Louisiana Voice

In a follow-up to our story of Dec. 24 about that $450,000 judgment against the St. Tammany Parish School Board in the case of the 2007 RAPE of an 11-year-old boy by a custodian at Abney Elementary School in Slidell, LouisianaVoice has learned more disturbing details about how the school board handled the matter.

Apparently, it wasn’t enough that the board offered a paltry settlement that wouldn’t have even cover the medical expenses of the victim, and apparently it wasn’t enough that the board had the insensitivity and the brass to appeal the judgement (which was upheld on appeal), but now we learned that the board:

• Did not follow up with appropriate action (firing) when the background check on Dino Schwertz came back showing that he had lied on his job application when he checked “No” to the question of “Have you ever pleaded guilty or no contest to or been convicted of a criminal offense?”
• Fid not inform his principal when that background check revealed that Schwertz was still on probation for a bank fraud conviction and for violation of a protective order.
• Inexplicably transferred him to a permanent job at Northshore High School.

The vice-principal at Northshore at that time was Frank Jabbia.

He was PROMOTED to St. Tammany Parish School Superintendent last October.

His father, Peter Jabbia, was Deputy Superintendent when Schwertz was first hired at Abney and in June 2020, was appointed interim superintendent until his son was appointed superintendent four months later. He also served as a member of both the Louisiana Association of School Executives and American Association of School Administrators.

Kathleen Katorchis, who was principal at Abney at the time of Schwertz’s hiring, testified in a sworn deposition in the lawsuit cited above that Schwertz’s lying on the employment application would have prompted her to recommend firing him but she was not informed of the background check’s contents. He was eventually fired – months later and only after school officials learned he was being investigated by Slidell police.

So, why didn’t Katorchis know about the results of the background check?

Well, that would be because Deputy Superintendent Peter Jabbia didn’t inform her of the results and the information in the background report was never checked against his application.

The lawsuit by Schwertz’s victim said no one in the school system checked Schwertz’s references or called his current employer for a reference. Attorneys for the school system even argued that none of the information it had about Schwertz (in the background check) would have raised any red flags as to the possibility that he might harm children (and thus, apparently, would not disqualify him from employment).

Would not have raised any red flags? Seriously?

So, why have the question on the application at all, then?

So, Louisiana’s junior U.S. senator is teaming up with that constitutional scholar Tommy Tuberville and nine other senators and senators-elect to challenge Joe Biden’s victory over President Tweet Thang in the November election that the Tweeter-in-Chief lost by more than 7 million votes.

John Neely Kennedy’s decision to embark on this exercise in futility should make his Louisiana constituents very proud. We have a damned fool wasting his time on this B.S. effort to undermine the nation’s democratic process while 350,000 Americans have died of coronavirus (that’s more than half the 675,000 Americans who died in the Spanish Flu pandemic – which lasted more than two years, compared to one year of coronavirus so far).

Instead of trying to learn why the Trump administration fell more than 16 million short of the 20 million who were supposed to receive the vaccinations by Dec. 31, he would rather grandstand, pontificate and spew his homey Foghorn Leghorn banalities as he always does (Name one thing he’s done in four years in the Senate other than run his mouth).

Kennedy is going to spend his time on this fruitless challenge even as we learn of a massive computer hack of our government by Russians.

Kennedy feels this Rudy Giuliani-esque exercise is more important than the bounties paid by Russia to Taliban militants to kill Americans.

Kennedy would rather grandstand and garner face time on network television than take a serious interest in helping millions of Americans – including Louisianans – who are out of work, facing eviction, losing unemployment benefits and going hungry.

Kennedy would prefer to reject the decision of the American people in a democratic election in order to suck up to Trump. Remember when the Republicans (and Trump) were saying IMPEACHMENT was part of an attempt to NULLIFY the 2016 election?

Kennedy would rather stand with Tuberville and nine other crackpots than take his job as senator seriously.

Why do I single out Tuberville over the other nine who are continuing their attempt to thwart the democratic process when 60 – count ‘em, 60 – court challenges of the election have already proved unsuccessful? Kennedy says he wants the legal process to play out. Well, it has, John Boy, it has.

But let’s return to Tuberville.

