[toussaints]

Mark Branham thought children at the Campbell Lodge Boys’ Home were choked and beaten until bruised, and nothing was being done.

The burly 6-foot-tall and 315-pound school resource officer cried on his way home from work for two weeks and prayed to God for guidance on how to help the residents at the facility for at-risk youths.

“It weighed on my mind,” Branham, a Campbell County Middle School resource officer, told The Enquirer. “All this bad stuff was happening to them, but because they were labeled bad kids, no one was listening.”

He filed a police report with Campbell County authorities in April 2011, but it was dismissed as unsubstantiated in just 6½ hours. He was set to file a report with Kentucky State Police in February, but didn’t have to because state inspectors following up on a different complaint from workers at the lodge soon ordered it closed.

“Some of these kids have nobody,” said Branham, who has a 10-year-old son. “They needed a voice, so I became their voice.”

The children confided to Branham that they were violently punished – choked, beaten. One child said a staff member used children as punching bags while practicing mixed martial arts. Another said male staff members forcibly tried to get him to kiss another boy at the home.

He filed the report in April 2011 after a child said a staff member grabbed him around the neck in a head lock and dragged him through a hallway. The child said he filed written grievances intended for the home’s administrators only to watch the staff rip them up, pour coffee on them and throw them in the trash.

Branham, a police officer in Alexandria where the middle school is located, filed the report with Campbell County Police because the home falls in its jurisdiction.

A county detective began investigating at 9:30 a.m. and by 4 p.m. closed the case as unsubstantiated. The detective interviewed two children at the home, Branham, a middle school counselor, the home’s executive director, the home’s safety crisis management instructor and the staff member who was accused of choking the child.