Book ‘Kids for Cash’ focuses on children

Pulitzer Prize-winning former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter William Ecenbarger was drawn into the Luzerne County corruption scandal by another person’s sudden illness.

He quickly was so caught up in the drama he decided to write a book, which he expects to hit the stands this summer.

“I was doing a little freelancing for the Inquirer, mainly feature stuff,” Ecenbarger recalled. “One night in October 2009 I got a call from the managing editor, who said someone in the Harrisburg Bureau fell ill and he needed somebody to cover a hearing. It was the first hearing of the Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice.”

The commission was formed by the state Legislature to look into the causes of the scandal, which began in January when federal prosecutors accused then-county Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan of accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks from private individuals in exchange for actions from the bench that benefited private juvenile detention centers.

“I vaguely knew the story,” Ecenbarger said. “I was living in Maine at the time it broke. But I didn’t really have a grip on it, so I tried to cram myself with all the info I could that night.”

Children in middle

While the saga had plenty of built-in drama – influential judges falling from grace, plea bargains struck, rejected and renegotiated, a climactic trial of Ciavarella that gripped the area for two weeks – Ecenbarger said the impetus for the book was the plight of the children caught in the middle.

“It’s a great story, and to me there was a great point to be made about the denial of kids’ rights, the rush to lock people up. It’s a very important underlying theme: In our rush to lock people up, we’re doing more harm than good,” Ecenbarger said. “To send a kid away for shoplifting or for putting a parody on Myspace or for smoking a joint doesn’t make a lot of sense for the welfare of the kid.”

Ecenbarger said he talked to about 40 children, including Lisa Spencer, who became part of a 2004 investigative series by The Times Leader into Ciavarella’s sentencing record as juvenile court judge.

Spencer had been charged with “terroristic threats” as a 16-year-old at Crestwood High School when she jokingly wrote a note threatening to bring a pistol to school, even though she had no access to a pistol.

Ciavarella’s punishment

Spencer – then Lisa Scarborough, she has since married – was sentenced to a juvenile camp with no time limit.

And though she ultimately was freed quickly on the advice of camp counselors and had her record expunged along with thousands of others adjudicated by Ciavarella, the incident came back to haunt her last year when she and her husband tried to join the Peace Corps.

The application was flagged because of the juvenile record. She eventually did get into the Corps and is serving in Africa.

Generally, the children he talked to – most are adults now, Ecenbarger noted – “seemed to want to put it all behind them. There is a lot of anger. There were some kids who were practically unaffected, and there were kids who were seriously and probably permanently damaged by it.”

“I have two kids, both in their 40s, and they did things when they were growing up that, had they landed in front of Ciavarella, they would have gone away. A lot of these things are just things that kids do,” he said.

The children may be the most important part of the book, but Ecenbarger conceded Ciavarella’s trial is probably “the best part of the book.”

Aside from having the built-in drama of a prominent court case, the testimony provided numerous high points, including testimony by Ciavarella during which he admitted crimes for which he hadn’t even been charged, and the playing of conversations between Ciavarella, Conahan and attorney Robert Powell – then co-owner of the detention facilities – recorded when Powell wore a wire.

Interviews declined

Ecenbarger said he sought interviews with Powell and the two judges, but they declined. Ciavarella is serving a 28-year sentence following his conviction.

While he admitted wrongdoing – including trying to hide the money he received, he adamantly denied he ever took money in exchange for sending kids to the private detention facility, bitterly rejecting the short-hand label often used on the case: “Kids for Cash.”