Beyond the Horrible, the Reality of Sexual Assault in Youth Detention

 I was 18 years old when I was arrested and sent to jail. But the real hell of my life to come started on my 19th birthday, when the state shipped me off to a place called Alto, a notorious youth prison in north Georgia. There was much to fear in this place, but nothing quite frightening as much as the likelihood of sexual assault.

I knew from talking to older guys in jail, before I was sent off to Alto, that rapes were common, but nothing they told me prepared me for the reality of what I witnessed. The place (it has since been shuttered) had been built in the 1930s as a hospital. Fifty years later, it was a dilapidated house of horrors.

When Home for Thanksgiving is Nothing More Than a Dream for a Boy and his Mom

I know a woman in Tennessee whose son was just sent to a youth detention center. He has had some problems with petty crime and drugs, and was sent to a treatment program for kids awhile back. He did not adapt very well to the program, and now he has been sent to this YDC for an indefinite period. He is 17 and the state can hold him until he is 21 if authorities decide he is not ready to be released. She is trying to figure out how she can go see him for Thanksgiving.