It’s not like he’s squeaky clean himself. He was just a little too close to JOHN DAVID STROUD for my comfort. I know, that’s guilt by association. But let’s not forget that he was a co-defendant in that fraud LAWSUIT that claimed the two partners mixed clients’ assets with their own, failed to filed tax returns, falsified fund performance reports and “generally disregarded and violated customary practices and procedures followed in the hedge fund and security investments industry.”

Tuberville, the former head football coach at Auburn, was head coach of Texas Tech at the time and by the time he SETTLED the lawsuit, he was head coach at the University of Cincinnati. Looks like somebody has trouble holding a job.

Tuberville claimed that Stroud merely used his name, that he was an investor “just like everyone else” who lost money. But the fact is, he was a 50-50 partner with Stroud in TS Capital Partners – that’s “T” for Tuberville and “S” for Stroud.

Of course, terms of the lawsuit settlement were confidential, as is the trend these days. When Tuberville ran for the Senate in Alabama, his campaign was asked to release the plaintiffs from the settlement’s confidentiality agreement.

The campaign refused to do so. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

But that’s nothing compared to Tuberville’s grasp of basic civics and American history. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank probably had the best take on Tuberville who probably (to paraphrase LBJ on Gerald Ford) played too much football without a helmet (as opposed to Kennedy who talks like he played too much without a cup). But since there is a paywall to The Post, I’ll just borrow a few of Milbank’s examples of the wit and wisdom of Tommy Tuberville:

His dad, for example, “fought…in Europe to free Europe of socialism.” That might be news to Hitler and the Nazis as well as a few million WWII combatants.

In 2000, he told the Alabama Daily News, “Al Gore…was president-elect for 30 days.” He probably should have been, but the Supreme Court ruled otherwise. The actual number of days Gore was president-elect was…0, zero, zilch, nada, nil – as in none.

Of the opioid epidemic, he informs us, “It’s not just opioids now, it’s heroin.”

On health care, he cited the need to “open up” a health-care system “where we have more than one insurance company.” Really? There are 952 health insurance companies in the U.S.

He said he wanted to serve on the Senate “banking finance” committee. Banking and Finance are separate committees and besides, he is ineligible to serve on Banking because Alabama’s senior Republican senator, Richard Shelby, already is on that committee. And speaking of his desire to be a member of the “banking finance” committee, did I mention that fraud business with that hedge fund with John David Stroud? Did I also mention that a lawsuit over the hedge fund (read: Ponzi scheme) resulted in a confidential settlement?

Rural hospitals have closed, he said, “because we don’t have Internet.”

In discussing the “three branches of government,” he named “the House, the Senate and the executive.”

On the Voting Rights Act: “Who’s it going to help?”

On constitutional democracy: “We’d probably get more done with just the president running this country. So, let the Democrats go home.”

On education: “We’re going to educate several generations in this country that really don’t understand this country.”

Looks like he’s got a jump on the rest of us on that last one.

As for John Neely Kennedy: Just shut the hell up and do your damned job.

When Baton Rouge’s Bucky Richardson was raising eyebrows with his outstanding quarterback play at Texas A&M, his then-brother-in-law Charles Dupuy was a regular sight as he barreled west along I-10 at 80-90 mph with his family as they headed to College Station to watch Bucky play – in a Louisiana State Police vehicle assigned to Dupuy.

It was not the last out-of-state pleasure trip for a vehicle assigned to Dupuy, of course.

Bucky played for the Aggies from 1987-1991, so those out-of-state pleasure sojourns to Aggieland in an official state vehicle preceded the infamous 2015 San Diego trip in the vehicle assigned to Dupuy that led to former State Police Commander Mike Edmonson’s departure by several years but may well have established the precedent for using state vehicles for unofficial out-of-state travel.

Dupuy is no longer Bucky’s brother-in-law, having divorced Richardson’s sister, and as of May 2018, he is no longer a Louisiana State Trooper. Following the purge of Mike Edmonson’s inner circle following Edmonson’s own ouster in 2017, he was demoted from the rank of lieutenant colonel to major.

Dupuy, long considered as Edmonson’s heir-apparent before that San Diego trip disrupted those plans, may now be referred to simply as plaintiff.

Dupuy, it seems, is SUING his old employer. He’s not suing for job discrimination or anything like that; he’s suing in connection with an auto accident he had with….a state trooper.

