Diane Turbyfill
An 11-year-old boy said his foster father sexually assaulted him multiple times a week when he was 6- and 7-years-old.
The child testified Tuesday morning that George Steen would molest him while the two showered together. His foster mother was sometimes in the Lincolnton home at the time but unaware of the molestation, the child said.
“I tried to scream the first day and the second day but he covered my mouth,” the boy said from the witness stand. “He was doing wrong things to me.”
Allegations of abuse
The child was taken from his mother and put into foster care in 2005, at the age of 4. He lived with the Steens on and off until he turned 8.
The boy said that Steen threatened to punish him if he told anyone what they did in the shower. Steen also told the child that no one believes a kid anyway.
The Steens were certified foster parents. According to the child’s testimony, he struggled to tell the truth in the past. If he told a lie, the boy would be made to eat soap when living with the Steens, the child testified.
The boy didn’t speak of the alleged abuse until he was placed in another foster home. One day while watching TV with his new foster mother the boy spoke of his relationship with Steen.
Lincoln County Department of Social Services was called, and Steen was charged with three counts of child sex assault.
Steen’s attorney, T.J. Wilson, said during opening statements Monday that the boy has a history of lying.
The defense has not yet had its chance to present evidence or witnesses.
Mental and emotional issues
Several psychologists and social workers testified in Steen’s trial Tuesday.
One psychologist talked of the child’s current mental state. He functions at a second-grade level and has sexual behavior issues. The boy suffers from depression, ADHD, expressive language disorder and reactive attachment disorder, according to specialists.
Like many children who have suffered sex abuse, the boy now expresses sexual predatory behavior. He now lives in a facility for children who display such behaviors.
Seven years in foster care
The Lincoln County child moved in with the Steens at age 4. It was his first foster home. His stay was short – just 21 days.
Social Services moved the boy to another family where his two sisters had gone. But taking on three children proved too much for those foster parents so the boy was removed from the home and returned to the Steens.
The child spent the next two-and-a-half years in the Steens’ home.
DSS attempted again to reunite the boy with family, returning him to his mother. But that attempt was short-lived. A month later he went into a group home. He spent six days there before being placed with another family.
The boy began acting out, according to social workers, and he was taken to a hospital for 10 days where his medications were leveled out.
He was returned to the Steens’ home in December 2007 where he stayed until February 2009.
At age 8 the child was transferred to another family for four days followed by a group home for nine days.
His next family kept him for three months before he was sent again to a group home.
In 2009, the child was placed with a family for nine months. That’s where he reported the alleged abuse.
The child now lives in a psychiatric residential treatment facility where his sexual and behavioral issues can be addressed.
On the stand
The boy was visibly uncomfortable when talking about sex in front of a room full of people. He told Lincoln County Assistant District Attorney Beth Lari that he was nervous and just wanted to finish his testimony.
He gripped a small stuffed animal. He said the toy was a way to calm his nerves.
The boy said he didn’t want to talk about it, but he wanted to make sure Steen didn’t victimize anyone else.
“That’s why I told,” he said. “I didn’t want no one else to be involved with this.”
The child left the courtroom Tuesday morning once he finished his testimony.
Source http://www.gastongazette.com/news/foster-69239-old-boy.html
CPS corruption hurts and destroys families worldwide. Please use caution posting about CPS here or anyplace on the internet. For your protection, using your full, real name and precise location is not advised. CPS has eyes everywhere and CPS is notorious for taking what people say, twisting it, embellishing on it and then using it against them in CPS "investigations" and at court proceedings.
Showing posts with label allegations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label allegations. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Monday, February 6, 2012
DHS: Charges for failure to report abuse claims unheard of - Iowa
Written by Lee Hermiston
Wednesday’s arrest of the director of the Broadway Neighborhood Center for not reporting allegations of child abuse levied against a teacher at the center may be the first of its kind in Iowa, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Human Services said.
“If it’s not the first time, it’s the first time in many years,” said DHS spokesman Roger Munns, noting employees in the agency’s central office have “quite a few years of experience.”
Sue Freeman-Murdah, 44, director of the Broadway Neighborhood Center, is accused of not reporting allegations of child abuse levied against a teacher in the Head Start Program, which she oversees. Because of her position at the center, Freeman-Murdah is considered a mandatory reporter, meaning she is required by law to report allegations of child abuse. She has worked at the center for more than 10 years.
According to a criminal complaint from Iowa City Police, the lead Head Start teacher informed Freeman-Murdah that the mother of a child enrolled in the program thought her daughter was the victim of a sexual assault. The alleged assailant was thought to be a teacher in the Head Start classroom. Police said the alleged victim was younger than 12.
The mother met with Freeman-Murdah and told her she thought the teacher had inappropriately touched her daughter and that contact raised to the level of abuse, police said. Police said the mother told Freeman-Murdah the child had repeatedly identified the teacher — who is not identified in the criminal complaint — as the perpetrator. The mother also observed injuries to her daughter, police said.
Police said Freeman-Murdah conducted her own investigation and did not contact police or the DHS. Iowa Code requires that health professionals, social workers, school employees, police officers, mental health professionals and employees of a DHS institution report allegations of abuse to a child younger than 12.
Iowa City Police Sgt. Denise Brotherton said the police department only learned about the allegations when the mother came to police on Dec. 21.
In a statement released Thursday, Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County Executive Director Brian Loring said no evidence of child abuse was discovered.
“The health and safety of children has always been, and remains, our top priority,” Loring said in the statement. “We want the community to know that the Department of Human Services investigated and found no evidence of child abuse. We have cooperated fully with law enforcement and the Department of Human Services and will continue to do so. In fairness to all the parties involved, we are avoiding further comments and will let the process run its course.”
Freeman-Murdah was arrested Wednesday afternoon, booked at the Johnson County Jail and released after about 30 minutes. She posted a $500 cash bond.
Freeman-Murdah made an initial appearance in court Thursday morning and entered a plea of not guilty. Judge Deb Minot set a bench trial for March 22. Freeman-Murdah has a right to request a jury trial — which would consist of six jurors — within 10 days. She said she did not know whether she would enter a request.
In addition to a potential sentence of up to 30 days in jail and a $625 fine, Minot warned Freeman-Murdah that her alleged actions could have “collateral consequences” with DHS. Munns said he wasn’t sure what those consequences could entail.
“Since this is so new, we haven’t crossed this particular bridge before,” he said.
Freeman-Murdah declined to comment after her appearance.
Munns said all reports of child abuse — only about half of which come from mandatory reporters — go through a central office in Des Moines. The office is staffed by about 30 child protective workers who determine if the allegation fits the definition of child abuse under Iowa law. Cases that fit that criteria are then directed to local offices stationed in each county. Munns said investigators respond within an hour for emergency situations and within 24 hours for all other reports, 365 days a year.
“This is not an entry-level job,” Munns said. “People who do this work have been around this field for years and are skilled at recognizing abuse and risk factors for future abuse. You want to prevent the child from being abused again. Obviously, the earlier you get a heads up on that, the better.”
The allegations of abuse do not have to be founded for a judge or jury to find Freeman violated the law by not reporting the alleged offense. Brotherton said the child abuse allegations remain under investigation.
Source http://www.press-citizen.com/article/20120203/NEWS01/302030014/DHS-Charges-failure-report-abuse-claims-unheard-of?odyssey=nav%7Chead
Wednesday’s arrest of the director of the Broadway Neighborhood Center for not reporting allegations of child abuse levied against a teacher at the center may be the first of its kind in Iowa, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Human Services said.
