Monday, Sept. 15, 2003 | 11:11 a.m.
A mother of an alleged member of the 311 Boyz says she tried to get help for her son's violent behavior years before he attacked another teenager while wearing brass knuckles.
Seaneen Defoor says her son, 17-year-old Christopher Morgan, was behaving erratically long before he and a group, alleged to be part of the 311 Boyz, reportedly attacked three teens in a northwest Las Vegas neighborhood.
Police say Morgan hit one teen while wearing brass knuckles, a charge that earlier this month earned the teen an indefinite stay at a youth correctional facility in Elko for battery. A Family Court judge found him guilty of battery with the use of a deadly weapon.
Police and prosecutors believe that Morgan is part of the 311 Boyz, a group of young men from suburban neighborhoods. Police said the gang allegedly committed a string of violent crimes in the northwest valley this summer. The attack Morgan was charged with is believed to be connected to the 311 Boyz.
"He swears to God that he's innocent," said Defoor, who talks to her son from the youth correctional facility. "But I know him and ... it breaks my heart to think I raised a child who could do something like this."
Defoor, a cocktail waitress at the Four Queens, said she feels police and the juvenile justice system constantly failed her.
Defoor, who says she didn't know her son was associated with the 311 Boyz, said she had battled with authorities and court officials to "throw the book" at her son for five years, ever since her son began using drugs, running away and stealing cars at age 14, she said.
The teen had at least three court cases in Clark County's Juvenile Court, and Defoor said she filed up to 25 missing persons reports with Metro Police after the teen ran away.
Each time Morgan went before a judge, Defoor said, serious crimes, such as grand larceny auto, were reduced to misdemeanors despite her pleading with judges to hand down harsher penalties. Police, meanwhile, warned Defoor that if she kicked the teen out of the house before he was 18 she could face neglect charges, she said.
Nine other alleged members of the 311 Boyz face charges in the adult court system for throwing a rock through the window of a moving vehicle and seriously injuring 17-year-old Stephen Tanner Hansen. Police are also investigating whether the teens are responsible for committing several other violent crimes in northwest neighborhoods, some caught on videotape.
Metro Police Capt. Dan Barry, who oversees the gang unit, declined to comment on Defoor's allegations, saying he was not familiar with Morgan's case or Defoor's interactions with police. He said the details of Morgan's case are confidential because he is a juvenile.
Defoor says the constant "slaps on the wrists" from the justice system helped perpetuate her son's downward spiral. Had authorities helped her in her fight to control her son's behavior, she says, the violence with the 311 Boyz may not have happened.
"I've told police, judges, teachers, 'Do not let my son off lightly,' " she said Friday in her home in northwest Las Vegas. "And they do every time. That's the part that kills me."
Defoor said she still loves her son and said she's not blaming the system for her son's behavior. She believes, however, the system must work with parents to help them deal with troubled children years before their behavior turns violent.
"I said, 'My child is troubled and I need help,' " she said. "There was a progression here. As a parent, you can only do so much."
Family Court Judge Diane Steel, who presides over juvenile cases, would not comment specifically on Defoor's situation or Morgan's case, but she said more needs to be done on the front end to help troubled children before their behavior spins out of control.
Steel said she has fought for funding for programs that would work to combat bad behavior in youth long before they are charged with felonies. But in Nevada, she said, there are few resources available to parents before their children's behavior becomes extreme.
For instance, Nevada law does not have mandated punishments for each crime. As a result, once children are charged, their punishment is generally at the judge's discretion, she said.
Steel said parents such as Defoor, who feel helpless in combating their children's behavior, are no strangers to the juvenile justice system.
"There are hundreds of parents who come in here at their wits' end and I have no resources to help them," she said. "In Nevada it's either all or nothing. There's no in-between."
Add to that a shortage of beds in youth correctional facilities statewide, Steel said, and Nevada's quandary when it comes to "throwing the book" at juvenile delinquents becomes clear.
The five facilities available to house juvenile offenders in Clark County, which together have only 345 beds, are already bursting at the seams and have long waiting lists. As a result, handing down lengthy detention center stays is not always an option for judges, Steel said.
"We can't put every potential victimizer in because we don't have the bed space," she said. "There's not a lot of room at the inn for the lower level conduct. That's a huge factor."
Defoor is a single mother with four other children. She said she has been diagnosed with adrenal gland cancer.
Though she declined to comment on videotapes released last week that allegedly show 311 Boyz engaging in fistfights, she said she has no doubt that her son was a participant in other incidents involving the 311 Boyz, including the attack on Hansen.
Defoor said she had come home from work several times and caught her son having parties with dozens of teens, including the nine charged. She said she had no idea that the teens were part of a gang.
Four days before the separate incident in which he was charged, Morgan came downstairs and proclaimed, "I'm outta here," Defoor said. It was the last time Defoor saw the teen before the violence involving the 311 Boyz had made national news.
Police say members of the 311 Boyz terrorized dozens of other teenagers in northwest Las Vegas during the summer months, long before the attack on Hansen.
