{"id":485,"date":"2011-08-03T10:47:56","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T16:47:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/?p=485"},"modified":"2011-08-03T10:47:56","modified_gmt":"2011-08-03T16:47:56","slug":"like-the-church-the-state-fails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/like-the-church-the-state-fails-485.htm","title":{"rendered":"Like the Church, the State Fails"},"content":{"rendered":"

Those who have noticed the patterns in the hierarchy\u2019s handling of abusive priests will have a sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu while reading this story<\/a>. I have emphasized the parallels.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pericles Clergeau as a child emigrated from Haiti to the U.S. He soon manifested violent behavior: <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The father, Joslin Clergeau, said Pericles started exhibiting emotional and behavioral problems at 4 or 5, not long after they emigrated from western Haiti. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Pericles was mad, he would bang his head on the walls,\u201d said Mr. Clergeau, a taxi driver. \u201cIf you see his arm, you see the line of scars from when he\u2019d bite, bite, bite himself.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Clergeau said Pericles was first hospitalized at 7 or 8 after \u201che beat a boy with a chair when the boy called him gay.\u201d He said Pericles celebrated his first communion on a psychiatric ward at Cambridge Hospital. <\/span><\/p>\n

The year between Mr. Clergeau\u2019s 17th and 18th birthdays was tumultuous. He was moved five times by a system that did not seem to know what to do with his increasing aggression.<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

Teenagers who violently challenge authority often disrupt a therapeutic environment and endanger the staff. Even though child welfare experts consider stability of placement to be beneficial and instability detrimental, these youths are the most likely to be bounced from program to program. <\/span><\/p>\n

In early 2009, Mr. Clergeau, kicked out of his previous program because of an assault, turned 17 at a juvenile detention center. From there, he was transferred to the Hillcrest Center, a 14-acre campus in the Berkshires that specializes in youths with extreme psychiatric, emotional and behavioral disorders. <\/span><\/p>\n

He tried to run away a few times, but his first major encounter with the police there occurred in May, when he flew into a despairing rage, destroying furniture, hitting an employee with a rock and trying to hang himself. <\/span><\/p>\n

The following month, the police were summoned again. Arriving at the main building, Officer William C. Colvin observed broken glass and other debris littering the entrance. Inside, he saw a 6-foot-2-inch male student \u2014 Mr. Clergeau \u2014 face down on the floor with one staff member holding each of his legs and two more employees lying across his back. <\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier that day, Mr. Clergeau had \u201cgone AWOL,\u201d and when finally located on the property, he was hostile, screaming and wielding a four-foot-long wooden sign post, the police report said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Swinging the stick, he had run back into the school, smashing a large glass clock and a photocopier. He charged a solid wooden door, cracking it in half and tearing it from its hinges. When the principal and others tackled him, he tore at the principal\u2019s face with the jagged post, causing what Officer Colvin described as \u201ca long bruiser\u201d from jaw to ear. <\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Clergeau was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, destruction of property and disorderly conduct. After a couple of days in jail, he was sent to the Brandon School and Residential Treatment Center in Natick. <\/span><\/p>\n

In July, police officers reported there because Mr. Clergeau had become enraged during classroom detention. Having placed a staff member in a headlock and repeatedly punched him, Mr. Clergeau was charged again with assault and battery. <\/span><\/p>\n

By September, he had been transferred to the Lowell Treatment Center. Not long after settling in, he was disruptive in class and ordered to return to his locked residential unit. He refused. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018If I\u2019m getting in trouble for nothing, I might as well do something,\u2019 \u201d Mr. Casaubon, a staff member at the school, said. Then Mr. Clergeau started hurling wooden chairs at his teacher. <\/span><\/p>\n

Seeking to restrain him, Mr. Casaubon, who is muscular but shorter than Mr. Clergeau, managed to pin him against the wall. Mr. Clergeau promised to calm down if released. Mr. Casaubon let him go, he said, and the young man \u201csucker punched\u201d him. <\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Casaubon, who needed surgery to rebuild his broken eye socket, said he pursued charges reluctantly, because \u201cI knew nothing would happen.\u201d (The case is still pending.) But, he said, \u201ceverybody was yelling at me to go to the police so that it would go on record that this guy is a violent person and shouldn\u2019t be in public. I mean, that was him on meds. Imagine when he\u2019s off meds.\u201d <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Afterward, Mr. Casaubon said, staff members learned that Mr. Clergeau had a record of previous assaults with similar modes of attack. \u201cI sure wish I had known he strikes when you let go,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it could have been worse. I\u2019m not dead.\u201d <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mr. Clergeau\u2019s next stop was Westborough State Hospital, a hauntingly beautiful 19th-century asylum on a hilly campus overlooking a lake. The hospital has since closed because of budget cuts. <\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Clergeau was placed in a treatment program that served a combination of fragile, traumatized teenagers and violent juvenile offenders. It was a difficult mix. <\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Allard, who had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and had been committed there after an encounter with the police, said Mr. Clergeau ruled the roost, intimidating his fellow patients and the staff, too. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

During several months at the hospital, Mr. Clergeau reportedly assaulted nine staff members, sending a few out on medical leave, a<\/strong> person familiar with his stay there said. \u201cYou could feel the rage radiating off him,\u201d another person said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Both people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared repercussions for exposing what had happened. <\/span><\/p>\n