“If it’s not the first time, it’s the first time in many years,” said DHS spokesman Roger Munns, noting employees in the agency’s central office have “quite a few years of experience.”
Sue Freeman-Murdah, 44, director of the Broadway Neighborhood Center, is accused of not reporting allegations of child abuse levied against a teacher in the Head Start Program, which she oversees. Because of her position at the center, Freeman-Murdah is considered a mandatory reporter, meaning she is required by law to report allegations of child abuse. She has worked at the center for more than 10 years.
According to a criminal complaint from Iowa City Police, the lead Head Start teacher informed Freeman-Murdah that the mother of a child enrolled in the program thought her daughter was the victim of a sexual assault. The alleged assailant was thought to be a teacher in the Head Start classroom. Police said the alleged victim was younger than 12.
The mother met with Freeman-Murdah and told her she thought the teacher had inappropriately touched her daughter and that contact raised to the level of abuse, police said. Police said the mother told Freeman-Murdah the child had repeatedly identified the teacher — who is not identified in the criminal complaint — as the perpetrator. The mother also observed injuries to her daughter, police said.
Police said Freeman-Murdah conducted her own investigation and did not contact police or the DHS. Iowa Code requires that health professionals, social workers, school employees, police officers, mental health professionals and employees of a DHS institution report allegations of abuse to a child younger than 12.
Iowa City Police Sgt. Denise Brotherton said the police department only learned about the allegations when the mother came to police on Dec. 21.
In a statement released Thursday, Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County Executive Director Brian Loring said no evidence of child abuse was discovered.
“The health and safety of children has always been, and remains, our top priority,” Loring said in the statement. “We want the community to know that the Department of Human Services investigated and found no evidence of child abuse. We have cooperated fully with law enforcement and the Department of Human Services and will continue to do so. In fairness to all the parties involved, we are avoiding further comments and will let the process run its course.”
Freeman-Murdah was arrested Wednesday afternoon, booked at the Johnson County Jail and released after about 30 minutes. She posted a $500 cash bond.
Freeman-Murdah made an initial appearance in court Thursday morning and entered a plea of not guilty. Judge Deb Minot set a bench trial for March 22. Freeman-Murdah has a right to request a jury trial — which would consist of six jurors — within 10 days. She said she did not know whether she would enter a request.
In addition to a potential sentence of up to 30 days in jail and a $625 fine, Minot warned Freeman-Murdah that her alleged actions could have “collateral consequences” with DHS. Munns said he wasn’t sure what those consequences could entail.
“Since this is so new, we haven’t crossed this particular bridge before,” he said.
Freeman-Murdah declined to comment after her appearance.
Munns said all reports of child abuse — only about half of which come from mandatory reporters — go through a central office in Des Moines. The office is staffed by about 30 child protective workers who determine if the allegation fits the definition of child abuse under Iowa law. Cases that fit that criteria are then directed to local offices stationed in each county. Munns said investigators respond within an hour for emergency situations and within 24 hours for all other reports, 365 days a year.
“This is not an entry-level job,” Munns said. “People who do this work have been around this field for years and are skilled at recognizing abuse and risk factors for future abuse. You want to prevent the child from being abused again. Obviously, the earlier you get a heads up on that, the better.”
The allegations of abuse do not have to be founded for a judge or jury to find Freeman violated the law by not reporting the alleged offense. Brotherton said the child abuse allegations remain under investigation.
Source http://www.press-citizen.com/article/20120203/NEWS01/302030014/DHS-Charges-failure-report-abuse-claims-unheard-of?odyssey=nav%7Chead
Monday, January 23, 2012
Star Watch: Could deaths of Indiana children have been prevented?
Bogger note:
Sometimes parents are at fault in child abuse and neglect cases. In many of those cases, CPS fails the children for a number of reasons, none of which are reasonable or make any kind of sense - simply - CPS failed. It's a shame that children who are in truly abusive homes are suffering which sometimes leads to their death whild children who are not in abusive homes are kidnapped by CPS and sold to the highest bidder. Seems that CPS should stop the baby selling business and focus on the job that they were originally intended to do - protecting children. We question if CPS has any idea how to do their jobs and how they deem homes safe and etc. Seems that they fail miserably at their job.
---
Investigation raises questions about whether Department of Child Services could have done more to protect kids
Written by Tim Evans
Taylor Creech, 5 months old.
Nygell Easter, 6 months old.
Julian Hurley, 4 years old.
Devin Parsons, 12 years old.
Tramelle Sturgis, 10 years old.
Irdessa Vazquez, 6 months old.
Six Hoosier children -- white, black and Hispanic, from small towns and big cities. All dead.
Their short, disparate lives are connected by one common thread: the Indiana Department of Child Services.
Before each of these children died last year, concerns about their care and treatment were reported -- repeatedly, in some cases -- to the state agency responsible for investigating allegations of child abuse and neglect.
In some cases, DCS determined the allegations did not merit an investigation. In others, the agency opened investigations but was unable to make contact with the family or found no problems -- case closed. And in two of the deaths, DCS had open cases at the time the children were killed.
But in each case -- and despite evidence of mounting trouble -- DCS ultimately left the children with their parents.
The 2011 fatalities uncovered by The Indianapolis Star raise questions about the quality of the agency's investigations and safety assessments, as well as with the services provided to struggling families.
It is not child deaths alone, however, that suggest lingering problems. There are other troubling indicators that the system is still failing too many Hoosier children:
The rate at which children suffer repeat abuse or neglect within six months of a DCS intervention -- a telling and nationally recognized measure -- remains basically unchanged from 2004 at about 8 percent. The federal government has a target standard of 5.4 percent, which 27 states met in 2010. Twelve states had a higher re-abuse rate than Indiana.
Despite a significant increase in the number of reports made to DCS, the agency is investigating a smaller percentage of the reports it receives -- and it is substantiating a smaller percentage of the cases that are investigated.
Altogether, the issues raise serious questions about the ambitious and costly reform project initiated in 2005 by Gov. Mitch Daniels to fix Indiana's long-troubled child welfare system and protect vulnerable children.
Despite hiring nearly 800 new field workers, setting caseload limits and expanding training, it is not clear that children involved with DCS are any safer now than they were before the overhaul.
"Clearly," said state Sen. Jean Breaux, D-Indianapolis, "the system is still broken."
In a written response to questions submitted by The Star, DCS spokeswoman Ann Houseworth disagreed.
"We are providing better outcomes for kids," she said.
Houseworth cited the added caseworkers, a centralized call center that provides uniformity in response to reports of abuse and neglect, a reduction in the number of children placed outside of their homes, and a decrease in the number of children who languish in the system for years with no permanent homes.
The agency's work was honored last week by Casey Family Programs for excellence in leadership, in part because of its efforts to decrease the number of children in institutional and foster care.
The approach DCS calls "Safely Home-Families First" is a concept that is gaining acceptance in child welfare circles across the country. It is based on research that shows the trauma of being torn from family can be as devastating to a child as some forms of neglect and abuse.
The key to success in the "family preservation" approach, according to experts, is making sure that there is a thorough and accurate assessment of a family's challenges and strengths -- and that adequate services are available to ensure that the problems of parents are addressed so their children can safely remain at home.
Houseworth acknowledged "DCS is concerned" about its inability to reduce the re-abuse rate but said the agency has no control over the behavior of parents once a case is closed.
Others have an idea why the rate hasn't budged.
Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, is an outspoken proponent of keeping families together while working through their problems. He said the state's inability to reduce re-abuse indicates DCS is not providing adequate or appropriate services to families.
"The question is: What is DCS doing before a case is closed?" he said. "It sounds to me like DCS lacked the competence to build the programs that are needed."
Intensive services that are proven to keep children safe don't come cheap, Wexler said.
That said, DCS officials have given back $320 million since 2009 to the state treasury -- including $103 million in 2011.
That was money lawmakers earmarked to help abused and neglected children but instead was used, at the governor's urging, to help bolster the state's balance sheet during the economic downturn. And it happened as reports of abuse and neglect increased in the state.
"The money DCS 'threw away' may well have helped children and families," Wexler said, "if it had been spent for the right kinds of programs."
Houseworth said returning the money has not caused children to suffer.
"Our goal is not just to spend money on services," she said. "We're charged with providing appropriate services children need and at the same time use our dollars wisely."
How that money is spent to help families is determined by a team -- which includes DCS staff, family members and local service providers -- that works to identify the kinds of help a troubled family needs.
The bulk of the money that was returned by DCS was not the result of skimping on those types of services, Houseworth said. Rather, it was not needed because of the significant savings provided by slashing the number of children placed in residential facilities. The cost for such services can run as high as $100,000 a year per child.
But state Rep. William Crawford, D-Indianapolis, said common sense makes him think some of the cases in which children died -- and many others across the state where children suffered repeat abuse and neglect -- might have turned out differently if DCS had used more of the money to better monitor and help those families.
"Their mantra is that they are doing more with less," he said, "but that doesn't appear to be working for the children."
Crawford has filed legislation to create a Commission on Improving the Status of Children, which would monitor and review state services and programs -- including those of DCS -- and produce an annual report detailing the state's successes and shortcomings.
"You have to wonder," said Crawford, "if (DCS) didn't put vulnerable children in jeopardy just so the governor could say 'look at what the state has in the bank' when he leaves office."
Breaux also questioned whether the agency's budget decisions have been in the best interest of children and families.
"It just breaks my heart when I hear those stories about children dying," she said. "It seems to me that DCS would want to keep as many dollars as it could to protect and help children."
How were concerns handled?
Each of the six deaths investigated by The Star highlights one or more continuing concerns about the agency's work.
There are likely many other victims. The Star's investigation has found at least 17 other deaths over the past five years -- DCS says that's not something the agency tracks -- including many that revealed the same problems that showed up in the 2011 cases.
Clearly, DCS is not solely responsible for the deaths; it was the abuse and neglect that killed the children. But there had been desperate cries for help calling these very children and adults to the attention of DCS.
The death of Devin Parsons, a Greensburg boy who had just completed the fourth grade, raises questions about the agency's increasing push to leave children with troubled parents and the quality of services DCS provides to those families.
Devin's mother had been investigated for allegations of abuse or neglect at least 18 times since Devin was born in 1999, including nine reports in the last year of his life. The agency repeatedly ordered Tasha Parsons to participate in counseling and other services but never removed Devin or his siblings -- even after the Greensburg boy told a caseworker in April that he was afraid to go back home.
A little more than one month later, police say, Devin was savagely beaten to death by his mother and her boyfriend.
The death of Nygell Easter in Indianapolis raises questions about the sufficiency of DCS investigations at a time when the agency is citing parents in a smaller percentage of the reports it investigates.
Nygell was 3 months old when he ended up at an Indianapolis hospital in December 2010. Medical personnel suspected abuse and called DCS. The agency opened an investigation. But it was closed with an "unsubstantiated" finding in January 2011 after the family blamed Nygell's older brother for the injury.
Less than two months later, Nygell was dead. Once again, his family tried to blame Nygell's fatal head injury on his 1-year-old brother. An investigation by police and the coroner, however, determined the injury could not have happened the way the family described, and his father -- who was convicted one year earlier for sexual misconduct with a minor -- faces murder charges.
The death of Taylor Creech in Columbia City raises questions about the urgency and tenacity with which DCS investigates reports, and also the agency's collaboration with law enforcement.
Before Taylor was born, family members said DCS had removed two of Janele Creech's other children because of her drug use. In November 2010, Janele's sisters turned to Janele's probation officer and DCS, reporting Taylor was in danger because their sister was making and using methamphetamine around her new baby.
They said the report prompted DCS to send a caseworker to Creech's home. But when no one answered the door, the worker left a card with a note asking Creech to call the agency. She didn't. Instead, Creech basically went into hiding, avoiding contact with her family.
Creech subsequently failed a mandatory probation department drug test on Dec. 23, 2010, but a warrant for her arrest was not issued for an additional week -- and probation officials apparently did not notify DCS.
Three days after a judge issued the warrant for Creech's arrest, she still had not been picked up for the probation violation or contacted by DCS -- and Taylor was dead.
The coroner told her aunts the baby died after a case of bronchitis. Creech had allowed it to go untreated while trying to avoid authorities, and it developed into sepsis. That condition pushed poisons into Taylor's bloodstream, contributing to her suffocation as she slept on a sofa with Creech's boyfriend.
"You hear all the time that if you suspect abuse or neglect, you need to report it," said Taylor's aunt, Michele Freewalt, who went to the Whitley County DCS office to report her fears for the baby.
"But it didn't do us any good. That's what makes me the most angry: We did exactly what we were supposed to do, and they dropped the ball."
The death of Tramelle Sturgis in South Bend also raises questions about the quality of DCS assessments.
A caseworker investigated a report in May that Tramelle's father and grandmother were beating children in the home with a wooden club -- a very specific allegation. But the DCS investigator reported on June 20 that there was no evidence of abuse.
Five months later, Tramelle, 10, was dead. A police investigation revealed the boy "suffered from numerous injuries, both old and new," according to court documents.
The final, fatal beating, investigators allege, was administered by his father. Tramelle was beaten to death with a wooden club.
Source http://www.indystar.com/article/20120122/LOCAL/201220337/Star-Watch-Could-deaths-Indiana-children-been-prevented-?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CIndyStar.com
Sometimes parents are at fault in child abuse and neglect cases. In many of those cases, CPS fails the children for a number of reasons, none of which are reasonable or make any kind of sense - simply - CPS failed. It's a shame that children who are in truly abusive homes are suffering which sometimes leads to their death whild children who are not in abusive homes are kidnapped by CPS and sold to the highest bidder. Seems that CPS should stop the baby selling business and focus on the job that they were originally intended to do - protecting children. We question if CPS has any idea how to do their jobs and how they deem homes safe and etc. Seems that they fail miserably at their job.
---
Investigation raises questions about whether Department of Child Services could have done more to protect kids
Written by Tim Evans
Taylor Creech, 5 months old.
Nygell Easter, 6 months old.
Julian Hurley, 4 years old.
Devin Parsons, 12 years old.
Tramelle Sturgis, 10 years old.
Irdessa Vazquez, 6 months old.
Six Hoosier children -- white, black and Hispanic, from small towns and big cities. All dead.
Their short, disparate lives are connected by one common thread: the Indiana Department of Child Services.
Before each of these children died last year, concerns about their care and treatment were reported -- repeatedly, in some cases -- to the state agency responsible for investigating allegations of child abuse and neglect.
In some cases, DCS determined the allegations did not merit an investigation. In others, the agency opened investigations but was unable to make contact with the family or found no problems -- case closed. And in two of the deaths, DCS had open cases at the time the children were killed.
