Families recount juvie experience

PLAINS TWP. – She has spoken about her son’s ordeal with the juvenile justice system at least a dozen times before, but Susan Mishanski struggled to get the words out of her mouth Thursday night.

She had come to the hearing before the Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice to share her story, but spoke for only a few minutes before she was overcome by emotion as memories of the day in 2008 when her son, Kevin, was taken out of a courtroom in handcuffs and shackles flooded her mind.

She remembered her 75-year-old father, standing in her yard with a Post-it note stuck to his finger, nervously pacing. He had gone to the hearing with Kevin in her place and was trying to figure out how he could tell her what had happened.

She remembered her concern as she tried to in vain to reach Kevin on his cell phone, and her son’s frantic voice when he called her from a juvenile detention center later that night.

“I could hear him saying, ‘You gotta get me out of here,’” Mishanski said after the hearing, explaining her tears. “It just brought it all back.”Mishanski was among members of four families who testified before the commission in the latest public hearing it has held as part of its investigation into failures within the Luzerne County juvenile justice system under former judge Mark Ciavarella.

The state Supreme Court last year vacated the convictions of thousands of juveniles who appeared before Ciavarella after finding he had violated their right to a fair trial by denying them the opportunity to be represented by counsel, among other things.

The commission was formed in August to investigate what happened and to provide a recommendation to the Supreme Court on how to ensure the problems do not reoccur here or elsewhere. The panel is scheduled to hold at least one more hearing in Harrisburg on April 12. Its report is due by May 31.

Mishanski, of Hanover Township, became so emotional during her testimony that she had to stop for several minutes to compose herself.

“Your heart can never plan for the emotional trauma I experienced that day,” Mishanski testified, choking back tears.

Kevin, then 17, was shipped off to a wilderness-style boot camp immediately after his hearing. But neither Mishanski nor her father was given any information regarding his whereabouts.

The only thing they got: that Post-it note, which carried the name “Dolores” and a phone number.

“They took my child and left me with a Post-it note. The heartache of having one of your children ripped away so unfairly was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with,” she said.

A father, identified only as “Mr. K,” spoke of the trauma his 13-year-old son, identified as “M” to protect his privacy, experienced after he was incarcerated for 48 days in 2004 for allegedly throwing a steak at his mother’s boyfriend.

Unlike many of the youths who appeared before Ciavarella, “M” had an attorney. It did no good as Ciavarella immediately cut off the attorney as he tried to speak on behalf of the boy, the teenager and his father testified.

After his son was incarcerated, the father said he phoned numerous officials, including county commissioners, the governor’s office and juvenile justice organizations to try to get the boy released. Everyone told him they could not help him.

Finally, he convinced his congressman to write a letter on his son’s behalf. The response he received left him even more disillusioned, he said.

The response, a letter, was drafted by Roseanne Ciavarella, an official with Luzerne County Children and Youth. She assured him she had looked into his case and found nothing wrong.

“When I asked her what was her relation to the Judge Ciavarella who put my son away, she told me she is his sister,” the father testified. “The audacity and incompetence of Children and Youth in assigning the judge’s sister to investigate claims against him is outrageous.”

The panel also heard from Laurene Transue of White Haven, whose 15-year-old daughter, Hillary, was sent away in 2007 for posting a fake Myspace page that mocked a school official; and Jessica Van Reeth and her father, Jack.

Van Reeth, of Mountain Top, was 16 when she was incarcerated in 2006 for carrying a lighter and pipe into school. She and Transue were the parties who, through the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, filed the original petition that led the state Supreme Court to that vacate the convictions of all juveniles who appeared before Ciavarella from 2003-08.

Laurene Transue said her daughter has come a long way in rebuilding her life. She’s now enrolled in college and is doing well. But her time in juvenile detention has left permanent scars. Hillary was not able to attend Thursday’s hearing, so her mother read her testimony into the record.

“At 15 I learned that the judicial system is a disgusting conveyor belt made for putting our problems away rather than fixing them. I learned that adults are not to be trusted ... cooperation means nothing (and) judges are biased,” Hillary Transue said.

Van Reeth is also enrolled in college and is considering going to law school. She said she also has emotional scars. She’s not sure she’ll ever overcome them.

“Even though several years have passed, I still feel a deep mistrust toward the American legal system,” she said. “After going through this painful ordeal, it is important to me to help ensure that no other juvenile ever has to go though an experience like this again.”