How Richard L. Bean Stayed in Power at a Tennessee Youth Detention Center Despite Scandals — ProPublica

For half a century, by scandals, investigations, failed state inspections and even the illegal use of seclusion to punish kids, Richard L. Bean remained in his perch of energy because the superintendent of the juvenile detention heart that bears his identify.

All through practically all of his tenure, there was just one physique that would take away him from his publish: a board of trustees in contrast to another within the state. New reporting by WPLN Information and ProPublica reveals that for many years the voting members of that board have been shut mates and allies of Bean’s.

Even for Knoxville, Tennessee, a metropolis identified for its old-school politics, the connection Bean has had with board members previous and current stands out. His former secretary, his private lawyer, the choose for whom he served as a marketing campaign treasurer and a pallbearer of his spouse’s casket all sat on the board over time as voting members.

“He’s simply been allowed to go unchecked,” mentioned Democratic state Rep. Sam McKenzie of Knoxville, a critic of Bean’s. “It was only a unhealthy state of affairs compounded by a rubber-stamp board that actually was attempting to guard him and never defend our kids.”

Bean, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, abruptly introduced final week that he’s resigning within the wake of a brand new scandal. Had he not chosen to go away himself, McKenzie mentioned, the board by no means would have unseated him.

“Watchdogs Over Richard”

Tennessee has 16 different county juvenile detention amenities much like the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Heart. Oversight of all of these falls to county businesses, just like the sheriff’s division, juvenile courtroom or commissioners. And some are run by non-public corporations.

In 1972, when Bean began as superintendent, the juvenile detention house in Knoxville was a city-run facility. Within the mid ’70s, it grew to become a regional facility that had 40 beds and has since grown to 3 occasions that. The creation of the board, by a legislative act, was a manner for each metropolis and county officers to keep up some say within the facility’s functioning.

The board’s mandate, as specified by the Knox County code, is to have “administrative management” over the middle, its price range and its superintendent. Although it was constituted to incorporate 10 members, solely three have voting energy. The county fee appoints two of the voting members. The county juvenile courtroom choose, who additionally sits on the board as a nonvoting member, appoints the third.

None of the present board members responded to a request for remark. Neither did six present commissioners who helped appoint the voting members now on the board. The juvenile courtroom choose, Tim Irwin, declined to remark.

Knox County lawyer Chris Coffey was a voting board member from 1999 to 2020, based on the Knoxville metropolis web site. He remembers the quarterly conferences as small — normally attended by a handful of board members, the juvenile courtroom choose and Bean, plus occasional workers members from the power.

The board solely knew what Bean informed them concerning the facility, he mentioned. The superintendent would give a presentation throughout every assembly about what number of youngsters have been within the facility, what sorts of meals they served or what number of books have been donated.

Coffey doesn’t recall any critical discussions about points on the detention heart or with Bean’s management.

“It simply by no means actually dawned on me that we have been watchdogs over Richard,” Coffey mentioned. “It by no means actually was defined to me that manner.”

“Associates of Richard’s”

Native legal professionals John Valliant, Billy Stokes and Sherry Mahar are the present voting members of the middle’s board. When Bean’s spouse, Lillian, died final 12 months, Valliant and Stokes have been listed as her pallbearers. The latter was additionally an officiant at her funeral.

Stokes labored for Bean on the heart for 3 years, calling a number of the kids there “harmful thugs” in a 1991 letter to the editor defending Bean in opposition to The Knoxville Information Sentinel’s criticism of his management. Later, Stokes represented Bean as his private lawyer when he was sued in his capability as superintendent of the middle in 2003.

Valliant, appointed to his seat on the board by the county commissioners, has represented county commissioners as their lawyer. After WPLN and ProPublica reported on Bean’s documented unlawful use of seclusion on the facility in 2023, lawmakers known as for his resignation. However Valliant informed a neighborhood TV information station that he thought the Bean Heart was “the most effective facility within the state of Tennessee.”

Mahar is a longtime lawyer in Knox County representing youngsters in juvenile courtroom. On New Yr’s Day 2025, screenshots offered to WPLN present that she wrote to Bean on Fb, “Simply desirous to say Pleased New Yr and I like you” with a crimson coronary heart emoji.

Bean’s shut relationships with the voting members of his board return years, mentioned Betty Bean, a longtime political journalist in Knox County who mentioned she’s a distant relative of the superintendent.

“Richard made his personal guidelines again within the day, and it hasn’t modified rather a lot,” she mentioned. “Many of the board are good individuals. However they’re all mates of Richard’s.”

One former board member was Bean’s secretary, who had donated cash to his spouse’s campaigns for Knox County circuit, basic periods and juvenile courtroom clerk, based on Betty Bean and native information stories on the time. And for many years, one other voting board member was Gail Jarvis, a lawyer and former Knox County Normal Classes Courtroom choose. Richard Bean was marketing campaign treasurer for Jarvis when she was working to turn into the legal courtroom choose in 1998.

Jarvis didn’t reply to a voicemail searching for remark.

“He had a number of political affect on the town,” former board member Coffey mentioned. “Again in these days, nearly anyone that ran for something — whether or not it was judicial or political — wished his blessing and endorsement.”

A few of the individuals listed as appointees to the middle’s board didn’t know they have been members till receiving a name from WPLN and ProPublica for this story.