But in each case -- and despite evidence of mounting trouble -- DCS ultimately left the children with their parents.
The 2011 fatalities uncovered by The Indianapolis Star raise questions about the quality of the agency's investigations and safety assessments, as well as with the services provided to struggling families.
It is not child deaths alone, however, that suggest lingering problems. There are other troubling indicators that the system is still failing too many Hoosier children:
The rate at which children suffer repeat abuse or neglect within six months of a DCS intervention -- a telling and nationally recognized measure -- remains basically unchanged from 2004 at about 8 percent. The federal government has a target standard of 5.4 percent, which 27 states met in 2010. Twelve states had a higher re-abuse rate than Indiana.
Despite a significant increase in the number of reports made to DCS, the agency is investigating a smaller percentage of the reports it receives -- and it is substantiating a smaller percentage of the cases that are investigated.
Altogether, the issues raise serious questions about the ambitious and costly reform project initiated in 2005 by Gov. Mitch Daniels to fix Indiana's long-troubled child welfare system and protect vulnerable children.
Despite hiring nearly 800 new field workers, setting caseload limits and expanding training, it is not clear that children involved with DCS are any safer now than they were before the overhaul.
"Clearly," said state Sen. Jean Breaux, D-Indianapolis, "the system is still broken."
In a written response to questions submitted by The Star, DCS spokeswoman Ann Houseworth disagreed.
"We are providing better outcomes for kids," she said.
Houseworth cited the added caseworkers, a centralized call center that provides uniformity in response to reports of abuse and neglect, a reduction in the number of children placed outside of their homes, and a decrease in the number of children who languish in the system for years with no permanent homes.
The agency's work was honored last week by Casey Family Programs for excellence in leadership, in part because of its efforts to decrease the number of children in institutional and foster care.
The approach DCS calls "Safely Home-Families First" is a concept that is gaining acceptance in child welfare circles across the country. It is based on research that shows the trauma of being torn from family can be as devastating to a child as some forms of neglect and abuse.
The key to success in the "family preservation" approach, according to experts, is making sure that there is a thorough and accurate assessment of a family's challenges and strengths -- and that adequate services are available to ensure that the problems of parents are addressed so their children can safely remain at home.
Houseworth acknowledged "DCS is concerned" about its inability to reduce the re-abuse rate but said the agency has no control over the behavior of parents once a case is closed.
Others have an idea why the rate hasn't budged.
Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, is an outspoken proponent of keeping families together while working through their problems. He said the state's inability to reduce re-abuse indicates DCS is not providing adequate or appropriate services to families.
"The question is: What is DCS doing before a case is closed?" he said. "It sounds to me like DCS lacked the competence to build the programs that are needed."
Intensive services that are proven to keep children safe don't come cheap, Wexler said.
That said, DCS officials have given back $320 million since 2009 to the state treasury -- including $103 million in 2011.
That was money lawmakers earmarked to help abused and neglected children but instead was used, at the governor's urging, to help bolster the state's balance sheet during the economic downturn. And it happened as reports of abuse and neglect increased in the state.
"The money DCS 'threw away' may well have helped children and families," Wexler said, "if it had been spent for the right kinds of programs."
Houseworth said returning the money has not caused children to suffer.
"Our goal is not just to spend money on services," she said. "We're charged with providing appropriate services children need and at the same time use our dollars wisely."
How that money is spent to help families is determined by a team -- which includes DCS staff, family members and local service providers -- that works to identify the kinds of help a troubled family needs.
The bulk of the money that was returned by DCS was not the result of skimping on those types of services, Houseworth said. Rather, it was not needed because of the significant savings provided by slashing the number of children placed in residential facilities. The cost for such services can run as high as $100,000 a year per child.
But state Rep. William Crawford, D-Indianapolis, said common sense makes him think some of the cases in which children died -- and many others across the state where children suffered repeat abuse and neglect -- might have turned out differently if DCS had used more of the money to better monitor and help those families.
"Their mantra is that they are doing more with less," he said, "but that doesn't appear to be working for the children."
Crawford has filed legislation to create a Commission on Improving the Status of Children, which would monitor and review state services and programs -- including those of DCS -- and produce an annual report detailing the state's successes and shortcomings.
"You have to wonder," said Crawford, "if (DCS) didn't put vulnerable children in jeopardy just so the governor could say 'look at what the state has in the bank' when he leaves office."
Breaux also questioned whether the agency's budget decisions have been in the best interest of children and families.
"It just breaks my heart when I hear those stories about children dying," she said. "It seems to me that DCS would want to keep as many dollars as it could to protect and help children."
How were concerns handled?
Each of the six deaths investigated by The Star highlights one or more continuing concerns about the agency's work.
There are likely many other victims. The Star's investigation has found at least 17 other deaths over the past five years -- DCS says that's not something the agency tracks -- including many that revealed the same problems that showed up in the 2011 cases.
Clearly, DCS is not solely responsible for the deaths; it was the abuse and neglect that killed the children. But there had been desperate cries for help calling these very children and adults to the attention of DCS.
The death of Devin Parsons, a Greensburg boy who had just completed the fourth grade, raises questions about the agency's increasing push to leave children with troubled parents and the quality of services DCS provides to those families.
Devin's mother had been investigated for allegations of abuse or neglect at least 18 times since Devin was born in 1999, including nine reports in the last year of his life. The agency repeatedly ordered Tasha Parsons to participate in counseling and other services but never removed Devin or his siblings -- even after the Greensburg boy told a caseworker in April that he was afraid to go back home.
A little more than one month later, police say, Devin was savagely beaten to death by his mother and her boyfriend.
The death of Nygell Easter in Indianapolis raises questions about the sufficiency of DCS investigations at a time when the agency is citing parents in a smaller percentage of the reports it investigates.
Nygell was 3 months old when he ended up at an Indianapolis hospital in December 2010. Medical personnel suspected abuse and called DCS. The agency opened an investigation. But it was closed with an "unsubstantiated" finding in January 2011 after the family blamed Nygell's older brother for the injury.
Less than two months later, Nygell was dead. Once again, his family tried to blame Nygell's fatal head injury on his 1-year-old brother. An investigation by police and the coroner, however, determined the injury could not have happened the way the family described, and his father -- who was convicted one year earlier for sexual misconduct with a minor -- faces murder charges.
The death of Taylor Creech in Columbia City raises questions about the urgency and tenacity with which DCS investigates reports, and also the agency's collaboration with law enforcement.
Before Taylor was born, family members said DCS had removed two of Janele Creech's other children because of her drug use. In November 2010, Janele's sisters turned to Janele's probation officer and DCS, reporting Taylor was in danger because their sister was making and using methamphetamine around her new baby.
They said the report prompted DCS to send a caseworker to Creech's home. But when no one answered the door, the worker left a card with a note asking Creech to call the agency. She didn't. Instead, Creech basically went into hiding, avoiding contact with her family.
Creech subsequently failed a mandatory probation department drug test on Dec. 23, 2010, but a warrant for her arrest was not issued for an additional week -- and probation officials apparently did not notify DCS.
Three days after a judge issued the warrant for Creech's arrest, she still had not been picked up for the probation violation or contacted by DCS -- and Taylor was dead.
The coroner told her aunts the baby died after a case of bronchitis. Creech had allowed it to go untreated while trying to avoid authorities, and it developed into sepsis. That condition pushed poisons into Taylor's bloodstream, contributing to her suffocation as she slept on a sofa with Creech's boyfriend.
