It was created as a refuge for needy kids. Instead they were raped and drugged.
First lady Jacqueline Kennedy hands out lollipops to children at Junior Village in 1962. By Diane Bernard Diane Bernard Editor and writer for Retropolis Email Bio May 18 at 7:00 AM The children’s home was a must-stop destination for the powerful.
Nick Robinson arrived in 1965 when he was 9 and saw a crowd of boys gathered around the dorm’s bathroom. When he pushed his way through, he witnessed an older boy forcing a younger boy to perform oral sex. Poverty, neglect and unemployment in the nation’s capital created a steady flow of children into the home. But it was a 1961 crackdown on welfare fraud, led by Sen. Robert Byrd , the new chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for the District of Columbia, that helped fuel massive overcrowding.
Penrod was 8 when he entered Junior Village in 1964 and was there for four years. “I weighed only 90 pounds when I left the home to live in an orphanage in Pennsylvania,” said Penrod, now 63 and living in Michigan. Until then, “I had never had cheese, turkey or ham. When I got to the Pennsylvania orphanage, I had to ask what boiled eggs were since I’d never seen them before.”
After WMAL’s documentary aired, the federal government began putting up Army tents on the grounds of Junior Village to deal with the overcrowding. “There was nothing to do there,” Penrod said. “No gym, no library. It was just you, alone.” The teenagers were aimless and abusive to the younger children, he said.
Taylor was shocked when he saw the testimonies, which included incidents of rape and children being drugged. He put Fields in touch with The Washington Post’s editorial director, J.W. Anderson, who had written the Harper’s magazine article about the home in 1965.
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