Bringing justice to them all

WHITE HAVEN – Laurene Transue thought the teenagers were kidding.

Her 15-year-old daughter, Hillary, had been charged with harassment for creating a fake MySpace page that mocked an assistant principal at her school.

“When Hillary was getting ready to go to court, other kids were teasing her, ‘You’re going to get sent away to Camp Adams,’ ” Transue said. “I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ That is absolutely the last resort. You were never in trouble before. You didn’t do anything harmful. I thought they were teasing her.”

On April 17, 2007 Hillary appeared before Luzerne County Juvenile Court Judge Mark Ciavarella. Following a hearing that lasted less than three minutes, she was shackled and led out of the courtroom to await transport to Camp Adams, a residential juvenile treatment facility near Jim Thorpe.

It took a month, but Laurene Transue won her daughter’s release based on the fact she had not been afforded her constitutional rights in the hearing before Ciavarella.

The story could very well have ended there for the Transues. Hillary was safe at home. They just wanted to put the incident behind them.

But there was another emotion flowing through Laurene and Hillary Transue: Anger.

“We felt so betrayed by authority and our own government and justice system,” Laurene Transue, 47, said in an interview Friday from her White Haven home. “I knew something was terribly wrong. My motive was to get justice for my daughter. But when we found out how many other children and families were going through what we went through, we felt we had to do something.”

That “something” was a court challenge that on Thursday led the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to overturn the convictions of an estimated 6,500 juveniles who appeared before Ciavarella from 2003 to 2008.

The court based its ruling on allegations that Ciavarella and former judge Michael Conahan accepted millions of dollars from the owner and builder of two juvenile centers the county utilized. The court also found Ciavarella had repeatedly violated the constitutional rights of juveniles.

The decision means all convictions within that time frame will be vacated and the records of the juveniles expunged, or erased. Prosecutors also were barred from retrying any juveniles other than those that remain incarcerated or owe restitution or fines.

It’s a ruling that very well may never have happened had the Transues and the family of a second juvenile, Jessica Van Reeth, not agreed to serve as the test case, said Bob Schwartz, executive director of the Juvenile Law Center of Philadelphia, the advocacy group that filed the petition that led the Thursday’s ruling.

“They are the heroes of this story,” Schwartz said. “They stepped forward to participate in our original pleadings before the Supreme Court and they never let go.”

While acknowledging she and her daughter played a role, Laurene Transue said the story really isn’t about them.

“What’s astounding about Hillary’s story is it’s not Hillary’s story. It’s the story of 5,000 kids in one little town in Pennsylvania that makes it incredible,” she said. “Thank God for the Juvenile Law Center. They not only offered legal support they offered emotional support.”

Most people were supportive, but others viewed Hillary as a “trouble maker” who should “just accept her punishment and keep quiet,” Laurene Transue said.

Hillary, now 18 and a freshman at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire, also has had to deal with the stigma and embarrassment of having her criminal conviction repeated in dozens of news articles as she and her mother have been interviewed by journalists across the globe.

“It’s something I have to endure because this is my passion,” Hillary Transue said in a phone interview from New Hampshire. “I love to have the opportunity to speak out.”

That’s especially true now that the Supreme Court has ruled in her favor, she said.

“You can never take back what happened to these kids. A lot had it worse than me. They’ll never get that piece of their life back. But now someone, for the time, has acknowledged, ‘You were mistreated.’ ”

In Transue’s case, her mother had been assured Hillary would get probation and possibly a fine given the nature of the offense and the absence of a prior record.

“Her biggest ‘crime’ up until that point was she got caught with another girl smoking a cigarette,” Laurene Transue said.

The MySpace page, while disrespectful, contained no threats against the Crestwood school official. It was filled with silly statements, such as the principal liked to collect the “tighty whiteys” – aka underwear, of actor Johnny Depp, Laurene Transue said.

Still, Hillary was concerned by the statements of her peers. She felt she needed an attorney, but her mother discounted the request as unnecessary.

Laurene had worked as a social worker for a number of years. She was confident she knew how the system worked.

“I told her, ‘Trust me. You are a child. The system is meant to protect you and help you,’ ” she said. “I felt that way up until the time the gavel came down and they took my baby girl away in handcuffs.”

The hearing lasted only a few minutes. Ciavarella never asked Hillary if she wanted an attorney or explained the ramifications and possible penalties she faced by admitting to the offense.

“They handcuffed her before she was out of the courtroom. I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” Laurene Transue said. “I was hysterical. They had to carry me out of the courtroom. I couldn’t fathom that a 15-year-old was going to jail.”

Hillary was immediately transported to Camp Adams. She was given a single, two-minute phone call that night.

“It was two minutes of her, crying, saying ‘Mommy I’m sorry’ and two minutes of me, crying, saying ‘Hillary I’m sorry,’ ” she said.

Transue said she called the Luzerne County public defender’s office, but was told an appeal would be futile because “Ciavarella never changed his rulings,” she said.

She then spent the next few days calling various agencies seeking help. Finally someone referred her to the Juvenile Law Center. She spoke with attorney Laval Miller-Wilson. That’s when she learned her case was not unique.

“The first thing he said to me is ‘I can’t believe this guy is doing this again,’ ” Transue said. “I said, ‘What do you mean?’ ”

Miller-Wilson went on to describe how the Juvenile Law Center had successfully argued in 1999 to overturn the conviction of another youth who had appeared before Ciavarella without an attorney. Ciavarella was later quoted in a local news story that he would never allow another child to appear before him without an attorney.

When the JLC approached Transue the next year about being the lead plaintiff in its court challenge, she immediately agreed.

The JLC filed a petition with the state Supreme Court in April 2008 that sought to overturn the convictions of hundreds of juveniles based, in part, on data that showed 50 percent of juveniles who appeared before Ciavarella between 2005 and 2006 did not have an attorney.

The Supreme Court initially declined to hear the case. It reconsidered after federal authorities filed corruption charges in January against Ciavarella and Conahan. The men initially pleaded guilty, but later withdrew their pleas and are awaiting trial.

The high court appointed Berks County Judge Arthur Grim in February to review all of Ciavarella’s cases from 2003 – the year he allegedly began taking kickbacks – until 2008, when he stepped down from juvenile court. Grim’s recommendation was the basis of Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling.

For Hillary and the thousands of others who already completed their sentences, the ruling means they will not have to report their juvenile convictions on any forms – such as applications for college or the military.

“All those people in the courtroom, the lawyers, the prosecutors who studied the law, how did they go in there day after day, cases after case and not say ‘Hey, this is wrong?’ ” she said. “Now, at the end of the spectrum, it feels good to know there are people out there in the government and justice system who are morally upstanding and follow the law and are equal and just and fair.”

“We are nobody special,” she said. “If nothing else, if people can learn that, even if you think you are nobody, if you open your mouth and other little people open their mouths, you can change things.”