A look into the judicial scandal that rocked the nation. | dG1fT0tyT1hkQ0VGNUE
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 [AUDIO OUT]
00:08 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:14 She was a good kid.
00:15 She was happy.
00:16 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:20 I was known for being the jokester.
00:22 Eddie, he was always a fireball.
00:25 We were talking about how funny it would
00:27 be if we made a fake MySpace page about my vice principal.
00:32 I was trying to stay out of trouble.
00:33 That's when everything started.
00:36 Whatever sins you have committed,
00:39 you can't go back and undo it.
00:41 Shavarela was a no-nonsense, zero-tolerance judge.
00:44 He always jailed kids.
00:46 You are going to experience prison.
00:48 I'll be glad to put you there.
00:49 The way Shavarela ran the courtroom,
00:51 you could have had Effie Bailey there,
00:52 and the kids would have gone away.
00:54 There's a mechanism that takes over
00:56 that keeps kids in that system.
00:58 No one listened because we were kids.
01:00 There was never any instance of guilt or innocence.
01:02 They were locking him up.
01:05 Really high number of kids appearing without counsel.
01:07 We have no rights.
01:08 He's in their custody now.
01:10 It is unbelievable.
01:11 We're talking about children.
01:12 I wanted them to be scared out of their minds.
01:15 I don't understand how that was a bad thing.
01:16 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:21 Former Luzerne County judge faces charges tonight.
01:23 In a scandal known as Kids for Cash.
01:26 $2.6 million in return for sentencing kids
01:29 to juvenile detention.
01:31 I'd never send a kid away for a penny.
01:34 I'm not this mad judge who was just putting them in shackles,
01:37 throwing kids away.
01:40 He went there as a free-spirited kid.
01:42 He came out a hardened man, I would say.
01:44 Here I was saying, we can trust that judge to be fair,
01:48 and that's not what happened.
01:51 I was scared everything.
01:54 I was only 14.
01:56 All those years I missed.
01:57 This is not a cash for kids case.
02:02 This is not bad.
02:03 You're ruining my life.
02:06 I still wake up from nightmares.
02:08 (upbeat music)
02:11 [BLANK_AUDIO]