Four former Volunteers of America youth workers are facing jail time after a judge found them guilty of abusing teenagers while working on Boston’s Long Island in 2014.
Suffolk Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Locke found Silvio Depina, 40, Jalise Andrade, 37, Hermano Joseph, 28, and Ainsley LaRoche, 44, guilty of beating, sexually assaulting and threatening four boys at the Casa Isla residential facility on Long Island.
Andrade of Brockton will serve a year and a half in prison, Depina of Brockton two and a half years and LaRoche of Roxbury one to two years behind bars. Joseph of Taunton faces sentencing early next year.
Suffolk Superior District Attorney spokesman Jake Wark said from April to August 2014 all four defendants performed “ritualized punishments” on four teens they were trusted to take care of, including a punishment known as “orange chicken” which involved teens being hit with an orange sandal to their buttocks.
The verdicts were handed down following a month of testimony, which included evidence presented by the District Attorney’s Child Protection Unit, Wark said.
Casa Isla served as a residential facility for youth between the ages of 14- and 19-years-old from juvenile court and was run by the Department of Youth Services (DYS). The program closed in 2014, weeks before the Long Island Bridge was ordered closed.
State police had been investigating allegations of abuse referred to them by DYS and the Department of Children and Families.
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