An investigation is currently being performed at Goshen Secure Center, a facility that houses convicted criminals too young to be immediately placed in state prisons, over a "social gathering" that allegedly ended in multiple sexual acts between minors. On December 12th, 2009, the residential center allowed some convicted killers and gang bangers to choose "the girls they wanted to have attend" a little party they were throwing. They chose a 15-year-old and a "suspected prostitute," both of whom proceeded to give the teens lap dances and possibly oral sex. Security officer Antonio Collado told the Post, "There was a girl getting her pants pulled down and getting ready to be penetrated from the rear."
Collado says this happened after the girl had already performed oral sex on the resident, and the gathering was quickly broken up after they figured out what was going on. Collado actually drove the two women to the dance at the request of the residents, a four-hour trip from their "street corner" in Albany to the residential center, and background checks identified one as a "suspected prostitute" who had received $100 in the mail from one of the residents. It is unclear why the residential center went out of their way to bring the girls to the dance.
The Office of Children and Family Services supports holding socials "as part of our way of incentivizing good behavior," according to Commissioner Gladys Carrion, but they, State Inspector General Joseph Fisch and the Department of Correctional Services are all investigating Goshen Secure Center to see if behavior like this happened often. The investigation was sparked after state Senator Catharine Young visited a different center and was shocked by the behavior, and asked, "What if one of the residents get into a fight over one of the women?" Collado said he had never seen anything like that incident in his 38 years with the OCFS.
