Florida youth reform contractor has past accusations of abuse
2005 allegations at Montana school were later dropped by state.
The vice president of a firm that runs three state juvenile reform facilities quit his previous job one day after allegations that widespread abuse occurred at a Montana residential treatment facility for teens under his watch.
Chris Perkins has vehemently denied that any abuse occurred while he ran the now-shuttered Swan Valley Youth Academy from 2003 to 2005. In 2005, however, state investigators say they found 19 violations, including alleged physical and mental abuse, at Swan Valley, and in 2007 a previously classified investigative report giving detailed accounts of abuse was unsealed.
The judge called the case "huge" but dismissed it because the state's department missed a filing deadline.
It "fell through the cracks," he admitted.
Perkins called the state's allegations "fraud" and said he did nothing wrong.
He was hired by Alabama-based Sequel TSI Holdings in June 2010. The company has $27 million in contracts with Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice to run the nearby program in Raiford and also in Daytona Beach and Kissimmee.
In 2007, Perkins ran a state reform school in Maryland, a post he quit a day after a Montana judge unsealed the investigative report. He hadn't told Maryland about the investigation in Montana and said he quit to spare the state the media attention.
Florida's department was unaware of Perkins' past until it received an anonymous email last July, a month after he was hired by Sequel, which already had the state contracts. At the time, department officials said that they trusted Sequel's screening process.
"We are not requesting that any action be taken in this matter," wrote Joan Wimmer, a policy director, in a July 2010 email to other department officials.
Asked about it last week, the department responded by sending copies of internal communication and emails from Sequel, both from last year.
"Our investigation found that all accusations against Chris in the State of Montana were dismissed with prejudice by the administrative law judge assigned to the case," company president Beverly Richard wrote to the state.
Perkins had passed two state background screenings and says he does not actually work in the facilities. He says he knows why Montana dropped the charges.
The state "knew in front of a judge ... that the case would come out in my favor," he said. "The real story here is how a state agency can commit state-sanctioned fraud and not be held accountable."
Joe Sternhagen, the administrative law judge who tossed the charges in 2007, told a Maryland newspaper that year that the collapse of the extensive, two-month investigation was strange.
"In my 12 years doing this - and I'm essentially the only person in the state who hears these cases - I've never seen the state go to such lengths to produce such a detailed substantiation of abuse and then quit," Sternhagen said.
"This case was huge, and it just slipped through the cracks," he added.
Sternhagen and a spokesman for the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services did not return calls seeking comment this month.
Andree Larose, an attorney who worked with the Montana Advocacy Program, a nonprofit organization that led the early Swan Valley investigation, said the system failed
"I am incredulous that the system failed these kids so miserably," Larose said. She discovered the abuse, she said, while representing a teen who had attempted suicide while at Swan Valley.
She later asked a county attorney to press criminal charges, which never happened.
Perkins said that Montana Advocacy Program had an agenda.
"They found a handful of disgruntled employees," he said, "and got them to make up stories of abuse."
matt.dixon@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4174