Georgia taxpayers have handed over millions of dollars to two former juvenile offenders who were brutally attacked while in state custody.
A second law suit was resolved this week with the state giving D.M., which is how he is identified in the federal lawsuit, more than $1.2 million. Two years ago, the state agreed to pay another young man $3 million because of the permanent brain damage he suffered when he was attacked by a bigger and older inmate known to be a predator. That same predator allegedly also attacked D.M. or he led the group that attacked him.
D.M. was 15 when he was physically or sexually assaulted nine times during the three times he was at the long-term juvenile jail in Dodge County, the Eastman Youth Development Campus.
Reginald Patton was identified as D.M.’s primary attacker. Patton also was blamed with beating another teenager, R.N., so severely that he suffered brain damage, resulting in the state paying. that inmate more than $3 million.
Patton is now serving 10 years in the adult prison system for attacking an Eastman YDC guard in 2011, within months of the attacks on D.M and R.N.
D.M. was 13 when he shot a man who was attacking his mother, his lawyer said. He was 15 when he was transferred to the Eastman YDC and within weeks suffered his first assault. Eight more followed over the next three months.
According to the suit, YDC officials would put D.M. in isolation after each one, supposedly for his own protection. Sometimes those isolations were as much as two- and three-weeks long. Eventually, D.M. attempted suicide twice because the seclusion became too much for him to take, he said.
Attorney Woody Sampson said since YDC officials couldn’t stop the attacks on D.M. they put him in seclusion “under the guise of protecting him.
“The conditions were egregious,” said Sampson, who also represented R.N. “These facilities are supposed to be about rehabilitation, and they should not be a place where kids have been brutalized, both sexually and physically, on a daily basis.”
The Department of Juvenile Justice declined to comment, saying the suit was still open.
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