Juanita Crawford, 19, who spent a year and a half at Lansing Girls Residential Center after she was found guilty of reckless endangerment and conspiracy and is now an intern at the A.C.L.U.,
said in an interview that she was restrained after not moving quickly enough to dispose of her food tray and talking back to a staff member. “He takes you and hooks your arms backwards with a lot of force, and it hurts, and you’re dropped face down,” she said. “It’s almost like getting tripped.”
Soon after taking over as chief psychiatrist at San Diego County's Juvenile Hall in 2000, Dr. Marjorie Shuer said she discovered many of the children were being given such heavy doses of psychotropic drugs that they couldn't function in school and didn't want to leave their cells. Shuer reported the problem to her superiors at the County Department of Health and Human Services. A few months later she was fired.
In a wrongful termination lawsuit she filed in 2002, Shuer said she lost her job because she blew the whistle on staff psychiatrists she believed were endangering children in Juvenile Hall.
When she tried to persuade her bosses to overhaul policies governing the use of drugs, the lawsuit said, she was told to "buy into the current system" and "turn a blind eye" to the conduct.
Last month, the county and Shuer agreed to settle her lawsuit for $80,000, which amounted to about half her annual salary, plus $40,000 to cover her legal fees.
Three current and former Juvenile Hall staff members interviewed by The San Diego Union-Tribune corroborated Shuer's assertions that some children were heavily medicated.
Although Shuer told the Union-Tribune she didn't know why so much medication was being prescribed, the staff members said the drugs helped make children with behavioral problems easier to control.
The staff members also said that after Shuer filed her lawsuit, subtle changes started taking place in the way drugs were administered to the mostly teenage population in Juvenile Hall. They said that for the first time since the late 1990s, fewer drugs are being prescribed.
Alfredo Aguirre, the county's acting director of mental health services, wasn't specific about the changes in the psychiatric care policy but attributed some of them to Shuer.
"Doctors need to be challenged over what they are doing and why they are doing it," he said. "There were concerns that needed to be addressed, and they were."
Aguirre said there were few quarrels with Shuer over the treatment issues she raised. The problem, he said, was the abrasiveness of her management style.
Juvenile Hall is an aging, one-story brick building in the Birdland neighborhood of San Diego, between Linda Vista and Serra Mesa. It is set up to house male and female teenagers primarily ages 14 to 18 who face allegations ranging from shoplifting and schoolyard fighting to rape and murder.
Although Juvenile Hall has consistently been certified by an independent accrediting agency, it has been beset for years by crowding and by allegations of too few and inexperienced staff members.
Shuer came to the county's health department from Maricopa County, Ariz., where she supervised mental health care at a county juvenile detention facility.
Her title in San Diego was Supervising Psychiatrist for the Juvenile Forensic Services Facility. She supervised four psychiatrists and directed the mental health care of nearly 500 children whose psychological needs were generally greater than those of most children.
Within a few months of starting her new job, Shuer's lawsuit said, she "discovered ethical breaches and what she believed to be negligent practices in violation of the law." Continue Reading Here
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