Dupuy is claiming in his lawsuit, filed in 19^th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge, that Trooper William Ray Stogner blew a red light and slammed into Dupuy’s 2019 Dodge Ram on LA. 446 near U.S. 190 in Tangipahoa.

Stogner, the lawsuit says, was allegedly responding to a call with his emergency lights activated. But the lawsuit claims that the call to which Stogner was responding did not require emergency sirens and did not allow Stogner to disregard traffic signals or the safety of the public.

Dupuy claims in his lawsuit that the Department of Public Safety “caused and/or contributed to the subject collision due to their negligent hiring, training and/or supervision” of Stogner.

But here’s the thing:

When Dupuy was DEMOTED from Lieutenant colonel to major in March 2017, he was sent to the State Police Academy. His new title was Command Inspector, Training.

He served in that capacity from March 31, 2017, until his retirement on May 7, 2018. He was making $140,800 a year at the time of his retirement.

Stogner? He entered the State Police Academy on Nov. 5, 2017. Academy training lasts from 12 to 18 weeks. He was listed as a cadet from Nov. 5, 2017 until Nov. 11, 2018, because new troopers are on probationary status for their first year.

That means that for the duration of Stogner’s time training at the academy, one Maj. Charles Dupuy was Command Inspector, Training, for the Louisiana State Police Academy.

So, the man who is suing his former employer for negligent training and supervision was himself responsible for Stogner’s training and supervision for the entire time that Stogner attended the academy.

That should make for some interesting cross-examination testimony if this case ever goes to trial.

But unless things have undergone a dramatic change i.e., a complete makeover, in the good ol’ boy network at LSP, this could be one of those cases that is settled quietly, out of the public eye and where settlement terms are deemed “confidential” so that Louisiana taxpayers who ultimately foot the bill will never know settlement amounts or attorney fees.

William Ray Stogner – State Police Cadet:   11/05/2017 – 11/14/2018

Charles Dupuy – Major, State Police Academy, Command Inspector, Training: 03/31/2017 – 05/07/2018

St. Tammany Parish, that bastion of Republican conservatism nestled on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, most assuredly has a critical need for a political image makeover.

A few examples of political skulduggery from the parish named in honor of Lenape Chief Tamanend:

• Former District Attorney WALTER REED was sentenced to four years in federal prison for political corruption.
• Former Sheriff Jack Strain was first accused of political corruption in connection with a WORK RELEASE PROGRAM run from the parish jail and then was arrested after leaving office for RAPE and INCEST.
• Two of Strain’s DEPUTIES, Captains Clifford “Skip” Keen, Jr., and David Hanson, Sr., pleaded guilty to conspiracy to wire fraud and soliciting a bribe in February 2019.
• But then neither Strain nor his successor, Randy Smith, have proved capable of making an arrest in the July 2017 murder of NANETTE KRENTEL.
• Former St. Tammany sheriff’s deputy HENRI WALKER was sentenced in 2006 to five years in prison for possession of marijuana, crack cocaine and ecstasy.
• Two years later, former junior high school assistant principal MARK CARPENTER was sentenced to 30 years in prison for raping a 6-year-old girl and for possessing child pornography in 1986 – before he was hired by the St. Tammany Parish school system.
• Another ex-St. Tammany Parish sheriff’s deputy, JORDAN HOLLENBECK was sentenced to two years in prison in 2019 for alerting drug dealers they were under investigation.
• School board member SHARON LO DRUCKER said this month that she will resign after her second arrest for shoplifting.
• Former parish coroner PETER GALVAN was sentenced to two years in federal prison in 2014 for conspiring to steal government funds from the coroner’s office. He was also fined $5,000 and ordered to make restitution of more nearly $200,000.
• Former Mandeville Mayor EDDIE PRICE was sentenced to 64 months in federal prison on corruption and income tax evasion charges in June 2010.

But perhaps the unkindest cut of all (with apologies to Julius Caesar) came in the form of a Dec. 17 decision by the First Circuit Court of Appeal that UPHELD an award of more than $450,000 to a 24-year-old man who was raped by a school custodian when he was an 11-year-old, fourth-grade special education student at Abney Elementary School in 2007.

So, why would such an award be considered unkind? For three reasons. First, the very fact that the trial court’s award was even appealed by the school board (or that the case even went to trial in the first place, for that matter) and second, the appeal court’s decision was by a 3-2 vote when it should have been unanimous.

