Woman claims she lost her job because she reported incidents in which teen offenders were verbally abused and struck by school employees.
By: Al Wicklund
MONROE A former state Training School for Boys counselor has charged that she became a target of school administrators after complaining about alleged abuse of inmates.
Marta Torres, 48, said, in a lawsuit filed last week in state Superior Court in New Brunswick, she was harassed and lost her job because she reported incidents in which teen offenders were verbally abused and struck by school employees.
Ms. Torres, who worked as a bilingual drug abuse counselor at the corrections facility, said she began working at the state facility in September 1999 and within weeks submitted a written report about her supervisor pulling a 14-year-old from his chair and kicking him because he made a complaint about the facility’s substance abuse program.
Ms. Torres’ attorney, Laurie Bice, said her client received a three-day suspension for insubordination and conduct unbecoming to a state employee and was later fired.
Sharon Lauchaire, a spokeswoman for the Juvenile Justice Commission, which is responsible for the training school, said she had not seen any of the lawsuit documents and could not comment on the suit.
She said, however, the commission has policies against abuse of inmates that are strictly enforced.
The suit filed by Ms. Bice on behalf of Ms. Torres named as defendants the New Jersey Training School for Boys at Monroe, the state Department of Law and Public Safety, including the attorney general’s office and the Juvenile Justice Commission, Ms. Torres’ supervisors and several other employees of the training school.