In addition to the nine teens charged in District Court, Kyle Hadley, Chad Cladderbuck, Thomas Geick and Joseph Trujillo were charged in juvenile court with two felony counts of battery causing substantial bodily harm in a July 3 fight that injured two other teens. They were also charged with a gang enhancement.
Brandon Gallion, 16, and Jeff Hart, 17, who face charges in the attack on Hansen, were also charged in the July 3 incident, said Catherine Harris, who prosecutes cases in the juvenile system. Gallion and Hart could have their charges transferred to the adult system, she said.
"Because Hart and Gallion are involved in both incidents, we will argue to have them certified as adults," she said.
Initially, all six teens pleaded not guilty to the offenses, Harris said. But Geick, Hadley, Cladderbuck and Trujillo "have since accepted responsibility for their participation in the incident," she said.
Police say the 311 Boyz gang consists of up to 100 well-to-do teenagers who come from affluent communities. Authorities are also investigating whether the gang is linked to the Ku Klux Klan. Police have said that the gang's name is derived from KKK, as K is the 11th letter of the alphabet.
Police told Defoor that her son had a tattoo of an iron cross, a symbol that has long been associated with racism in Nazi Germany. The symbol was banned from Centennial High School after the teens' arrests. Defoor said she had never seen her son's tattoo.
Defoor, who is also a Sunday school teacher, said her son was raised in a loving home and was taught good values. She said she suspects many of the other gang members had similar backgrounds. She said Morgan was very smart and did well in school during his younger years.
He attended Catholic school until he was in the sixth grade when she pulled him out of the school because she divorced his father and could no longer afford tuition, Defoor said.
"He was given every opportunity," Defoor said. "He was raised in an affluent neighborhood. These affluent kids have the same problems as other kids."
Defoor said she takes offense when people ask where the parents of the 311 Boyz were when the teens allegedly committed their crimes.
"I was right here the whole time," she said. "There are parents like me out there who have tried everything in the world."
Most of the teens charged are students or former students at Centennial High School. Morgan also attended Centennial, but was attending Peterson Alternative School at the time of his arrest.
Defoor said her son's bad behavior began when he was about 12, when he began cursing her and "disrespecting" her. At age 14, her son stole a car in California and drove it to Nevada, Defoor said.
Police arrested him at a service station as he tried to put gas in the stolen car, Defoor said. The teen was charged in the juvenile system and was ordered to spend three months in the juvenile detention center, Defoor said.
Two years later, Morgan stole his older brother's truck. That charge was reduced to a misdemeanor, Defoor said.
"It was nonstop from there," she said. "Every time he did something they'd just keep knocking it down."
She said he used drugs and would run away when she tried to discipline him. Nevada law states that a teen must be gone for at least 24 hours before a parent can file a missing person's report.
When he would return, Defoor said, she was required by law to let him back in her home, despite his violent behavior toward her and others.
By the time he was 16, Morgan, who was charming and articulate, Defoor said, had "figured out the system and laughed at it," she said. Morgan even pressed charges against her twice when she'd grab him by the arm or try to restrain him, she said.
The charges were later dropped, Defoor said, but the incidents caused Defoor to be afraid to discipline her own son.
"The kids have taken over," she said. "We're not allowed any more to delegate our authority. There is a fine line between child abuse and discipline."
Steel said Defoor's sentiments are not uncommon. While child abuse is unacceptable, some juvenile delinquents try to manipulate the system to get away with their behavior, she said.
"There are a lot of good, decent parents out there and their kids are holding them hostage," Steel said. "It's frightening. They try to take care of it in their home for so long and one thing leads to another and you wind up in Juvenile Court. Kids understand that and they know they can take advantage of that."
Steel is trying to develop programs to help parents stop the cycle of delinquent behavior before the situation escalates. She has already helped rewrite the juvenile statute and helped to categorize laws to be clearer when dealing with juveniles.
Now, she said, more state laws need to be created to address recidivism, or repeat offenders. Steel believes sanctions for juvenile delinquency should increase with the frequency of behavior.
Because there is no base line to tell prosecutors or defense attorneys what punishment is mandated for what crime, sanctions for juveniles are "all over the map," she said.
Clark County has a few programs aimed at helping juvenile offenders, which shows the system is on the right track, she said.
"The more services we have to offer the less the recidivism rate and the fewer adult prisoners we have to work with on the other end," she said. "I wish we could get more services for kids who haven't been adjudicated."
In many ways, however, it is too late for Defoor and her son. Defoor said her new goal is to prevent her younger children, ages 8, 7 and 5, from following down their older brother's path.
"I don't want the system to be as easy on my three as they were on my son," she said.
Defoor said she hopes to one day help change state legislation relating to child abuse and runaway children so that parents won't have to be afraid to discipline their children or throw them out of the house when their behavior turns violent.
"We've taken away too much authority from the parents and given it to the kids," she said. "The system has to be changed."
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