Justices Ray Chutz and J. Michael McDonald dissented.

And just why do I feel that the school board bears responsibility in this matter?

The doctrine of respondeat superior comes immediately to mind. That’s the Latin term for “let the master answer” for actions taken by an employee during the course of his employment.

The school board had taken the absolutely absurd position that the custodian, a fine, upstanding individual named Dino Schwertz, had committed the rape during his lunch break and was not acting within the scope of his employment – even though the attack occurred in a school rest room during school hours and on school grounds.

Moreover, the school board, in its appeal, conveniently overlooked the inconvenient fact that it did a pretty crappy job of vetting Schwertz in 2007, who had checked “NO” on the employment application that asked, “Have you ever plead (sic) guilty or no contest or been convicted of a criminal offense? (You’d think school board personnel would know how to spell pled or pleaded – either would be acceptable in the past tense, but not “plead.”):

Louisiana law requires schools to conduct criminal background checks on janitors but Schwertz’s background check wasn’t completed for three months and the law allows temporary employment until the background checks come back.

It turned out that Schwertz was on PROBATION for bank fraud and had a second criminal conviction for violation of a protective order. But the principal who hired him testified that she was never given his background check to review after it was returned to the school board.

It also turned out that Schwertz’s stepfather is a Slidell city council member.

Schwertz was convicted in a 2009 criminal trial on charges of aggravated rape and molestation of a juvenile for the assaults on the victim in this case as well as at least four other children at the school who later came forward to say they had been raped or molested by Schwertz (some reports put the number at 14). He is currently serving a life sentence plus 20 years.

The third reason is that even for a place like St. Tammany, with its All-Star roster of corrupt public officials, the school board’s defense of the lawsuit represents a classic breach of ethics that, even in a state where ethics flouting is a way of life, went way over the top.

The St. Tammany District Attorney’s office prosecuted Schwertz in the criminal rape case cited here.

But when the victim’s family sued the school board for negligence, who do you suppose defended the board in the civil proceedings?

Why, that would be none other than Assistant District Attorney Harry Pastuszek, who represents the board through his private practice but who was assigned that job by former DA Reed, who wrote in a LETTER to then-board President Elizabeth Heintz in 2013 that “Harry will continue to provide legal services to the board as he has done in the past.”

And during the 2018 civil trial who do think dispatched an associate to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola to take a sworn statement from Schwertz – the same person the district attorney’s office had successfully prosecuted?

Again, that would be none other than Assistant District Attorney Harry Pastuszek.

Just to reiterate in order to be sure you understand: The DA’s office prosecuted Schwertz, who raped an 11-year-old boy in a school rest room where he worked, and an assistant district attorney who may or may not have had access to information from the school board in the criminal trial or information from the rape victim in the civil trial DEFENDED the board in the ensuing civil lawsuit.

One might normally think the district attorney, knowing one of his assistants was representing the board, would have recused his office from the criminal prosecution. One might also assume that Pastuszek, knowing his boss had prosecuted Schwertz in the earlier criminal matter, would have recused himself from participation in the civil lawsuit.

But this is Louisiana, folks, and we have that wonderful Gold Standard of governmental ethics that protects the citizenry from any official chicanery.

That whistleblower’s complaint by a former nurse at the LASALLE CORRECTIONS-run Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia has just exploded into a major class-action federal lawsuit that lays bare the widespread practice of unwanted hysterectomies performed on female detainees that, if not condoned, then were at least allowed by Ruston-based LaSalle Corrections and a host of co-defendants, including Attorney General William Barr and Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf.

The lawsuit, lodged in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, was filed by 14 women on behalf of a “main class” of 60 women and a “retaliation sub-class,” claims that a doctor who only five years was among a group of doctors at Irwin County Hospital who settled a MEDICAID FRAUD CASE for $520,000, performed unwanted hysterectomies on female detainees after telling each of the women they had ovarian cysts or, in one case, a benign tumor.

In several of the cases, follow-up examinations by another doctor revealed no such condition existed.

Claims asserted in the 154-page COMPLAINT bring to mind the infamous “Tuskegee Study” of the effects of syphilis on Black men in which victims were allowed to go untreated for the disease.

Like the Tuskegee victims, the federal detainees at the LaSalle-run facility were not informed of the medical procedures being performed on them. Unlike Tuskegee, the women from the Irwin County Detention Center were not volunteers and had no say in their treatment or choice of doctors.

