Huffington Magazine Issue 73 | Page 64

CHRIS McGONIGAL PRISONERS OF PROFIT [the boy] from breathing and she feared from [sic] his life.” After she screamed at the staff member to let the boy go, he dropped him to the floor, leaving the boy with a bloody nose. When the Pembroke Pines Police Department called the staffer to follow up, he replied: “This ain’t no big deal,” while refusing to answer questions, according to the report. At YSI’s Broward Girls Academy, a 30-bed program less than a mile away from Thompson, HUFFINGTON 11.03.13 18-year-old Destinee Bowers didn’t want to go to an evening church service last year. Normally she was permitted to stay in a dayroom, she said, but staff members declined to watch her, instead ordering her to go to church. According to Bowers, when she refused, a staff member tried to pull her out of her bed. She resisted, she said, prompting the staffer to choke her. “I was trying to tell her, ‘I can’t resist, you’ve got my arms, you’ve got my throat,’” Bowers recalled. She said once the staff member released her, she started throwing up. She asked to call the 24- Bowers with her mother, Jeanna, at their Orlando, Fla., home.