From the Publisher: 'Joe Sexton Here'

Joe Sexton at the Seven Days office Credit: Paula Routly ©️ Seven Days

You’ll notice something different about the print edition of this week’s issue of Seven Days. Sixteen ad-free pages have been devoted to an important and disturbing story we think you should read. It explains how young Vermonters were physically restrained, stripped and held in isolation for days in the North Unit of Essex’s Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center — supposedly for their own protection — before the state shuttered the place in 2020. Our special investigation is about the pain suffered by one of its charges. “The Loss of Grace” is the longest piece we’ve ever published. That’s because it’s a story that has never been fully told — and almost certainly never would have been, if a dogged veteran reporter hadn’t moved to Vermont and found it.

Three days before Christmas last year, I received an unexpected text that started, “Paula, Joe Sexton here.” It explained that a mutual friend, ProPublica journalist James Bandler, had suggested he get in touch. Sexton, a seasoned reporter and editor who had worked for 25 years at the New York Times and eight years at ProPublica, was now living in Waitsfield and wanted to talk.

Seven Days had just started its holiday break, but Sexton’s bio justified taking the meeting — he’d shared in three Emmys and a George Polk Award and directed six Pulitzer Prize winners. He was about to publish a book, The Lost Sons of Omaha, about two men — one Black, one white — who died as a result of the rioting after the murder of George Floyd. He was also working on a true-crime documentary film with HBO.

We jumped at the chance to have a self-described “lifelong journalist, muckraker and shit-stirrer” looking for untold stories on our behalf.

Sexton had left his native Brooklyn at the outbreak of the pandemic to relocate to Vermont with his wife, a photo editor at the New York Times, and their twin tween daughters.

Consulting editor Candace Page and I met with him three days after Christmas. As soon as he walked in Seven Days‘ door and beheld the creative chaos of our empty office, his eyes lit up — the sign of a journalist away too long from the newsroom.

Sexton is one year older than me: 64. He said he wasn’t ready to retire but was unsure of what he wanted to do next, in a new place. We met a few more times before coming to an agreement: If, in his local explorations, he spotted anything worthy of investigation, he would bring it to Seven Days.

We jumped at the chance to have a self-described “lifelong journalist, muckraker and shit-stirrer” looking for untold stories on our behalf. While reporters are hardwired to be keen observers of what’s going on around them, they can’t notice everything. And, in truth, sometimes we’re blind to what’s right in front of us. That’s what Spotlight, the movie about the Boston Globe‘s investigation into pedophile priests, was all about.

I knew that, if he were serious about working here, Sexton would be looking at Vermont with fresh eyes. And he’d recognize a good story when he saw it.

By April, he’d found one.

We first heard about it with the rest of our writing staff during a Lunch & Learn session with Sexton as the featured guest. He showed up in his signature track suit and shared war stories with our reporters and editors — about his first job working for a Black newspaper in Brooklyn; about how he got his start in sports at the Times, then moved to the metro desk when he became a single dad to the two daughters from his first marriage.

At the end of our lunch session, he told us about a local story that he’d already started pursuing: what happened at Woodside. He knew lawsuits had been filed on behalf of a group of seven kids who were held there — one of which resulted in a $4.5 million payout from the state. Vermont taxpayers picked up the tab but didn’t know much about what it covered.

It’s true that the story was 2 years old, and “there was some solid, straightforward daily news reporting on it” at the time, as Sexton observed. But no local media had dug in to explain what had happened at Woodside, how it was allowed to occur, who was responsible “and, most important of all, who were these children?” as he phrased it. He aimed to answer those questions. Sexton had already found his way to the family of one of the child victims, Grace Welch, around whom this week’s story is told.

I can’t remember if we told Sexton about our own efforts to get inside Woodside. The longtime director, Jay Simons, kept our reporters at bay for years until 2017, when the cash-strapped facility was looking for money from the legislature. That appears to be the one and only time he gave an interview to Seven Days.

Sexton was not going to take no for an answer. He was not going to accept silence, either. If current and retired Vermont officials did not respond to his inquiries, he sent them snail-mail letters. When that didn’t work, he found out where they lived and showed up in person.

He spent about three months reporting “The Loss of Grace,” during which time he went to Omaha, Neb., to promote his book; published a piece about it in the New York Times; wrote a story for the Atavist magazine with one of his older daughters about his experience being taken hostage in Libya; and moved his family to Williston. He also suffered a heart attack and had double bypass surgery.

During his remarkably short convalescence, he sent suggestions for illustrating and packaging the Woodside story.

And, of course, he met his deadline. When he filed the first draft, in mid-July, I happened to be stuck overnight at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on the way back from a trip to the West Coast. Totally sleep deprived, in the wee hours I set up my laptop in the airport and started reading. For the 90 minutes it took to consume what was originally a 20,000-word piece, I was riveted.

The story was shocking and hard-hitting — and also thoroughly documented and well sourced.

For the past three months, we’ve put Sexton’s piece through the journalistic paces: multiple rounds of fact-checking, two full edits by news editor Matthew Roy and Page, legal review, proofreading, art direction, audio recording. News broke, too, that Sexton had to incorporate. Earlier this month, one of the former Woodside leaders went before the state Board of Psychological Examiners and was fined for testifying untruthfully about her qualifications.

Also: Vermont is actively seeking sites for a new juvenile detention center, and, not surprisingly, no town is enthusiastic about hosting it. Needless to say, the hard-learned lessons of Woodside should inform how the state plans future facilities for troubled youths.

Sexton covers that in his epilogue. We briefly considered serializing his story in consecutive issues but decided instead to publish it in its entirety, all at once. I hope you can carve out the time to read it.

It’s not often that one of the best journalists in the U.S. delves into something that happened in our state, for the benefit of those who live here. And it’s definitely not what most people expect from a free weekly. Sexton affectionately calls Seven Days an “absurdity” — a functioning local newspaper that’s still supported by print advertising — and an “absolute miracle” in an era of diminishing news sources.

We’re grateful for the chance to work with him and hope that some greater good comes of sharing this difficult story.

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