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Report: Paulding Juvenile Facility Has High Rate of Sexual Misconduct

The Paulding facility, which serves Cherokee County, exceeded the national rate of 9.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

federal report released Thursday identified 13 juvenile facilities with high rates of sexual victimization, and the Paulding County Regional Youth Detention Center was at the top of the list. 

Data from the 2012 National Survey of Youth in Custody found that 32.1 percent of Paulding juveniles reported that they were victimized sexually by either staff or other juveniles at the center.

That exceeded the national rate of 9.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

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The Paulding facility, which also serves Cherokee County, also had the highest rate of staff-on-youth sexual victimization (31 percent). About 7.1 percent of respondents said the staff sexual misconduct was the result of force or other forms of coercion.

The survey was conducted between February and September 2012 in 273 state-owned or operated juvenile facilities and 53 locally or privately operated facilities that held adjudicated youth under state contract, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The survey limited reporting by youth to incidents that occurred in the last 12 months or since their admission to the facility, if less than 12 months.

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Responses to the survey, mandated by the Prison Rape Elimination Act, were anonymous.

The Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice was ranked as one of four states with an overall sexual victimization rate that exceeded 15 percent. Illinois, Ohio, and South Carolina were the others. Sexual victimization was defined in the survey as any unwanted sexual activity between youth and all sexual activity between youth and staff.

Three other Georgia facilities, the Eastman Youth Development Campus in Dodge County, the Augusta Youth Development Campus in Richmond County and the Sumter Youth Development Campus in Americus, joined Paulding on the list of 13 juvenile facilities with high rates of sexual victimization.

Paulding can house up to 100 juvenile offenders from Paulding, Carroll, Cherokee, Coweta, Douglas, Haralson and Heard counties.

For further contemplation and analysis, read the full report at http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/svjfry12.pdf

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