‘They made it up’: Landry’s juvenile justice nominee rejects abuse claims at facility he ran

Gov. Jeff Landry’s controversial pick to run state juvenile justice services declared a news investigation that exposed dozens of allegations of abuse and violence at the juvenile detention center he ran for decades was full of lies.

“I wish I could erase that article, but I can’t,” said Kenneth “Kenny” Loftin, during his preliminary confirmation hearing before the Louisiana Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday. “That’s a flat out lie. That did not happen.”

In 2022, The New York Times and the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism published a lengthy article describing rampant child abuse and neglect at Ware Youth Center in Coushatta over decades. 

Loftin is not directly accused of committing abuse in the report, but his time overseeing the facility overlaps with many of the violent allegations reported in the article.

He ran Ware from 1983 to 2015 and again from 2021 to October 2023. Earlier this year, Landry gave him a bigger job running Louisiana’s Office of Juvenile Justice, which oversees multiple juvenile prisons, group homes and supervision services for minors. 

Landry’s decision has alarmed several state legislators, particularly members of the Black Caucus, who released a statement opposing Loftin’s appointment.

“Mr. Loftin’s past reported actions have shown he cannot be trusted to protect the children of Louisiana,” the caucus said in February. 

The Times investigation said 42 people held at Ware over a 25-year period described being sexually abused in interviews and documents. Many of the instances of alleged abuse would have taken place when Loftin was in charge.

“So they made it up?” Sen. Gary Carter, a Black Caucus member from New Orleans, asked Loftin about the allegations.

“Yes. They made it up,” Loftin replied this week.

‘No information’ in inspector general’s report

In his previous work running Ware, Loftin said he embraced the Missouri model for juvenile justice, which focuses on rehabilitation and discourages punitive measures. As head of the Office of Juvenile Justice, he also said would not be focused exclusively on disciplining youth. 

During the hearing, Loftin announced plans to set up a separate facility for young adults incarcerated in juvenile prisons – those 18, 19 and 20 years old — where they can learn job skills. While people enter the juvenile justice system as minors, they can stay in those facilities until they reach 21. 

“That way, we can get them away from the younger youth that we have,” he said. 

Loftin didn’t get to spend much of his confirmation hearing talking about his plans for the future of juvenile justice in Louisiana. Instead, he had to focus on defending his tenure at Ware.

During the hearing, Loftin repeatedly claimed he had been cleared of wrongdoing by the Louisiana Office of the Inspector General. The agency released a letter months ago under pressure from the governor, saying it had “no information” that would disqualify Loftin from serving in state government.

At the time, the inspector general had been wrapping up a two-year investigation into Ware, but the probe wasn’t focused on Loftin’s tenure at the facility. Instead, the inspector general was focused on Ware’s history from 2018 to 2022, years when Loftin was mostly not working at the facility, according to a report released last week.   

The inspector general’s Ware investigation was prompted by The Times article but didn’t necessarily look into most of the alleged abuse, which took place several years ago. 

‘Their goal was to shut Ware down’

Under questioning from lawmakers this week, Loftin said he doubted the abuse described in The Times article took place, in part because the former child detainees making the allegations didn’t report it to authorities at the time.

“There were multiple opportunities for kids to make complaints, and we never heard those,” he told senators. 

But the recent inspector general’s report shows that, at least over the past five years, most complaints of sexual abuse at Ware are deemed unsubstantiated. Local law enforcement officials in Coushatta, who sit on the board that oversees Ware, only found six of 44 reports of sexual abuse from the incarcerated youth at Ware to be credible from 2017 to 2022. 

At the confirmation hearing, Loftin characterized The Times investigation – which mostly focused on alleged violence from several years ago – as a “hit piece.” He said the story was only published because a woman whose son died by suicide at Ware, when Loftin wasn’t running the facility, had pushed her agenda onto reporters.

Bridget Peterson, whose 13-year-old son Solan died at Ware in 2019, is quoted extensively in The Times story, though Loftin didn’t mention her by name in his comments to lawmakers. 

“Their goal was to shut Ware down,” Loftin said of the reporters who wrote the story.

Three children, including Solan, died by suicide at Ware between 2018 to 2022, according to the Office of the Inspector General, though none of those incidents took place when Loftin was in charge. When he ran Ware, there were no deaths by suicide at the facility, Loftin told the senators. 

“We had never had a negative article about us until that report came out,” Loftin said. 

Loftin also said he hadn’t read The Times story personally.

“I understand that the article was written. I didn’t even read it. I read over it,” he said. 

Confirmation chances 

Though his confirmation hearing took place this week, Loftin isn’t expected to come up for a vote until later this month, when the full Senate considers hundreds of Landry’s appointees to state jobs. The Senate confirmation process takes place in secret, and the public is not privy to their discussions about the governor’s picks.

Senators typically only reject a gubernatorial appointee if the senator who represents the district where the appointee lives opposes their nomination. In Loftin’s case, he is represented by Sen. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport, who is a close ally of Landry’s.

There are some indications Loftin will run into other problems during his confirmation, however. 

Senate Pro Tempore Regina Barrow, a member of the Black Caucus, also sat in on Loftin’s hearing this week, an unusual move for the Senate leadership.

She questioned Loftin extensively about The New York Times report, asking about statements made by Glenn Holt, a former assistant secretary of the Office of Juvenile Justice, about Loftin that appeared in the news article. 

“[Loftin would] make comments like, ‘If at any point I don’t want to pay with these guys, I’m not worried,’” Holt told The Times. “‘Cause if I shut my doors, I guarantee you got sheriffs, you got local law enforcement, you got people, judges that are going to be screaming at D.C.F.S. ‘What the hell are you doing? You’re jeopardizing public safety.’”

In response to Barrow’s questions, Loftin responded: “The state of Louisiana knows him. That’s all I’m going to say about Mr. Holt.”

Perhaps sensing his confirmation faces some hurdles, Loftin gathered a large number of letters of recommendations from local law enforcement officials and juvenile justice experts in support of his appointment.

He also pointed out the Louisiana Senate had already confirmed him once before, in 2016, when former Gov. John Bel Edwards appointed Loftin to serve on the state pardon and parole board. The process took place five years before The Times investigation on Ware came out.

“There’s a lot of things that happened between [2016] and present,” Sen. Cleo Fields, a Black Caucus member, told Loftin at the hearing.

A few Republicans on the committee went out of their way to defend Loftin. 

Sen. Mike Reese, R-Leesville, said David Burton, the former district attorney for his home Beauregard Parish, reached out to him specifically to support Loftin.

Reese said he was glad Loftin wasn’t going to let “one uncorroborated hit piece in the media” derail his career. 

“I want to share with you the trust I have in Mr. Burton and the trust that I have in you,” Reese said.

Ten people, including former Ware staff members and former child detainees, were identified by their full names when describing the alleged violence that took place at the facility in The Times report. Several also appeared in photos alongside the story. 

“You understand how it’s hard for us to just dismiss allegations,” Carter told Loftin. “I can’t just dismiss them and say, ‘Hey. I talked to the guy. He said it’s just flat lies.”