Fourth plaintiff added to suit against Boys’ School

WORLAND — An amended complaint against the Wyoming Department of Family Services, the Wyoming Boys’ School and 10 of its staff members was filed on Wednesday, July 31, in U.S. District Court, adding a fourth defendant to the civil suit.

The original suit was filed in February of this year on behalf of Blaise Chivers-King, Dylan Tolar (by and through Debra Dever) and Charles “Rees” Karn.

The complaint alleges “widespread abuses” including the use of restraints and solitary confinement.

Karn of Cheyenne “suffers multiple disabilities, according to the complaint. He was held on two occasions: 2017-2019 and 2019 to 2021.

Chaivers-King of Sheridan, according to the complaint, suffers from “multiple disabilities” and was held 2020-2021 and 2021-2022.

Tolar was held 2020-2021 and has “a number of mental health diagnoses and disabilities, including cerebral palsy, bipolar disorder, ADHD, epilepsy, executive function disorder and autism spectrum disorder.”

The addition to the suit is “D.H.,” who appears “by and through his mother, Cassie Belcourt, who is his parent and next friend.”

He was held from March to July of this year, according to the amended complaint.

The complaint states that D.H. has “a number of mental health diagnoses, including severe ADHD and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. D.H. also has severe learning disabilities.”

The complaint alleges that the plaintiffs suffered “discriminations based on their disabilities, emotional and psychological abuse and denial of medical care and deprivation of meaningful human contact.”

The amended complaint added four additional staff members as defendants; Darryl Coronado, Jim Haun, Del Olson and Clark Les Urbin are the new defendants, joining Superintendent Dale Weber, Elsa Olson, Amanda Turner, Tate Adams, Mike Nelson, Thad Shaffer, John Schwalbe, Kevin McGinity and Margaret Dahlke.

An answer to the amended complaint has not been filed at this time.

In the previous answer, the Wyoming Boys’ School, Department of Health and defendants denied the allegations.

In an earlier interview with the Northern Wyoming News, Weber said the only reason restraints are used is if a student is demonstrating that he “is unsafe to himself or someone else.

“That’s it. We don’t use physical restraints. We don’t use solitary confinement as a means of influencing behavior. We don’t punish them by doing those things,” said Weber. “The real reason that we would ever use those is that they are either hurting themselves, or they are hurting someone else or they are destroying property. We have a good oversight system with regard to our physical management of students.

“We also have that backed up with video evidence because most of our areas are on video,” Weber added.

He said the video is only kept for so long, but if there is a significant restraint incident the video will be burned to a CD or copied to a more permanent file.

“We can demonstrate the why of any type of physical restraint and demonstrate that it is always because of safety,” Weber said.

He said it is documented every time a staff member has to touch a student and what led up to that.

“We review every single physical restraint incident,” said Weber.

There is a debriefing by the management team, review of the video and the security supervisor reviews and critiques the techniques used with the Right Response Training that each staff member undergoes when they are hired, he said.

Weber, in the earlier interview, noted that sometimes students are hurting themselves or trying to break a window, or they go after a student or staff member.

“The reality is that some of the students have the capability and desire to hurt other people at times, and a demonstrated history of it,” he said.

Currently the Wyoming Boys’ School houses boys from 12 to 21; the average ages are 14 to 18, according to Weber.

According to Wyoming State Statute 7-13-101 “upon his first conviction of a felony, any male offender, under the age of 18 years may be sentenced to imprisonment in the Wyoming boys’ school.”

This story was published on August 8, 2024.