"You hear all the time that if you suspect abuse or neglect, you need to report it," said Taylor's aunt, Michele Freewalt, who went to the Whitley County DCS office to report her fears for the baby.
"But it didn't do us any good. That's what makes me the most angry: We did exactly what we were supposed to do, and they dropped the ball."
The death of Tramelle Sturgis in South Bend also raises questions about the quality of DCS assessments.
A caseworker investigated a report in May that Tramelle's father and grandmother were beating children in the home with a wooden club -- a very specific allegation. But the DCS investigator reported on June 20 that there was no evidence of abuse.
Five months later, Tramelle, 10, was dead. A police investigation revealed the boy "suffered from numerous injuries, both old and new," according to court documents.
The final, fatal beating, investigators allege, was administered by his father. Tramelle was beaten to death with a wooden club.
Source http://www.indystar.com/article/20120122/LOCAL/201220337/Star-Watch-Could-deaths-Indiana-children-been-prevented-?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CIndyStar.com
Friday, January 20, 2012
Former DHS employee faces sex charge against 15-year-old foster child - Oklahoma
By GINNIE GRAHAM
Correction: A Wednesday Tulsa World story about a criminal charge filed against former Oklahoma Department of Human Services worker Ronald Jay Green II contained incorrect information. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation received the referral from the Stillwater Police Department to handle the investigation on Sept. 26. This story has been corrected.
-----
A former employee of the state Department of Human Services has been charged with committing a sex crime against a teenage girl in foster care while he was on staff with DHS.
Ronald Jay Green II, 23, was charged Thursday in Tulsa County District Court with one count of forcible oral sodomy, and Special Judge David Youll issued a warrant for his arrest.
Green worked in the Stillwater DHS office from May through October 2010 as a temporary social worker aide and was paid $8.80 an hour, according to DHS spokeswoman Sheree Powell.
On Sept. 13, 2010, Green was transporting a 15-year-old foster child from Stillwater to a Tulsa placement when he allegedly engaged in the sex act, said Jessica Brown, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.
The victim came forward last year with the allegations, and the OSBI was called by Stillwater police Sept. 26 to oversee the investigation, Brown said.
The alleged abuse occurred in Tulsa County, Brown said.
Green has no disciplinary actions on file with DHS because the allegations were made after he resigned, Powell stated in an email.
"The accusations against Mr. Green are disgusting and extremely disturbing," Powell wrote. "The safety of the children entrusted into our care is our top priority. Although the disclosure of this incident came out almost a year after Mr. Green resigned from (DHS), our staff immediately reported it to the proper authorities for investigation."
The commission overseeing the DHS this month agreed to a settlement agreement of a federal class-action lawsuit that had alleged abuses in the state's foster-care system. Part of the allegations involved staffing, training and reasonable workloads to ensure the safety of children while they are in DHS care.
The settlement agreement has to be approved by a federal judge.
The suit was filed by Children's Rights, a New York-based child advocacy group.
Source http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20120118_11_A9_Aforme289796
Correction: A Wednesday Tulsa World story about a criminal charge filed against former Oklahoma Department of Human Services worker Ronald Jay Green II contained incorrect information. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation received the referral from the Stillwater Police Department to handle the investigation on Sept. 26. This story has been corrected.
-----
A former employee of the state Department of Human Services has been charged with committing a sex crime against a teenage girl in foster care while he was on staff with DHS.
Ronald Jay Green II, 23, was charged Thursday in Tulsa County District Court with one count of forcible oral sodomy, and Special Judge David Youll issued a warrant for his arrest.
Green worked in the Stillwater DHS office from May through October 2010 as a temporary social worker aide and was paid $8.80 an hour, according to DHS spokeswoman Sheree Powell.
On Sept. 13, 2010, Green was transporting a 15-year-old foster child from Stillwater to a Tulsa placement when he allegedly engaged in the sex act, said Jessica Brown, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.
The victim came forward last year with the allegations, and the OSBI was called by Stillwater police Sept. 26 to oversee the investigation, Brown said.
The alleged abuse occurred in Tulsa County, Brown said.
Green has no disciplinary actions on file with DHS because the allegations were made after he resigned, Powell stated in an email.
"The accusations against Mr. Green are disgusting and extremely disturbing," Powell wrote. "The safety of the children entrusted into our care is our top priority. Although the disclosure of this incident came out almost a year after Mr. Green resigned from (DHS), our staff immediately reported it to the proper authorities for investigation."
The commission overseeing the DHS this month agreed to a settlement agreement of a federal class-action lawsuit that had alleged abuses in the state's foster-care system. Part of the allegations involved staffing, training and reasonable workloads to ensure the safety of children while they are in DHS care.
The settlement agreement has to be approved by a federal judge.
The suit was filed by Children's Rights, a New York-based child advocacy group.
Source http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20120118_11_A9_Aforme289796
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Mother says her autistic son was put in bag as discipline at school - Kentucky
Blogger note:
What do you bet not much becomes of this unless there were a lot more adult witnesses to the event than is noted in the article? Not much usually happens when a school abuses your child.
---
From Kiran Khalid
(CNN) -- A Kentucky woman says special education teachers put her autistic 9-year-old son inside a net ball bag as punishment at his school.
The mother, Sandra Baker, told CNN Monday that she was called to her son's elementary school on December 14, because he was being unruly.
"I saw a big green bag with the drawstring pulled and the (teacher's) aide sitting next to him," Baker said. "As I approached the bag, I heard Christopher say, 'Who's out there?' "
The head of Mercer County public schools did not directly address Baker's accusations in a statement, but Superintendent Dennis Davis acknowledged that, "The Mercer County School District is aware of recent reports of conduct directed by staff toward a student in one of our schools."
Citing federal and state confidentiality laws regarding students, David said the district could not confirm or deny "the specific allegations which are being raised in the public."
But he added, "Upon learning of the allegations, the school system reviewed the incident immediately, and the matter is being handled consistently with School District policies and with State and Federal law."
"The employees of the Mercer County Public Schools are qualified professionals who treat students with respect and dignity while providing a safe and nurturing learning environment," the statement added.
Baker, meanwhile, said Monday that she was stunned to arrive at the school to find her son trapped in a bag.
Baker said the bag was made of net and, in addition to her son, it contained dozens of small plastic balls like the ones found in inflatable bounce houses for children.
She said she demanded that her son be removed from the bag immediately, and she became more alarmed to see the aide struggle with the tied knot to free the boy.
"That shook me up because what if he had gotten sick in there, or there would have been an emergency and no one could get him out?" Baker said. Her son emerged from the bag "sweaty and scared," Baker told CNN. She added that her son, who is in the school's program for autistic children, may not have known whether he was being punished or was participating in a "game" of some sort.
Baker said she and her husband met with school officials the day after the incident, but she said the couple has no choice other than to return their son to the same school after the holiday break.
The incident has led to an online petition on a website calling on the school district to fire the teacher or teachers responsible and to institute a comprehensive training program in the school district. More than 10,000 people scattered through all 50 states endorsed the petition during the weekend, according to the website Change.org.
New study suggests autism starts in the womb
The alleged incident in central Kentucky also has ignited the outrage of advocates for autism awareness.
"People with autism are especially vulnerable, and some may either be unaware that they are being mistreated or may be unable to effectively communicate that mistreatment has occurred," said Lisa Goring, vice president of the organization Autism Speaks.
"It's critical that we do everything possible to prevent mistreatment and abuse, by arming parents and children with key safety information, as well as improving our ability to detect and report any instance of wrongdoing."