Among the claims of the plaintiffs:

• Subjecting them to unconstitutional and unlawful practices;
• Retaliating against petitioners for bringing the suit;
• Retaliating against or otherwise deterring petitioners from testifying in federal court proceedings or otherwise participating in any investigation or legal action related to their detention or abuse, including deportations;
• Removing witnesses needed in connection with an ongoing criminal investigation.

The last claim involved either placing witnesses in solitary confinement or transferring them to another area in order to conceal them from congressional investigators – and warning witnesses to keep their mouths shut and not talk to investigators.

Defendants, besides Wolf, Barr, and LaSalle, include:

• U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE);
• Thomas Giles, Acting Director of the Atlanta Field Office of ICE;
• Tony Pham, Senior Official performing the duties of ICE director;
• Cesar Ciprian, Supervisory Detention and Deportation Officer of ICE Atlanta Field Office;
• Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC);
• David Paulk, warden of Irwin County Detention Center;
• Hospital Authority of Irwin County;
• Dr. Mahendra Amin, the doctor who performed the surgical procedures on the detainees, and
• Various other officials and employees of ICE, LaSalle, and Irwin County Detention Center.

Amin, who also is accused of indiscriminately administering Depo, aka birth control, shots, invariably would perform painful vaginal examinations on the women and declare that they had ovarian cysts and were in need of surgery, paid for, of course, by Medicaid.

The women claimed in their petition that they were coerced to sign consent forms printed only in English even though they did not understand English and no interpreters were provided.

Moreover, some of the women, including a 16-year-old were required to fully disrobe in the presence of a guard who refused to leave the examination room – even during vaginal examinations.

One of the women, 35-year-old Jenel Haug, described her experience as “the most medical way of being raped you could possibly experience.”

The “main class” is defined in the lawsuit as “All individuals who were subjected to non-consensual, medically unindicated, and/or invasive gynecological procedures while they were detained in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at the Irwin County Detention Center.”

The proposed “retaliation sub-class” was defined as “All individuals who, after speaking out about or protesting experiencing non-consensual, medically unindicated, and/or invasive gynecological procedures while they were detained in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at the Irwin County Detention Center, were subject to retaliation by ICE and ICDC respondents.”

“The Main Class and the Retaliation Sub-Class are so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable,” the petition says. “There are at least 60 individuals who are members of the Main Class. Given the rampant, systematic retaliation against petitioners and putative class members, many of the at least 60 individuals are also members of the Retaliation Sub-Class.”

The petition says that because ICE contracts with Irwin County, which in turn contracts with LaSalle, for the operation of the detention facility, “ICDC, LaSalle, and their employees, agents and officers are state or local actors and subject to suit…independent of whether they may also be considered federal actors because they are engaging in the core federal function of civil immigration detention.”

Shortly before a congressional delegation, led by Sen. Corey Booker of New Jersey, arrived at ICDC, the defendants and their employees/contractors transferred some survivors of the alleged medical abuse to a different area that was not scheduled for inspection by the delegation. Defendants ordered the women not to speak to any of the congressmembers.

One of the women, Yanira Yesenia Oldaker, on Oct. 28, provided a declaration and list of victims to her attorneys. Four days later, her commissary account was “zeroed-out,” in preparation for her deportation. Only the intervention of her attorneys prevented her forced exit from the country.

Others were not so fortunate despite court rulings that say the deportation of a material witness in a criminal proceeding may establish a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

“Respondents have acted in bad faith by deporting several petitioners within days, and in some cases, within hours, of (their) coming forward and sharing their experiences at ICDC,” the petition says. “By deporting or threatening to deport petitioners in this case, respondents have infringed on the rights of all petitioners to a full and fair hearing on their claims.”

LaSalle has been cited on numerous occasions for negligence, a lack of proper training for employees, falsification of records, and even for failure to pay benefits for employees (see HERE, HERE and HERE, and it was recently announced that it would be TERMINATING ITS CONTRACT to run the Bowie County Bi-State Jail in Texarkana on Feb. 12 after a number of lawsuits over wrongful deaths, injuries and abusive treatment at the facility.

One of the promises made by Joe Biden in his successful campaign for president was to abolish the practice of private prisons.