Nothing but crickets

From the end of May through June, there was outrage over the forced separation of children from their parents as families entered the United States illegally. Many were seeking asylum. Outrage filled the news cycles. My Facebook feed had posts several times a day from people I know locally as well as national news. I had to stop checking Facebook to get away from it all.

There were protests and calls for the forced separations to stop. Comments such as, “I have a 4-year-old and can’t imagine this happening to me,” helped everyday Americans identify with the plight of people trying to escape from a variety of circumstances many people cannot understand or comprehend.

Then, everything went silent. Although I have continued to read stories about conditions at the detention centers where children are still being held, there has been nary a peep from the local folks who were once so angry about the treatment of children. It was like it didn’t matter. Several stories, however, have made national attention, and people are angry, it just seems like no one I know in western Nebraska cares about it anymore.

On July 27, 2018, The Nation reported that a 6-year-old girl was sexually abused in an immigration detention center.

According to immigrant-rights advocates, a 6-year-old girl separated from her mother under the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy was sexually abused while at an Arizona detention facility run by Southwest Key Programs. The child was then made to sign a form acknowledging that she was told to maintain her distance from her alleged abuser, who is another child being held at the same detention facility.

A Southwest Key Programs document obtained by The Nation confirms that D.L. was reported to have been sexually abused on June 4, 2018. On June 12, one day after D.L.’s father was contacted, the 6-year-old girl was presented with the form stating that, as part of the facility’s intervention protocol, she had been instructed to “maintain my distance from the other youth involved” and had been provided “psychoeducation,” described in the document as “reporting abuse” and “good touch / bad touch.” The form, posted below, shows D.L.’s “signature”—a single letter “D,” next to the characterization of her as “tender age”—which supposedly confirms that D.L. understands “that it is my responsibility to follow the safety plan” reviewed with her.

But the nightmare wasn’t over. On June 22, Southwest Key again contacted D.L.’s father and informed him that the same boy initially cited for abuse had hit and fondled D.L. again. According to Lane, D.L.’s father asked how the facility could allow this to happen, and the woman on the phone responded that she was only calling him to advise him that it had happened, that she didn’t have permission to say anything else, and he would have to speak with the director.

I posted this story to Facebook. It received 2 likes. One was my husband.

By Aug. 3, news outlets had picked up a ProPublica story about Levian Pacheco, who is now facing several charges stemming from incidents that allegedly took place between August 2016 and July 2017 at a Southwest Key facility in Mesa, Arizona. (Note: If you read the ProPublica article or the quote below, be forewarned, it describes graphic details of the incidents Pacheco is accused of committing.)

The allegations against Levian D. Pacheco, who is HIV-positive, include that he performed oral sex on two of the teenagers and tried to force one of them to penetrate him anally. The other six teens — all between 15 and 17 — said Pacheco had groped them through their clothing. All of the incidents are alleged to have taken place between August 2016 and July 2017, according to a court filing last week that laid out the government’s case.

ProPublica only discovered Pacheco’s case while trying to find additional information about a vague reference to a molestation case in Arizona inspection records. Federal officials had known about the case when answering questions from ProPublica last week and when describing the conditions of the shelters before Congress, but did not mention it.

In addition to Pacheco, two other cases involving abuse at other Southwest Key shelters have recently surfaced.

On Tuesday, an employee at a Southwest Key facility in Phoenix, Fernando Magaz Negrete, was arrested on allegations that he sexually abused a 14-year-old girl by kissing her and rubbing her breast and crotch, according to Phoenix news outlets. And The Nation reported Friday that a 6-year-old girl who had been separated from her mother was allegedly fondled by a boy at another Southwest Key facility in Glendale, Arizona in June.

At other Southwest Key facilities, police reports and call logs from the last five years detail inappropriate relationships with staff, dozens of runaways, sexual contact among kids at the shelters and other allegations of molestation by employees. In one case, ProPublica found, a 46-year-old youth care worker in Tucson was convicted of groping a 15-year-old boy who had just arrived in the United States five days earlier.

HHS said Thursday that shelter operators reported 264 allegations of sexual abuse to the FBI last year. While those can include anything from “touching of the buttocks” to sexual assault, the agency said, 53 allegations involved an adult. The agency did not say how many of those allegations were founded or how many constituted more serious assaults.

Nayeli Chavez-Dueñas, a clinical psychologist who helped develop shelter guidelines on behalf of the National Latina/o Psychological Association, said she wasn’t surprised that alleged abuse went on for so long “because a lot of the children are terrified.” Many of the children have experienced sexual and physical violence, she said, and in the shelters, they face a lot of uncertainty.

“So when you have adults that are taking care of these children that are so vulnerable,” Chavez-Dueñas said, “they know that the children are going to be so afraid for their safety that they are not likely to report.”

These aren’t isolated incidents.

Fernando Magaz Negrete, a 32-year-old employee of federal contractor Southwest Key Programs, is accused of slipping into the girl’s room late at night and forcibly kissing and inappropriately touching her, according to court documents. He was arrested and charged Tuesday with molestation of a child, sexual abuse and aggravated assault.

Complaints of sexual abuse at immigrant shelters for children, which are overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement and operated by contractors, are not uncommon. A recent ProPublica investigation found police responded to at least 125 calls reporting sex offenses in the past five years at shelters primarily housing immigrant children. The investigation had analyzed incidents at more than 70 out of approximately 100 such shelters nationwide.

“If you’re a predator, it’s a gold mine,” Lisa Fortuna, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Medical Center, told ProPublica. “You have full access, and then you have kids that have already had this history of being victimized.”

Where is the outrage over these horrific events? My Facebook and Twitter feeds were lit up like Christmas trees day in and day out when people learned that children were being separated from their parents. But now? Crickets. I have three journalists I follow online who are sharing these stories. There is nothing in my Facebook feed.

I don’t want to hear you are busy. You weren’t busy before. I don’t want to hear you have to take care of your own family. You took care of your family before. I don’t want to hear you have this family thing. You had family things before. I don’t want to hear there’s a rock concerts. There were rock concerts before. I don’t want to hear you have to work. You had to work before. I don’t want to hear whatever excuse you had before. You made the time before.

Are you not outraged because the Pacheco incidents occurred under Obama’s watch? It’s still happening. What possible excuse can anyone have for keeping silent on this?

I suspect it’s because people readily identified with the issue. They have children and thought about how horrible it would be to be if they were forcibly separated from their children. Now? Well, their children aren’t being sexually assaulted or molested so they can’t identify. It’s an icky subject that no one wants to talk about. It’s easier to ignore. They posted their outrage, but did nothing tangible to change the situation. So children are still being separated from their parents and are still being assaulted.

This isn’t funny. It’s not a joke. And, apparently, it’s not even worth your time. Who gives a shit about these kids being scarred for life? You certainly don’t. You can’t identify with it. So you don’t care. You ignore it because it makes you uncomfortable.

When these stories make national headlines, all I hear locally is the sound of crickets.