MASSILLON, Ohio — An Ohio corrections officer says nothing will change at a facility where violent teens are serving time until those teens are held accountable for staff assaults.
Tara Patris says staff at the Indian River Juvenile Correctional Facility need help. She wrote to Gov. Mike DeWine on March 30 after back-to-back assaults, including one on a fellow corrections officer.
Patris regrets not saying something sooner.
“When I saw her blood on the floor, I guess knowing that it could have been worse and the fact that she could have died, that something needs to be done,” Patris said.
Patris is a corrections officer at one of Ohio’s adult prisons, but works the weekends at Indian River in Massillon.
She says she was there two weeks ago when another visiting prison guard was beaten and knocked out.
“The one youth that did this to her, he did it to three other people prior, violent assaults where they got seriously hurt, he’s going to keep doing it if nothing happens to him,” Patris said.
Patris was so horrified by the violent attack on her colleague that she wrote DeWine begging him to do something.
In her email, she described how the 14-year-old laughed and threw up gang signs when asked why he did it.
She told DeWine the assaults on staff are happening very frequently lately, and policies need to change.
“It’s still the DYS facility with more violence than any other,” OCSEA President Chris Mabe said.
In a rare move two weeks ago, the Department of Youth Services stopped taking in teens at Indian River for one month.
The director told judges they can’t send kids there because of safety and staffing shortages.
That same day, union leaders visited staff at Indian River after back-to-back assaults.
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“They want people in here to basically keep your mouth shut, your head down, and your eyes open, and we’re sick and tired of our people getting beat up,” Mabe said.
Indian River houses 149 teens. Patris says a lot of them are in gangs with older teens grooming the younger ones.
“If they’re not doing the aggression, they’re the ones ordering the aggression,” Patris said.
In January, surveillance video at Indian River shows when a 15-year-old boy was paralyzed from the neck down, his mom says, after a fight with another teen in a day room.
In October 2022, 12 teens barricaded themselves in a school building on campus, which led to a nearly 12-hour standoff.
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“It’s a sad situation because they are in their rooms a lot,” Patris said.
The state brought in people from adult prisons, such as Patris, as a stopgap measure.
In 2023, the state also created a working group that recommended smaller facilities.
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But Patris says they need more people, and if conditions don’t change, Indian River will lose more staff, and no one will sign up to replace them.
“You’re getting stuff thrown on you; urine, feces and you’re getting punched, and it’s almost every single day if not twice a day three times a day. We did not sign up for that, and you’re not going to keep staff,” Patris said.
DYS says those 18 and older who commit a serious felonious assault can be transferred to the Stark County jail, and if convicted, they’ll go to adult prison.
The working group recommended that the General Assembly approve new funding to help prosecutors with felony cases, but in an updated report, stated it didn’t get the full funding in the governor’s budget.
DYS issued the following statement regarding the matter:
"We take all assaults committed by any youth seriously. It's also important to note that at Indian River, within the first quarter of this year, an average of 84% of the youth had no acts of violence against staff or youth in any given month."