The basketball game occurred on Mr. Clergeau\u2019s 18th birthday, the day he technically aged out of the child welfare department\u2019s care. <\/span><\/p>\n

Two days later, he smashed a dresser drawer, fashioned a weapon and threatened to impale anybody who came near him. The unit was cleared of patients, the state police were called and Mr. Clergeau, after barricading himself in his room, was persuaded to surrender peacefully. He was led away in handcuffs. <\/span><\/p>\n

Only then did the program staff learn, through a fax sent anonymously, that Mr. Clergeau had a record of violence, with eight outstanding warrants at that time. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The hospital\u2019s human rights officer filed an internal complaint on behalf of Mr. Allard, which set off a departmental investigation that dragged on without resolution. But Mr. Clergeau was not prosecuted for anything that happened at the hospital. That was partly because the state Department of Mental Health discourages the criminalization of its adolescent patients; staff members did not press assault charges. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The police, learning about the attack on Mr. Allard after the fact, were in the process of opening an investigation when the weapon incident occurred. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs we responded the next day and locked up the subject on the eight outstanding warrants, the investigation into the past A & B did not go anywhere,\u201d David Procopio, a state police spokesman, said, referring to assault and battery. <\/span><\/p>\n

Now back in his hometown, Ware, and feeling stable with an apartment and a job, Mr. Allard was stunned to learn that Mr. Clergeau had never been held accountable for, as he put it, \u201cthe attempted murder of me.\u201d <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe they let him out into a public place,\u201d he said. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Last Resort <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mr. Clergeau was discharged from Westborough with the expectation that he would be imprisoned. Hospital authorities told the state police that he was \u201cnot a psych patient,\u201d which appears to reflect a medical opinion that he belonged in a correctional setting. <\/span><\/p>\n

At that point, Mr. Clergeau\u2019s Lowell assault case was reactivated. A judge set bail at $1,000, and after a few weeks at a juvenile detention center, he was released to his father.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Mr. Clergeau\u2019s destructive and self-destructive path crisscrossed Massachusetts, taking him in and out of the custody of three state agencies as well as multiple treatment centers, hospitals, police departments and courts. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Over time, Mr. Clergeau established a clear pattern of lashing out violently. In turn, the government developed a pattern, too, of shuttling him from place to place until it released him to the streets and he ended up on the doorstep of a homeless shelter with little security, few resources and no knowledge of his history. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Other institutions that had treated Mr. Clergeau previously did not know his full history, either. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cNo one seemingly put together a composite,\u201d his court-appointed lawyer, Michael Collora, said. \u201cEach incident was viewed in isolation.\u201d <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Pericles Clergeau, a tall, sturdy teenager with a troubled past, did not much like it when Kevin Allard, a radiant, sometimes manic youth, arrived at Adolescent Unit 2 at the Westborough state psychiatric hospital early last year.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe was like the alpha male of the place, and I was the competition,\u201d Mr. Allard said. \u201cIt was his turf, and I was mowing the lawn.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

On Feb. 3, 2010, the two 18-year-olds faced off in a basketball game called Taps, where one player can send the other\u2019s score plummeting to zero by tapping in a rebound. The game was close and tense, and the verbal sparring kept escalating, too. Mr. Clergeau was near 21 points when a swish by Mr. Allard derailed him. <\/span><\/p>\n

Catching his breath, Mr. Allard felt Mr. Clergeau \u2014 about six inches taller \u2014 very close behind. In seconds, Mr. Allard said, Mr. Clergeau\u2019s arm was wrapped around his throat and he was dangling in a choke hold. He tried to wriggle free but passed out. Mr. Clergeau dropped him on the tarmac, and Mr. Allard came to with a deep laceration on his forehead, dripping blood, according to several accounts. <\/span><\/p>\n

The next day, Dr. Bruce Meltzer, the unit\u2019s medical director and psychiatrist, told a state mental health department investigator that \u201che fears the perp could commit murder and that it could happen at any time,\u201d according to an internal document. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

That concern got buried in an internal investigation. Mr. Clergeau was neither prosecuted nor placed for long in a more secure situation. A<\/span><\/strong>nd almost exactly a year later, on Jan. 29, 2011, Mr. Clergeau, homeless and adrift, was arrested in the killing of an employee at the shelter in Lowell where he had been staying. When the police arrived, Mr. Clergeau was standing behind the reception desk clutching a bloodstained knife. \u201cI did it, I did it,\u201d he said as he was being handcuffed, according to the police report. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

All too familiar \u2013 the unwillingness to deal with a malefactor, the attempt to hush things up, the failure of the police, the catastrophic consequences.The institutional and personal weaknesses are similar.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those who have noticed the patterns in the hierarchy\u2019s handling of abusive priests will have a sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu while reading this story. I have emphasized the parallels. Pericles Clergeau as a child emigrated from Haiti to the U.S. He soon manifested violent behavior: The father, Joslin Clergeau, said Pericles started exhibiting emotional and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[544,545,543],"class_list":["post-485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law-enforcement","tag-clergeau","tag-institutional-failure","tag-violent-behavior","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}