For half a century, through scandals, investigations, failed state inspections and even the illegal use of seclusion to punish children, Richard L. Bean remained in his perch of power as the superintendent of the juvenile detention center that bears his name.

Throughout nearly all of his tenure, there was only one body that could remove him from his post: a board of trustees unlike any other in the state. New reporting by WPLN News and ProPublica shows that for decades the voting members of that board were close friends and allies of Bean’s.

Even for Knoxville, Tennessee, a city known for its old-school politics, the relationship Bean has had with board members past and present stands out. His former secretary, his personal lawyer, the judge for whom he served as a campaign treasurer and a pallbearer of his wife’s casket all sat on the board over time as voting members.

“He’s just been allowed to go unchecked,” said Democratic state Rep. Sam McKenzie of Knoxville, a critic of Bean’s. “It was just a bad situation compounded by a rubber-stamp board that really was trying to protect him and not protect our children.”

Bean, who did not respond to requests for comment, abruptly announced last week that he is resigning in the wake of a new scandal. Had he not chosen to leave himself, McKenzie said, the board never would have unseated him.

“Watchdogs Over Richard”

Tennessee has 16 other county juvenile detention facilities similar to the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center. Oversight of all of those falls to county agencies, like the sheriff’s department, juvenile court or commissioners. And a few are run by private companies.

In 1972, when Bean started as superintendent, the juvenile detention home in Knoxville was a city-run facility. In the mid ’70s, it became a regional facility that had 40 beds and has since grown to three times that. The creation of the board, through a legislative act, was a way for both city and county officials to maintain some say in the facility’s functioning.

The board’s mandate, as laid out in the Knox County code, is to have “administrative control” over the center, its budget and its superintendent. Though it was constituted to include 10 members, only three have voting power. The county commission appoints two of the voting members. The county juvenile court judge, who also sits on the board as a nonvoting member, appoints the third.

None of the current board members responded to a request for comment. Neither did six current commissioners who helped appoint the voting members now on the board. The juvenile court judge, Tim Irwin, declined to comment.

Knox County lawyer Chris Coffey was a voting board member from 1999 to 2020, according to the Knoxville city website. He remembers the quarterly meetings as small — usually attended by a handful of board members, the juvenile court judge and Bean, plus occasional staff members from the facility.

The board only knew what Bean told them about the facility, he said. The superintendent would give a presentation during each meeting about how many kids were in the facility, what kinds of meals they served or how many books were donated.

Coffey does not recall any serious discussions about issues at the detention center or with Bean’s leadership.

“It just never really dawned on me that we were watchdogs over Richard,” Coffey said. “It never really was explained to me that way.”

“Friends of Richard’s”

Local lawyers John Valliant, Billy Stokes and Sherry Mahar are the current voting members of the center’s board. When Bean’s wife, Lillian, died last year, Valliant and Stokes were listed as her pallbearers. The latter was also an officiant at her funeral.

Stokes worked for Bean at the center for three years, calling some of the children there “dangerous thugs” in a 1991 letter to the editor defending Bean against The Knoxville News Sentinel’s criticism of his leadership. Later, Stokes represented Bean as his personal lawyer when he was sued in his capacity as superintendent of the center in 2003.

Valliant, appointed to his seat on the board by the county commissioners, has represented county commissioners as their lawyer. After WPLN and ProPublica reported on Bean’s documented illegal use of seclusion at the facility in 2023, lawmakers called for his resignation. But Valliant told a local TV news station that he thought the Bean Center was “the best facility in the state of Tennessee.”

Mahar is a longtime lawyer in Knox County representing kids in juvenile court. On New Year’s Day 2025, screenshots provided to WPLN show that she wrote to Bean on Facebook, “Just wanting to say Happy New Year and I love you” with a red heart emoji.

Bean’s close relationships with the voting members of his board go back years, said Betty Bean, a longtime political journalist in Knox County who said she’s a distant relative of the superintendent.

“Richard made his own rules back in the day, and it hasn’t changed a lot,” she said. “Most of the board are good people. But they’re all friends of Richard’s.”

One former board member was Bean’s secretary, who had donated money to his wife’s campaigns for Knox County circuit, general sessions and juvenile court clerk, according to Betty Bean and local news reports at the time. And for decades, another voting board member was Gail Jarvis, a lawyer and former Knox County General Sessions Court judge. Richard Bean was campaign treasurer for Jarvis when she was running to become the criminal court judge in 1998.

Jarvis did not respond to a voicemail seeking comment.

“He had a lot of political influence in town,” former board member Coffey said. “Back in those days, almost anybody that ran for anything — whether it was judicial or political — wanted his blessing and endorsement.”

