The three plaintiffs suing the Wyoming Boys’ School on allegations of abuse and cruel treatment are asking if they can add the claims of another youth resident of the school to their own. They also want to expand their lawsuit to include four more of the facility’s employees.
Blaise Chivers-King, Dylan Tolar and Charles “Rees” Karn sued the Wyoming Department of Family Services, the Wyoming Boys’ School and several of the school’s staffers in February, alleging that school staffers discriminated against the boys for their disabilities, confined and abused them during their respective stays at the school for juvenile criminal conduct.
After a July 9 conference, a fourth potential plaintiff, a minor identified by the initials “DH,” came forward with additional claims from his stay at the school, from March to July of this year. The timeline is more recent than the others in the suit: other plaintiffs date their residency at the school to about 2020, in court documents.
DH also implicated four more employees, according to a Tuesday filing by the young men already suing.
The filing asks U.S. District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl to allow the young men and teens to file a new lawsuit complaint that includes DH’s allegations; namely, that he was denied medical treatment, subjected to humiliation and cruelty, and held in solitary confinement.
“(Some) staff members subjected DH to improper restraints and inflicted serious physical abuse on him, including shoving him, pinning him against the wall, and restraining him by bending his arms behind him,” says a copy of the new complaint as proposed, which the plaintiffs filed along with their request. One staffer “shoved DH with such force that he knocked the air out of DH, causing him excruciating pain.”
The document says the school subjected DH to prolonged solitary confinement, a practice which the school denied using, in an April 29 answer to the original allegations.
DH has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and learning disabilities.
The proposed complaint says staffers denied the boy access to his ADHD medication and ignored his mother’s pleadings that they provide it, that one employee humiliated the boy by displaying his underwear after he’d have a bladder accident and making fun of him, and that the employee called the boy “retard” and withheld food from him.
The boy tried to run away May 6 of this year, but he was caught and placed in “uninterrupted isolation” for five weeks, the proposed complaint alleges.
Nope, Says DFS
Wyoming DFS, the umbrella agency over the school and one of many parties being sued, countered the new claims in a Wednesday email to Cowboy State Daily.
“Safety and security continue to be priorities for all boys court-ordered to the Wyoming Boys’ School,” says the agency’s statement. “ We do not tolerate abuse and deny any allegations of wrongdoing.”
That echoes the agency’s earlier statement, issued when the lawsuit first surfaced and denying any allegation of wrongdoing: “We look forward to formally responding to the complaint and having our day in court."
It also echoes the state’s April answer to the plaintiffs’ complaint in which the school and DFS repeatedly denied the use of abuse, cruelty and solitary confinement.
“(We) deny that the Wyoming Boys’ School uses solitary confinement; deny that (the boys) were in solitary confinement … deny that Plaintiffs experienced serious deprivations of basic human needs,” the answer says. “(We) deny that Plaintiffs were deprived of their basic dignity and human decency … deny that Plaintiffs were subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