Source http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/26/us/kentucky-boy-bag/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
What do you bet not much becomes of this unless there were a lot more adult witnesses to the event than is noted in the article? Not much usually happens when a school abuses your child.
---
From Kiran Khalid
(CNN) -- A Kentucky woman says special education teachers put her autistic 9-year-old son inside a net ball bag as punishment at his school.
The mother, Sandra Baker, told CNN Monday that she was called to her son's elementary school on December 14, because he was being unruly.
"I saw a big green bag with the drawstring pulled and the (teacher's) aide sitting next to him," Baker said. "As I approached the bag, I heard Christopher say, 'Who's out there?' "
The head of Mercer County public schools did not directly address Baker's accusations in a statement, but Superintendent Dennis Davis acknowledged that, "The Mercer County School District is aware of recent reports of conduct directed by staff toward a student in one of our schools."
Citing federal and state confidentiality laws regarding students, David said the district could not confirm or deny "the specific allegations which are being raised in the public."
But he added, "Upon learning of the allegations, the school system reviewed the incident immediately, and the matter is being handled consistently with School District policies and with State and Federal law."
"The employees of the Mercer County Public Schools are qualified professionals who treat students with respect and dignity while providing a safe and nurturing learning environment," the statement added.
Baker, meanwhile, said Monday that she was stunned to arrive at the school to find her son trapped in a bag.
Baker said the bag was made of net and, in addition to her son, it contained dozens of small plastic balls like the ones found in inflatable bounce houses for children.
She said she demanded that her son be removed from the bag immediately, and she became more alarmed to see the aide struggle with the tied knot to free the boy.
"That shook me up because what if he had gotten sick in there, or there would have been an emergency and no one could get him out?" Baker said. Her son emerged from the bag "sweaty and scared," Baker told CNN. She added that her son, who is in the school's program for autistic children, may not have known whether he was being punished or was participating in a "game" of some sort.
Baker said she and her husband met with school officials the day after the incident, but she said the couple has no choice other than to return their son to the same school after the holiday break.
The incident has led to an online petition on a website calling on the school district to fire the teacher or teachers responsible and to institute a comprehensive training program in the school district. More than 10,000 people scattered through all 50 states endorsed the petition during the weekend, according to the website Change.org.
New study suggests autism starts in the womb
The alleged incident in central Kentucky also has ignited the outrage of advocates for autism awareness.
"People with autism are especially vulnerable, and some may either be unaware that they are being mistreated or may be unable to effectively communicate that mistreatment has occurred," said Lisa Goring, vice president of the organization Autism Speaks.
"It's critical that we do everything possible to prevent mistreatment and abuse, by arming parents and children with key safety information, as well as improving our ability to detect and report any instance of wrongdoing."
Source http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/26/us/kentucky-boy-bag/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Monday, December 26, 2011
Some DHS workers allowed to keep jobs after child deaths - Oklahoma
Agency audit discovered ‘substantial violations,' blatant irresponsibility by child-welfare workers in three deaths
BY NOLAN CLAY, RANDY ELLIS AND ROBBY TRAMMELL
DHS workers are not always fired over mistakes that contributed to children's deaths.
In 2008, a Craig County child-welfare specialist, Jamie L. Veysey, was suspended without pay for only five days after a 3-year-old boy died.
A supervisor, Debra L. Grace, was suspended without pay for 60 days.
A DHS audit after the death found “substantial violations” of DHS child-welfare policy.
DHS workers had returned the medically fragile boy to his mother from foster care in February 2007. The boy, Blake Ragsdale, died of natural causes less than a month later.
He was placed with his mother even though she did not have a job, a telephone or a car, records show. The mother had failed to take care of him properly a year before during a reunification attempt.
He was in foster care because he had tested positive for methamphetamine at birth.
DHS found the workers failed to notify a judge the boy was being reunited with his mother, failed to make a safety assessment of the mother's home beforehand and failed to put any services into place to help the mother with the boy's care.
DHS found Veysey failed to check on the boy enough times after the reunification. DHS also found both did not notify the proper DHS authorities of the death.
Veysey resigned in 2010, records show. Grace no longer handles child-welfare cases, a DHS spokeswoman said.
Beaten to death
A Beckham County child-welfare specialist, Liberty Michelle Carter, was suspended for 15 days without pay in 2009 after a young boy, Ryan Weeks, was beaten to death. Carter was disciplined for her “action/inaction” in the case.
Ryan, 3, died on Nov. 4, 2008, after DHS placed him back in his mother's Elk City home from foster care. The mother's live-in boyfriend eventually pleaded no contest to first-degree murder.
A foster mother had pleaded with the agency not to return Ryan to his mother's home because he had returned from visits there with bruises. The foster mother complained to a DHS county director that Carter would not listen to her. DHS found Carter had concluded in July 2008 that the foster mother likely was making false allegations.
DHS also found Carter failed to properly look into an injury to the boy in September 2008 and failed to address Ryan's mother's fear that her boyfriend was overwhelmed.
Carter resigned in December 2010, the DHS spokeswoman said.
Medically fragile
An Oklahoma County child-welfare specialist, Glen E. Marshall, was at first offered more training after a medically fragile baby died a few days after he failed to get the child help.
“Your failure to ensure the safety of this infant demonstrated a blatant disregard of your responsibilities as a child-welfare specialist, poor judgment and egregious lack of risk assessment skills,” he was told.
Marshall was fired in November 2009 — more than a year after the child's death — after he continued to mishandle cases and lied to a supervisor, an assistant district attorney and an Oklahoma City police detective, the disciplinary records show.
Source http://newsok.com/some-dhs-workers-allowed-to-keep-jobs-after-child-deaths/article/3634878
BY NOLAN CLAY, RANDY ELLIS AND ROBBY TRAMMELL
DHS workers are not always fired over mistakes that contributed to children's deaths.
In 2008, a Craig County child-welfare specialist, Jamie L. Veysey, was suspended without pay for only five days after a 3-year-old boy died.
A supervisor, Debra L. Grace, was suspended without pay for 60 days.
A DHS audit after the death found “substantial violations” of DHS child-welfare policy.
DHS workers had returned the medically fragile boy to his mother from foster care in February 2007. The boy, Blake Ragsdale, died of natural causes less than a month later.
He was placed with his mother even though she did not have a job, a telephone or a car, records show. The mother had failed to take care of him properly a year before during a reunification attempt.
He was in foster care because he had tested positive for methamphetamine at birth.
DHS found the workers failed to notify a judge the boy was being reunited with his mother, failed to make a safety assessment of the mother's home beforehand and failed to put any services into place to help the mother with the boy's care.
DHS found Veysey failed to check on the boy enough times after the reunification. DHS also found both did not notify the proper DHS authorities of the death.
Veysey resigned in 2010, records show. Grace no longer handles child-welfare cases, a DHS spokeswoman said.
Beaten to death
A Beckham County child-welfare specialist, Liberty Michelle Carter, was suspended for 15 days without pay in 2009 after a young boy, Ryan Weeks, was beaten to death. Carter was disciplined for her “action/inaction” in the case.
Ryan, 3, died on Nov. 4, 2008, after DHS placed him back in his mother's Elk City home from foster care. The mother's live-in boyfriend eventually pleaded no contest to first-degree murder.
A foster mother had pleaded with the agency not to return Ryan to his mother's home because he had returned from visits there with bruises. The foster mother complained to a DHS county director that Carter would not listen to her. DHS found Carter had concluded in July 2008 that the foster mother likely was making false allegations.
