By Janice Morse
Enquirer staff writer

HAMILTON - Butler County's juvenile detention center faces a second federal lawsuit alleging that overcrowding and other conditions helped lead one youth to beat and rape another.

In a suit filed last week in U.S. District Court, Cincinnati, attorney Jennifer Branch says the center was overcrowded, inadequately staffed and operated under unsafe policies, contributing to the December 1999 beating and rape of a 14-year-old boy who was in the center because he had run away from home.

Earlier this year, the county paid $200,000 to settle a similar suit stemming from the rape and beating of an 11-year-old boy in June 1999.

Under that settlement, Butler County admitted no liability but agreed to enlist help from a National Juvenile Detention Association program that has helped reform detention systems in 20 locations.

Tom Barnes, juvenile detention center superintendent, Monday referred questions to Juvenile Court Administrator Rob Clevenger, who could not be reached. Both Barnes and Clevenger are named as defendants in the suit, along with Butler County and unnamed detention center officials.

The suit was filed Friday on behalf of a victim whose identity is concealed in court records under the pseudonym "Jack Doe."

It says records that lawyers obtained show that the Butler detention center's conditions were raising alarms by 1997, but those problems persisted through 1999, when Doe was raped.

The suit seeks payment for medical, psychological and other costs that Doe and his parents have incurred, along with attorneys' fees and unspecified punitive and other damages.

E-mail jmorse@enquirer.com