A detainee stuck his head in a toilet for attention. Staff took photos and shared them.

What was touted as a family-friendly slide show of everyday life at the Walton Youth Development Center initially was to include a peculiar picture: It showed a teen with his head inside a toilet.

A detainee at the program in the Panhandle town of DeFuniak Springs was having a rough time coping with his incarceration in August 2010, and the boy stuck his head inside the toilet bowl. Rather than counsel the young man, Walton’s then-assistant program director decided to shoot a photo and video, and included it in a slide show presentation.

The assistant program director displayed the slide show to other boys at the high-risk 40-bed facility via in-house television, an inspector general report said.

The youth captured in the photo told an investigator he did “not feel [the youth care worker] had malicious intent in taking the photograph or placing it in a presentation,” but the boy was bothered enough to complain to the state’s child abuse hotline. The hotline declared the event was not abuse.

The detainee said “he was going through a stressful time and was looking for attention.” But seeing his head in a toilet broadcast over a closed-circuit television made him feel “dismayed, ridiculed and humiliated,” a report said.

Higher-ranking bosses vetoed the assistant program director’s initial plan to include the photo in a presentation for a broader audience — the parents of detainees — to show them what day-to-day life was like in the program.

The then-assistant director of the program, now operated by a different provider and called Walton Academy for Growth and Change, destroyed the images and was formally counseled.

This story was originally published October 10, 2017 at 9:00 AM with the headline "A detainee stuck his head in a toilet for attention. Staff took photos and shared them.."