This text was produced for ProPublica’s Native Reporting Community in partnership with WPLN/Nashville Public Radio, a 2023-2024 LRN accomplice. Join Dispatches to get our tales in your inbox each week.
For half a century, by way of scandals, investigations, failed state inspections and even the unlawful use of seclusion to punish youngsters, 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 put up: a board of trustees in contrast to every other within the state. New reporting by WPLN Information and ProPublica reveals that for many years the voting members of that board had been shut buddies 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 scenario compounded by a rubber-stamp board that basically was making an attempt to guard him and never defend our youngsters.”
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 services much like the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Middle. Oversight of all of these falls to county businesses, just like the sheriff’s division, juvenile court docket or commissioners. And some are run by non-public corporations.
In 1972, when Bean began as superintendent, the juvenile detention residence 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 a few occasions that. The creation of the board, by way of a legislative act, was a means for each metropolis and county officers to take care of 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 funds 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 court docket 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 court docket 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 — often attended by a handful of board members, the juvenile court docket choose and Bean, plus occasional employees members from the ability.
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The board solely knew what Bean advised them concerning the facility, he mentioned. The superintendent would give a presentation throughout every assembly about what number of children had been within the facility, what sorts of meals they served or what number of books had been donated.
Coffey doesn’t recall any severe discussions about points on the detention heart or with Bean’s management.
“It simply by no means actually dawned on me that we had been watchdogs over Richard,” Coffey mentioned. “It by no means actually was defined to me that means.”
“Associates of Richard’s”
Native attorneys 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 had 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 few of the youngsters there “harmful thugs” in a 1991 letter to the editor defending Bean towards 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 referred to as for his resignation. However Valliant advised an area TV information station that he thought the Bean Middle was “the very best facility within the state of Tennessee.”
Mahar is a longtime lawyer in Knox County representing children in juvenile court docket. On New 12 months’s Day 2025, screenshots offered to WPLN present that she wrote to Bean on Fb, “Simply eager to say Joyful New 12 months 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. “A lot of the board are good folks. However they’re all buddies of Richard’s.”
One former board member was Bean’s secretary, who had donated cash to his spouse’s campaigns for Knox County circuit, common classes and juvenile court docket clerk, based on Betty Bean and native information studies on the time. And for many years, one other voting board member was Gail Jarvis, a lawyer and former Knox County Normal Classes Court docket choose. Richard Bean was marketing campaign treasurer for Jarvis when she was operating to turn out to be the legal court docket choose in 1998.
Jarvis didn’t reply to a voicemail in search of remark.
“He had lots 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 — needed his blessing and endorsement.”
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William DeShazer for ProPublica
Among the folks listed as appointees to the middle’s board didn’t know they had been members till receiving a name from WPLN and ProPublica for this story.
Not less than two folks listed on a Knoxville metropolis web site as being nonvoting appointees from 1999-2020 mentioned that they had no thought that they had been members. And the East Tennessee Improvement District Regulation Enforcement Advisory Committee, which is listed as having appointed the pair, has not existed for at the least 15 years, based on the pinnacle 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 necessary as a juvenile board, I might 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 listing, the board has additionally had a Knox County GOP appointee, but it surely has had a emptiness for a Democratic appointee since at the least 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 telephone he estimated he solely attended two conferences throughout that point.
“Someone Was Going to Die in There”
It might have been onerous for the board to overlook that the Bean Middle was troubled.
A 1991 grand jury mentioned the ability had rat issues and no rest room paper. A 2000 grand jury referred to as the detention heart a “shame” to the county, citing that the ability 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 Kids’s Providers mentioned it was investigating the worker and contemplating a probe of the middle. Three feminine staffers, and one among their husbands who additionally labored on the heart, filed a lawsuit — later dismissed — towards 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 ability was illegally utilizing seclusion as punishment and was constantly out of compliance with DCS, based on public information.
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 overtly advised folks they had been his “greatest buddies.”
“Completely not. As a result of they might have advised him,” she mentioned. “It might’ve made issues a lot more durable.”
Clowers reported the alleged mishandling of treatment by the employees 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 baby was hidden from me,” Clowers mentioned. When she was in a position to see him, she referred to 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 youngsters after which to the state comptroller’s workplace.
“I knew then that if one thing didn’t change, anyone was going to die in there,” she mentioned.
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William DeShazer for ProPublica
WPLN and ProPublica reached out to board members and the detention heart for remark about Clower’s allegations. Irwin, the juvenile court docket choose who can be on the board, declined to remark. The others didn’t reply.
Bean’s determination to fireside 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 referred to as for the ability to be taken out from underneath 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 advised WPLN and ProPublica that he would keep in his place as “lengthy as Decide and my board put up with me.” He predicted that Irwin would “run him out” for unhealthy publicity.
“I’m dismayed and dissatisfied by the push to judgement by the Mayor, Decide Irwin, and different county leaders,” Bean wrote in his resignation letter to board member Valliant.
Clowers mentioned she was stunned that Bean determined to resign.
“I believed he was gonna get away with it. This complete time I knew it will 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 move 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 might give operation and management to the Knox County sheriff.
Commissioners who got here into workplace after the final board was appointed advised WPLN they need an investigation earlier than they reassign management of the middle to anybody. That features the sheriff, who advised WPLN in a press release that he was keen to work with the mayor and the state “to seek out options in the very best curiosity of the juveniles in custody.”
McKenzie, the Democratic state consultant, mentioned he doesn’t assume giving the detention heart to the sheriff’s workplace is the reply. He pointed to a current incident wherein sheriff’s workplace SWAT deputies shot and killed a Black highschool pupil throughout a raid.
“I don’t assume that workplace is constructed or geared up to deal with juvenile justice,” he mentioned.
The sheriff’s workplace mentioned it takes “the protection and safety of juveniles in our care very critically,” but it surely declined to remark additional on McKenzie’s statements.
McKenzie mentioned giving the ability to the sheriff could be like saying “we wish to sweep this underneath the carpet,” protecting “Knox County enterprise inside Knox County.”
That sort of insular “good previous boys” perspective, he mentioned, created this drawback within the first place.
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