Some of the people listed as appointees to the center’s board didn’t know they were members until receiving a call from WPLN and ProPublica for this story.

At least two people listed on a Knoxville city website as being nonvoting appointees from 1999-2020 said they had no idea they had been members. And the East Tennessee Development District Law Enforcement Advisory Committee, which is listed as having appointed the pair, has not existed for at least 15 years, according to the head of the development district.

“This is the first I’m hearing of it,” said Terry Frank, who is now the mayor of neighboring Anderson County. “Something definitely as important as a juvenile board, I would definitely appear if I knew that I was a sitting member.” Bill Brittain, the former mayor of Hamblen County, said the same.

According to the public list, the board has also had a Knox County GOP appointee, but it has had a vacancy for a Democratic appointee since at least 1999.

U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett was also a nonvoting member of the board, listed from 1999 to 2017 as the city mayor’s appointee. When reached by phone he estimated he only attended two meetings during that time.

“Somebody Was Going to Die in There”

It would have been hard for the board to miss that the Bean Center was troubled.

A 1991 grand jury said the facility had rat problems and no toilet paper. A 2000 grand jury called the detention center a “disgrace” to the county, citing that the facility was dirty to the point of stinking.

In 2003, allegations of sexual harassment and assault by an employee at the center made the papers. The Department of Children’s Services said it was investigating the employee and considering a probe of the center. Three female staffers, and one of their husbands who also worked at the center, filed a lawsuit — later dismissed — against Bean, Knox County and the employee. The county later settled with the husband, who claimed he was demoted when his wife threatened legal action.

A 2023 investigation by WPLN and ProPublica found the facility was illegally using seclusion as punishment and was consistently out of compliance with DCS, according to public records.

Stephani Clowers, the nurse whose firing set in motion Bean’s resignation, said she never considered going to the board for help. She said Bean openly told people they were his “best friends.”

“Absolutely not. Because they would have told him,” she said. “It would’ve made things much harder.”

Clowers reported the alleged mishandling of medication by the staff to Bean, but nothing changed, she said. She hit her breaking point in 2024 when a child at the center was clearly in need of medical attention “and that child was hidden from me,” Clowers said. When she was able to see him, she called and consulted a doctor who determined that the boy should be transferred to the emergency room. Clowers said the child was never taken there. She reported these incidents to the DCS workers assigned to those children and then to the state comptroller’s office.

“I knew then that if something did not change, somebody was going to die in there,” she said.

WPLN and ProPublica reached out to board members and the detention center for comment about Clower’s allegations. Irwin, the juvenile court judge who is also on the board, declined to comment. The others did not respond.

Bean’s decision to fire Clowers was the apparent last straw for Irwin. He went to Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs.

Irwin, a former NFL player, and Jacobs, a former professional wrestler, wrote a letter to the 84-year-old superintendent demanding he reinstate the nurse and another fired employee. And Jacobs looped in the governor and called for the facility to be taken out from under Bean and the board.

A day later, Bean announced that he plans to leave on Aug. 1. He didn’t reply to requests for comment, but in 2023 he told WPLN and ProPublica that he would stay in his position as “long as Judge and my board put up with me.” He predicted that Irwin would “run him out” for bad publicity.

“I am dismayed and disappointed by the rush to judgement by the Mayor, Judge Irwin, and other county leaders,” Bean wrote in his resignation letter to board member Valliant.

Clowers said she was surprised that Bean decided to resign.

“I thought he was gonna get away with it. This whole time I knew it would be me or him,” Clowers said. “And when it was me it was kind of devastating. I was like, wow, he wins again.”

The Board’s Unknown Future

Even with Bean’s departure, the question of the board remains.

Jacobs is asking the commissioners to pass an emergency ordinance dismantling the board. He wants them to delete sections of the Knox County code about the board, its meetings and duties and replace them with a new section that would give operation and control to the Knox County sheriff.

Commissioners who came into office after the last board was appointed told WPLN they want an investigation before they reassign control of the center to anyone. That includes the sheriff, who told WPLN in a statement that he was willing to work with the mayor and the state “to find solutions in the best interest of the juveniles in custody.”

McKenzie, the Democratic state representative, said he doesn’t think giving the detention center to the sheriff’s office is the answer. He pointed to a recent incident in which sheriff’s office SWAT deputies shot and killed a Black high school student during a raid.

“I don’t think that office is built or equipped to handle juvenile justice,” he said.

The sheriff’s office said it takes “the safety and security of juveniles in our care very seriously,” but it declined to comment further on McKenzie’s statements.

McKenzie said giving the facility to the sheriff would be like saying “we want to sweep this under the carpet,” keeping “Knox County business inside Knox County.”

That type of insular “good old boys” attitude, he said, created this problem in the first place.