DHS also found Carter failed to properly look into an injury to the boy in September 2008 and failed to address Ryan's mother's fear that her boyfriend was overwhelmed.
Carter resigned in December 2010, the DHS spokeswoman said.
Medically fragile
An Oklahoma County child-welfare specialist, Glen E. Marshall, was at first offered more training after a medically fragile baby died a few days after he failed to get the child help.
“Your failure to ensure the safety of this infant demonstrated a blatant disregard of your responsibilities as a child-welfare specialist, poor judgment and egregious lack of risk assessment skills,” he was told.
Marshall was fired in November 2009 — more than a year after the child's death — after he continued to mishandle cases and lied to a supervisor, an assistant district attorney and an Oklahoma City police detective, the disciplinary records show.
Source http://newsok.com/some-dhs-workers-allowed-to-keep-jobs-after-child-deaths/article/3634878
Monday, December 19, 2011
Counselor charged with having sex with 17-year-old - Kentucky
By Valerie Chinn
MOUNT WASHINGTON, Ky. (WDRB) -- A counselor for abuse victims is now behind bars, charged with raping a teenager in her care.
Sunrise Children's Services says a child in its care made the allegations against Counselor Brooke Briscoe. The 27-year-old from Louisville is now at the Bullitt County Detention Center. Briscoe is charged with one count of rape and one count of sodomy.
The Sheriff's Department says she had intercourse and oral sex with a 17-year-old male resident at Sunrise Child Services in Mt. Washington on Sunrise's property. The organization says it cares for children who are victims of abuse or neglect.
Detective Scotty McGaha with the Bullitt County Sheriff's Department says, "16 is the legal consensual age in the state of Kentucky, however, even though he's of a consensual age, the problem with it is Rape in the Third because she is in a caretaker role with him. She was a counselor for him."
Briscoe's neighbors wouldn't go on camera, but say she has young children. The Sheriff's Department is looking into other possible victims at Sunrise. Briscoe was on administrative leave, pending the investigation. But Sunrise says her job is now terminated.
The Sheriff's Department says she did not have a prior criminal background.
Sunrise Children's Services issued the following statement:
"Allegations were brought against Ms. Briscoe by a child in our care. That day, we initiated the investigation by reporting the allegations to the Office of Inspector General (OIG) and Child Protective Services (CPS). We immediately put Ms. Briscoe on Administrative Leave pending the investigation. We have cooperated fully with OIG, CPS and the Bullitt County Sheriff's Department. Per the information we received today, Ms. Briscoe has been terminated.
We are conducting an internal investigation and are reviewing our policies and procedures to determine if there is anything we need to change to avoid a situation like this in the future. We conduct a full background check on all of our employees. Moreover, we hold ourselves to the highest standards possible as the only child care agency in this area certified by the highest accreditation body for health care agencies.
We work, every day, to protect the children in our care and to provide them a better future. We take this situation very seriously and are shocked and saddened to find out the allegations are true. But we are grateful that someone stepped forward to alert us to the situation so we could stop it."
Source http://www.wdrb.com/story/16355555/counselor-charged-with-having-sex-with-17-year-old
MOUNT WASHINGTON, Ky. (WDRB) -- A counselor for abuse victims is now behind bars, charged with raping a teenager in her care.
Sunrise Children's Services says a child in its care made the allegations against Counselor Brooke Briscoe. The 27-year-old from Louisville is now at the Bullitt County Detention Center. Briscoe is charged with one count of rape and one count of sodomy.
The Sheriff's Department says she had intercourse and oral sex with a 17-year-old male resident at Sunrise Child Services in Mt. Washington on Sunrise's property. The organization says it cares for children who are victims of abuse or neglect.
Detective Scotty McGaha with the Bullitt County Sheriff's Department says, "16 is the legal consensual age in the state of Kentucky, however, even though he's of a consensual age, the problem with it is Rape in the Third because she is in a caretaker role with him. She was a counselor for him."
Briscoe's neighbors wouldn't go on camera, but say she has young children. The Sheriff's Department is looking into other possible victims at Sunrise. Briscoe was on administrative leave, pending the investigation. But Sunrise says her job is now terminated.
The Sheriff's Department says she did not have a prior criminal background.
Sunrise Children's Services issued the following statement:
"Allegations were brought against Ms. Briscoe by a child in our care. That day, we initiated the investigation by reporting the allegations to the Office of Inspector General (OIG) and Child Protective Services (CPS). We immediately put Ms. Briscoe on Administrative Leave pending the investigation. We have cooperated fully with OIG, CPS and the Bullitt County Sheriff's Department. Per the information we received today, Ms. Briscoe has been terminated.
We are conducting an internal investigation and are reviewing our policies and procedures to determine if there is anything we need to change to avoid a situation like this in the future. We conduct a full background check on all of our employees. Moreover, we hold ourselves to the highest standards possible as the only child care agency in this area certified by the highest accreditation body for health care agencies.
We work, every day, to protect the children in our care and to provide them a better future. We take this situation very seriously and are shocked and saddened to find out the allegations are true. But we are grateful that someone stepped forward to alert us to the situation so we could stop it."
Source http://www.wdrb.com/story/16355555/counselor-charged-with-having-sex-with-17-year-old
Friday, December 16, 2011
US officials plan South Dakota summit on Indian foster care
CHET BROKAW Associated Press
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — Federal officials are planning a summit in South Dakota in the wake of allegations that the state has violated federal law by removing too many American Indian children from their homes and placing them in foster care with non-Indian families.
Nedra Darling, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department's Office of Indian Affairs, told The Associated Press that the agency has created a committee to plan the summit, the date of which has not yet been set.
"We hope it will open up a dialogue between tribes and federal and state agencies," Darling said.
The summit is in response to a National Public Radio series in October that said the state routinely broke the Indian Child Welfare Act and disrupted the lives of hundreds of Native American families each year. Federal law requires that Native American children removed from homes be placed with relatives or put in foster care with other Native American families except in unusual circumstances.
The three-part NPR report said 90 percent of the Native American children removed from their homes in South Dakota each year are sent to foster care in non-Indian homes or group homes. It reported that Native American children are placed in South Dakota's foster care system at a disproportionate rate because only 15 percent of the state's child population is Native American, but half of the children in foster care are Native American.
State officials have criticized the NPR report as inaccurate, unfair and biased.
Kim Malsam-Rysdon, secretary of the state Department of Social Services, said the Interior Department has not notified state officials about the planned summit, but that the state has nothing to hide.
"We are very confident that South Dakota is in compliance with federal law in this area, and we really do welcome the opportunity for the federal government and others to understand just how that federal law is being implemented in our state," Malsam-Rysdon said.
The summit suggestion surfaced in a letter to members of Congress who had called for an investigation. The meeting is meant to give state, federal and tribal officials a way to work together so that all involved agencies comply with the law and make sure American Indian children and their families are protected, wrote Larry Echo Hawk, the Interior Department's assistant secretary for Indian Affairs.
The Interior Department also is considering sending lawyers to South Dakota to help tribes enforce the Indian Child Welfare Act, Echo Hawk wrote.
Malsam-Rysdon, whose agency oversees South Dakota's child welfare system, said people need to understand that the system involves her department, tribes, courts, law-enforcement officers and others. Federal officials should not take any action based on the NPR report, but instead should get the facts about what is happening in South Dakota, she said.
