, which the school said in an update on its now-defunct website “is the first crisis prevention training program to completely eliminate the use of restraints and seclusion as accepted behavioral management tools.”

The approach is that intervention should be built upon comfort rather than control. Glen Mills says that in 2004, Grafton Integrated Health Network began using the Ukeru approach. With Ukeru as its parent organization, Grafton had full support to use the program. According to Glen Mills, Grafton is now 100% seclusion-free and 99% restraint-free. Grafton also has seen a large reduction in the number of client and staff injuries, reduced workers’ compensation expenses, and dramatically less employee turnover.

“We are so excited that the behavioral health experts who created Ukeru have now trained The Glen Mills Schools team on key concepts such as trauma-informed care and conflict resolution,” said the school in an update on its website that has since been taken down.

However, some believe that Spriggs’ plan should never be put into place.

Michaela Soyer, a sociology professor at Hunter College who uncovered some Glen Mills abuse allegations back in 2014, thinks the school should stay closed, per the Philadelphia Tribune.

“An institution that has abused children for decades shouldn’t be allowed to re-open,” said Soyer. “This was not an isolated incident, but brutalizing students was part of the fabric of Glen Mills.”

That doesn’t mean that such a pilot program shouldn’t exist—somewhere else, Soyer says. According to Soyer, Spriggs’ vision for a pilot program “could be opened anywhere and run by people who have not failed the children in their care as badly as the administrators and staff members at Glen Mills did.”

Survivors of child abuse suffered while at Glen Mills Schools could be eligible to file a class action lawsuit against the reform school. Filing a lawsuit can be a daunting prospect, so Top Class Actions has laid the groundwork for you by connecting you with an experienced attorney. Consulting an attorney can help you determine if you have a claim, navigate the complexities of litigation, and maximize your potential compensation.