Riggs on Parole but Still Embroiled With Prison Hierarchy

By Richard C. Widman

David Riggs is working in

a pizza parlor to support himself while attending

classes at Ohio University. Despite his heavy sched-

ule of work and study, he continues to fight for the civil rights of juvenile delinquents.

RIGGS IS constantly at his desk writing letters in a paper war with state penal officials, and on the road

One of a Series

drumming up support for an organization he is forming called Coalition for Wayward Youth.

Riggs, 23, was living in Kent when he was arrested on a charge of writing checks with insufficient funds.

Riggs admitted his guilt, but said he did it because he was using the money to pay for publication of a book about heroin addiction and hoped to pay back the money from proceeds of the sale of the book.

Authorities contended it was a scheme to defraud the banks. Riggs was sentenced to the Ohio Reformatory at Mansfield.

He said he was led to believe he would receive probation because the money was paid back.

AT THE reformatory, Riggs witnessed beatings and homosexual rape of vulnerable boys by older, streetwise youths. He launched a personal campaign to end the brutality.

Information furnished by Riggs and other inmates, resulted in a series of articles published last August in The Plain Dealer.

When Riggs was waylaid and beaten by inmates and this newspaper received a letter from inmates threatening to kill him unless the Plain Dealer retracted the stories, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio filed suit in U.S. District Court in Cleveland for an order requiring reformatory officials to protect Riggs.

DESPITE A court-arranged agreement' for Riggs' protection, he was put in an unlighted punishment cell.

His regular prison clothing and all his personal effects, including his eyeglasses and writing materials, were taken from him.

In response to a protest from the ACLU, Ohio De-

David Riggs

partment of Rehabilitation and Correction officials said the treatment of Riggs was an error resulting from a "mixup." They transferred him to the Lebanon Correctional Institute.

Riggs was treated exceptionally well in his weeks at Lebanon, but he says that Bennett J. Cooper, state commissioner of correction, tried to delay or prevent his parole.

A PSYCHIATRIC evaluation of Riggs by a psychologist was ordered before his release.

The psychologist's evaluation of Riggs:

"Definitely not psychot-

ic.""

Riggs alleges Cooper has continued to harass him since his release from the penal system and Cooper's intent is to put him back inside the reformatory and silence him.

Among the evidence, Riggs says, is an order that he report to his parole officer on his travels within the state, including the names of all persons and newspapers which he contacts.

THE ACLU has protested the order as a violation of guarantees under the first

and 14th amendments to the Constitution. It has advised Riggs not to report interviews which he gives to public officials or to newspaper reporters.

Cooper denies he is harassing Riggs and ordered him to report all of his contacts.

"I have no malice against David Riggs," Cooper said in an interview.

MEANWHILE, George F. Denton, chief of the Adult Parole Authority, has written to Riggs:

"I strongly urge that you cease and desist from making such false accusations against Director Cooper; otherwise, I will order appropriate action be taken against you."

Don Casey, managing editor of the Chillicothe Gazette, said that following a visit by Riggs to the newspaper on a recent afternoon, the paper received a telephone call the the next morning from a man who identified himself as a public relations representative of the correction department and said:

"We heard you've been talking to David Riggs, and we'd like to tell our side of the story."

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RIGGS ACKNOWLEDGES his efforts on behalf of youths-and in particular his fight to rescue Billy P. from the reformatory-have stepped on some toes in the penal system.

His words and his style are blunt.

In his zeal he sometimes makes accusations that penal

officials contend are gross exaggerations, inmates say are the plain truth, and newspapermen might characterize as indulgence in hyperbole.

Billy P., 17, a juvenile delinquent from Bainbridge in

Ross County, was the subject of an article published Monday in The Plain Dealer.

Monday in The Plain Billy P. was sexually-assaulted by seven inmates in the reformatory and, despite being put into a solitary cell with a guard to watch over him, was attacked again.

Riggs has been with Billy P.'s parents in the Ross County Juvenile Court where they are seeking to win probation for him or transfer to another institution where he will be safe. ..RIGGS' ZEAL puzzled who psychologist interviewed him. The report shows the psychologist found it difficult to accept that Riggs has an honest dedication to the fight for full civil rights for juveniles, rather than hidden, perhaps dishonest, motives.

Billy P.'s lawyer, Ohio Supreme Court Judge-elect William B. Brown, also finds it difficult to accept Riggs' zeal.

"Why is he such a crusader?" Brown asked.

Riggs expresses it in these terms:

"I don't want to see kids get beat in the head. It's as simple as that.

"A kid really has no one on his side. No one has ever lobbied before for young people in trouble, and the reforms under way in the prisons are ignoring the kids.

Last night Riggs' parole officer ordered him to go to the parole office and obtain each written permission time he leaves Athens County.

Previously, according to Riggs, he was permitted to merely telephone the parole officers' secretary to record his travels out of the county.