At the least two individuals listed on a Knoxville city website as being nonvoting appointees from 1999-2020 mentioned they’d no concept they’d been members. And the East Tennessee Growth District Legislation Enforcement Advisory Committee, which is listed as having appointed the pair, has not existed for not less than 15 years, based on the top of the event district.

“That is the primary I’m listening to of it,” mentioned Terry Frank, who’s now the mayor of neighboring Anderson County. “One thing undoubtedly as essential as a juvenile board, I’d undoubtedly seem if I knew that I used to be a sitting member.” Invoice Brittain, the previous mayor of Hamblen County, mentioned the identical.

In accordance with the general public record, the board has additionally had a Knox County GOP appointee, nevertheless it has had a emptiness for a Democratic appointee since not less than 1999.

U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett was additionally a nonvoting member of the board, listed from 1999 to 2017 as town mayor’s appointee. When reached by cellphone he estimated he solely attended two conferences throughout that point.

“Anyone Was Going to Die in There”

It could have been laborious for the board to overlook that the Bean Heart was troubled.

A 1991 grand jury mentioned the power had rat issues and no rest room paper. A 2000 grand jury known as the detention heart a “shame” to the county, citing that the power was soiled to the purpose of stinking.

In 2003, allegations of sexual harassment and assault by an worker on the heart made the papers. The Division of Youngsters’s Providers mentioned it was investigating the worker and contemplating a probe of the middle. Three feminine staffers, and certainly one of their husbands who additionally labored on the heart, filed a lawsuit — later dismissed — in opposition to Bean, Knox County and the worker. The county later settled with the husband, who claimed he was demoted when his spouse threatened authorized motion.

A 2023 investigation by WPLN and ProPublica discovered the power was illegally utilizing seclusion as punishment and was persistently out of compliance with DCS, based on public data.

Stephani Clowers, the nurse whose firing set in movement Bean’s resignation, mentioned she by no means thought of going to the board for assist. She mentioned Bean brazenly informed individuals they have been his “finest mates.”

“Completely not. As a result of they might have informed him,” she mentioned. “It could’ve made issues a lot more durable.”

Clowers reported the alleged mishandling of remedy by the workers to Bean, however nothing modified, she mentioned. She hit her breaking level in 2024 when a baby on the heart was clearly in want of medical consideration “and that little one was hidden from me,” Clowers mentioned. When she was capable of see him, she known as and consulted a physician who decided that the boy must be transferred to the emergency room. Clowers mentioned the kid was by no means taken there. She reported these incidents to the DCS staff assigned to these kids after which to the state comptroller’s workplace.

“I knew then that if one thing didn’t change, someone was going to die in there,” she mentioned.

WPLN and ProPublica reached out to board members and the detention heart for remark about Clower’s allegations. Irwin, the juvenile courtroom choose who can also be on the board, declined to remark. The others didn’t reply.

Bean’s determination to fireplace Clowers was the obvious final straw for Irwin. He went to Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs.

Irwin, a former NFL participant, and Jacobs, a former skilled wrestler, wrote a letter to the 84-year-old superintendent demanding he reinstate the nurse and one other fired worker. And Jacobs looped within the governor and known as for the power to be taken out from below Bean and the board.

A day later, Bean introduced that he plans to go away on Aug. 1. He didn’t reply to requests for remark, however in 2023 he informed WPLN and ProPublica that he would keep in his place as “lengthy as Choose and my board put up with me.” He predicted that Irwin would “run him out” for unhealthy publicity.

“I’m dismayed and disillusioned by the frenzy to judgement by the Mayor, Choose Irwin, and different county leaders,” Bean wrote in his resignation letter to board member Valliant.

Clowers mentioned she was shocked that Bean determined to resign.

“I assumed he was gonna get away with it. This entire time I knew it could be me or him,” Clowers mentioned. “And when it was me it was form of devastating. I used to be like, wow, he wins once more.”

The Board’s Unknown Future

Even with Bean’s departure, the query of the board stays.

Jacobs is asking the commissioners to cross an emergency ordinance dismantling the board. He needs them to delete sections of the Knox County code concerning the board, its conferences and duties and exchange them with a brand new part that will give operation and management to the Knox County sheriff.

Commissioners who got here into workplace after the final board was appointed informed WPLN they need an investigation earlier than they reassign management of the middle to anybody. That features the sheriff, who informed WPLN in a press release that he was prepared to work with the mayor and the state “to seek out options in the most effective curiosity of the juveniles in custody.”

McKenzie, the Democratic state consultant, mentioned he doesn’t suppose giving the detention heart to the sheriff’s workplace is the reply. He pointed to a recent incident during which sheriff’s workplace SWAT deputies shot and killed a Black highschool pupil throughout a raid.

“I don’t suppose that workplace is constructed or outfitted to deal with juvenile justice,” he mentioned.

The sheriff’s workplace mentioned it takes “the security and safety of juveniles in our care very critically,” nevertheless it declined to remark additional on McKenzie’s statements.

McKenzie mentioned giving the power to the sheriff can be like saying “we wish to sweep this below the carpet,” holding “Knox County enterprise inside Knox County.”

That sort of insular “good outdated boys” perspective, he mentioned, created this downside within the first place.