Nightmare In Pleasantville

In appearance at least, Pleasantville Cottage School seems aptly named. The campus--a residential treatment center for troubled foster kids--sits serenely on a hilltop 25 miles north of New York City. Maple trees and weeping sycamores tremble in the wind. In a girl's room in one of the bucolic cottages there's a bed crowded with teddy bears, and pink walls plastered with posters of Bob Marley. But on Feb. 7 at around 11:15 p.m., horror struck. Eight female residents of Cottage 12, age 14 to 16, brutally attacked the lone night counselor minutes after she reported for duty. They snatched away her cordless phone and beat her on the head with it. "Don't hit me, don't hit me!" the petite counselor pleaded, according to the account her mother gave to a neighbor. The assault grew more vicious. The girls chopped the counselor's hair with scissors, doused her with rubbing alcohol, set her aflame, threw her down two flights of stairs and poured bleach on her raw flesh. Only when one of the girls spotted a staffer walking outside did the torture, which lasted more than an hour, finally end. At their arraignment several days later, some of the girls giggled.

The assault capped a string of disturbing incidents at the Cottage School. In the same week, four boys tried to sodomize a fellow resident with a cucumber, two boys stole a school car and caused two accidents during their joyride, and another boy was charged with sexual misconduct. The school, one of the oldest and best-respected facilities of its kind in the country, is now in a state of siege--facing possible litigation, the withering glare of the media and a state probe into New York's residential treatment centers. More broadly, the episodes have raised worrisome questions about the state of the nation's foster-care system. Is this an especially awful but aberrant case? Or is it an omen of more troubles to come?

Statistics are hard to come by, but child-welfare advocates suggest that incidents of violence at foster-care facilities may be on the rise. The reason: disturbed and volatile kids who were once housed in the crammed mental-health system are now often routed to treatment centers. Cuts in public funding are exacerbating the problem, crippling places plagued by high turnover by stripping them of resources to attract qualified staff. Add in a spike in violent crime committed by girls (even as the overall juvenile crime rate is dropping), and you've got what Gail Nayowith of the Citizens' Committee for Children of New York calls "a recipe for disaster." To combat the trend, states like Florida are replacing therapeutic programs with high-security housing. "We've built a lot more correctional beds than residential treatment facilities," says Robert McKeagney of the Child Welfare League.

The crisis at Pleasantville is all the more disturbing because it is regarded as a model facility; founded in 1912, it was the first place in the country to adopt the cottage model to replace the cold and imposing institutions common at the time. Today, the school provides its nearly 200 students with an array of specialists--psychiatrists, social workers, vocational counselors--on a rolling 175-acre campus. "It really helped me out," says Rafaelina, 17, a sweet-faced resident at one of the cottages. "Before, I didn't know how to control myself."

Not that the Cottage School hasn't had problems in the past. In 1994 a 13-year-old boy strangled a 12-year-old to death. The counselor attacked by the gang of girls was also assaulted by residents of Cottage 12 last August (she insisted on returning to the same post, according to school officials). In recent years, in fact, the increase in crimes by Cottage School students has led one local judge to call himself the school's "dean of discipline," says a local attorney. School administrators take these developments seriously. They've solicited a security review by Kroll Associates, which will be probing such questions as why the school did not have two counselors on duty that awful night, as its policies require.

The school's soul-searching has just begun. What prompted the girls to lash out so savagely remains a mystery. But the wreckage is unmistakable. Seven girls with already ravaged lives (one remains at large) have been charged as adults with attempted murder and may face sentences of up to 10 or 25 years. The counselor they attacked, released from the hospital late last week, is still nursing her wounds. And the Cottage School--as well as the nation--is left to figure out how to make Pleasantville pleasant again.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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