The settlement followed revelations during pretrial discovery that state officials had received numerous abuse complaints from boys being held at the facility as well as staff starting in the the 1990s and through the 2000s, yet repeatedly failed to notify law enforcement. Instead, according to court records, agency leaders chose to “deal with a situation such as this internally.”
This particular case is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how bad things were and are in the state of Oregon when it comes to how vulnerable populations are cared for. Scandal after scandal after scandal has happened in youth corrections, foster care, CPS, and in care homes where elderly & disabled live, and nothing is ever actually done about it.
There are many problems in state government, but care for at-risk youth, elderly, and the disabled is routinely one of the worst. I beg people to pay attention to it, and look into the record if you can spare the time. Just pull any single thread and follow it with your favorite search engine and you will be absolutely horrified at what you find in plain sight.
Sharing this despite the fact that some people have reported being paywalled by OregonLive … adding
?outputType=ampto the end of an article URL should (and does, in most cases, for me) display the entire content of the article, so I’d be interested to hear if it doesn’t work for you.