Conahan, of Wilkes-Barre, wasn’t happy, to say the least, when she learned on Friday that that the former Luzerne County judge was found not guilty of more than two-thirds of the federal corruption counts filed against him.
“I believe he should get more because, for what I did as a juvenile, he didn’t do right by me at all. I really didn’t do anything wrong,” Conahan said when approached by a reporter seeking public reaction to the jury verdict in Ciavarella’s trial while she was pushing her son in a stroller on Public Square.
“I got locked up for no reason my very first time. I just can’t stand him. I hate him,” she said.
Conahan said she was charged with making terroristic threats and harassment after she and her grandmother got into an argument when she was 13.
“She didn’t press charges … She wanted me to come home. First (Ciavarella) put me in juvie for three weeks and he let me out. Then, it wasn’t even me, it was my family,” Conahan said, explaining that her mother called her probation officer and left a message they were going to visit her aunt in New Jersey and phone numbers where they could be reached.
Conahan said her probation officer didn’t care that she was out of state with her mother, but Ciavarella did.
“He took that as a violation of probation and kept me locked up. So I’m not happy with it at all,” Conahan said.
In addition to spending time at the PA Child Care juvenile detention center in Pittston Township, Conahan said Ciavarella also sent her to Camp Adams – a residential treatment facility near Jim Thorpe – and drug-and-alcohol treatment facilities because she once tested positive for marijuana use. She also spent time in a half-way house.
Among the allegations of federal prosecutors was that Ciavarella and former Judge Michael Conahan accepted a bribe from the developer of PA Child Care and extorted money from a co-owner of the facility. The judges, prosecutors said, agreed to make the center profitable by sending juveniles there in exchange for kickbacks.
While Ciavarella was found guilty of racketeering, conspiracy, honest services mail fraud, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, tax fraud and money laundering, he was found not guilty of bribery and extortion.
Michael Conahan, who is not related to Alissa Conahan, pleaded guilty last year to one count of racketeering conspiracy and is awaiting sentencing.
Alissa Conahan is now a party in a class-action civil suit filed by Cefalo & Associates, Pittston, seeking damages from the ex-judges and others.
She said Ciavarella changed her life “for the worst. … He took my whole juvenile life from me.” She was incarcerated for the majority of time between the ages of 14 and 18, she said.
“He ruined my life, so I don’t care what happens to him. I know they’re going to take it easy on him because he’s a judge, so they’re not just going to throw him in regular jail, they’re going to put him in PC (protective custody),” she said.
She thinks the judge should be placed in general population in prison just as she was placed in the general population of juvenile facilities. But she doubts it would make him a better person.
“I had big hopes and dreams. I wanted to be a doctor. I wasn’t supposed to have kids yet. I wasn’t supposed to be married until I was older. But … I learned everything from the streets, from the kids I was locked up with. I learned everything that they did instead of everything that I was looking forward to learning,” Conahan said.
“But I’m making it work with what I have now,” she said, looking down at her 18-month-old son, smiling.
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