"We're glad the Department of Interior is taking it seriously, that they're evidently interested into looking into and ensuring the federal law is being implemented," she said.
Malsam-Rysdon said it's true that a disproportionate number of Native American children are involved in the child welfare system. The state receives more referrals for alleged abuse and neglect involving Native American children, and that leads to more investigations and removals from homes for those children, she said.
"What really permeates our involvement with the child welfare system is safety of the child," Malsam-Rysdon said. "We're involved in homes where there are proven or foreseeable safety concerns regarding a child."
In a written response to the NPR series, the state has said it uses all available Native American foster placement homes.
The series said the state's motive for removing Native American children from their homes might be financial because the state gets federal financial assistance for each child removed from his or her home. The report said the state gets almost $100 million a year to subsidize foster care programs, but state officials said the budget for the entire Division of Child Protection Services last year was only $59 million, and spending specifically on foster care and foster-care support was just $8 million.
The series also said there was a conflict of interest in Gov. Dennis Daugaard's work for Children's Home Society of South Dakota when he was lieutenant governor. That organization received millions of dollars for housing Native American children under contracts the state awarded without competitive bids.
The governor's office responded that Children's Home Society has had contracts with the state since 1978, long before Daugaard became its chief operating officer in 2002.
State officials also have said the Department of Social Services cannot remove children from homes and place them in protective custody. Only law officers and judges have the legal authority to do so, the state officials said.
Source http://m.siouxcityjournal.com/mobile/article_e1ed29d6-1b91-59ab-bfe6-26801493047a.html
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — Federal officials are planning a summit in South Dakota in the wake of allegations that the state has violated federal law by removing too many American Indian children from their homes and placing them in foster care with non-Indian families.
Nedra Darling, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department's Office of Indian Affairs, told The Associated Press that the agency has created a committee to plan the summit, the date of which has not yet been set.
"We hope it will open up a dialogue between tribes and federal and state agencies," Darling said.
The summit is in response to a National Public Radio series in October that said the state routinely broke the Indian Child Welfare Act and disrupted the lives of hundreds of Native American families each year. Federal law requires that Native American children removed from homes be placed with relatives or put in foster care with other Native American families except in unusual circumstances.
The three-part NPR report said 90 percent of the Native American children removed from their homes in South Dakota each year are sent to foster care in non-Indian homes or group homes. It reported that Native American children are placed in South Dakota's foster care system at a disproportionate rate because only 15 percent of the state's child population is Native American, but half of the children in foster care are Native American.
State officials have criticized the NPR report as inaccurate, unfair and biased.
Kim Malsam-Rysdon, secretary of the state Department of Social Services, said the Interior Department has not notified state officials about the planned summit, but that the state has nothing to hide.
"We are very confident that South Dakota is in compliance with federal law in this area, and we really do welcome the opportunity for the federal government and others to understand just how that federal law is being implemented in our state," Malsam-Rysdon said.
The summit suggestion surfaced in a letter to members of Congress who had called for an investigation. The meeting is meant to give state, federal and tribal officials a way to work together so that all involved agencies comply with the law and make sure American Indian children and their families are protected, wrote Larry Echo Hawk, the Interior Department's assistant secretary for Indian Affairs.
The Interior Department also is considering sending lawyers to South Dakota to help tribes enforce the Indian Child Welfare Act, Echo Hawk wrote.
Malsam-Rysdon, whose agency oversees South Dakota's child welfare system, said people need to understand that the system involves her department, tribes, courts, law-enforcement officers and others. Federal officials should not take any action based on the NPR report, but instead should get the facts about what is happening in South Dakota, she said.
"We're glad the Department of Interior is taking it seriously, that they're evidently interested into looking into and ensuring the federal law is being implemented," she said.
Malsam-Rysdon said it's true that a disproportionate number of Native American children are involved in the child welfare system. The state receives more referrals for alleged abuse and neglect involving Native American children, and that leads to more investigations and removals from homes for those children, she said.
"What really permeates our involvement with the child welfare system is safety of the child," Malsam-Rysdon said. "We're involved in homes where there are proven or foreseeable safety concerns regarding a child."
In a written response to the NPR series, the state has said it uses all available Native American foster placement homes.
The series said the state's motive for removing Native American children from their homes might be financial because the state gets federal financial assistance for each child removed from his or her home. The report said the state gets almost $100 million a year to subsidize foster care programs, but state officials said the budget for the entire Division of Child Protection Services last year was only $59 million, and spending specifically on foster care and foster-care support was just $8 million.
The series also said there was a conflict of interest in Gov. Dennis Daugaard's work for Children's Home Society of South Dakota when he was lieutenant governor. That organization received millions of dollars for housing Native American children under contracts the state awarded without competitive bids.
The governor's office responded that Children's Home Society has had contracts with the state since 1978, long before Daugaard became its chief operating officer in 2002.
State officials also have said the Department of Social Services cannot remove children from homes and place them in protective custody. Only law officers and judges have the legal authority to do so, the state officials said.
Source http://m.siouxcityjournal.com/mobile/article_e1ed29d6-1b91-59ab-bfe6-26801493047a.html
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Number of American Indian children in foster care worries tribal leaders - Minnesota
by Sasha Aslanian
St. Paul, Minn. — Each year about 1,500 American Indian children in Minnesota spend time in foster care or other out-of-home-care, often after allegations of neglect or substance abuse by a parent.
In Minnesota, American Indian children are 14 times more likely to be placed in out-of-home care than white children - the widest such gap in the nation. Officials place 66 percent of the children with relatives or with American Indian foster families.
Even as the total number of Minnesota children in foster care dropped 44 percent in the last decade, the number of American Indian children placed in foster care dropped by only 16 percent.
That worries tribal officials like Erma Vizenor, chairwoman of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. She said the tribes should be able to determine which of their families need intervention, and what kind.
"When we do not have the decision making and the authority and the control to determine what is best for them, it has become a major concern," Vizenor said.
Aiming to reduce the break-up of Indian families, the White Earth and the Leech Lake band of Ojibwe have taken over responsibility for child welfare on tribal lands. Now the White Earth, Minnesota's largest tribe, is now preparing to care for its children living hundreds of miles away in Hennepin County.
High poverty among American Indian families makes it more difficult to meet a child's basic needs, but that doesn't completely explain why Indian children are much more likely to be removed from their parents' care.
The tribes have questioned whether racial bias is a factor in such decisions, and they've worked with state officials to develop training for county workers to reduce bias in deciding which cases to investigate. The training also seeks to help outsiders understand the traditional role extended families play in raising Indian children.
Dawn Blanchard, the state's ombudsperson for American Indian Families, said removing American Indian children from their homes is "a daily reality."
Blanchard sorts cases into those she can solve over the phone, and those that require an investigation. She reports wide variation in how well counties follow a federal law designed to keep Indian children with other family members, or to at least place them with an Indian foster family.
Blanchard said the most common complaints she handles are disagreements between county social workers and tribes over where children should go.
"The tribe will say we want them to go to Aunt Betty and the county will say, 'we have problems with Aunt Betty. We think that she's not a good person,' " Blanchard said. "Maybe she's too old. 'We've heard' — that's a big one 'we've heard that she's drinking.' Is it substantiated? Do we know for sure if she has a history of drinking or was it 10 or 15 years ago and she's cleaned up her life now?"
Representatives of Minnesota's 11 tribes were so concerned that the needs of their children were not adequately addressed that late last year they sent letters to then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Gov.-elect Mark Dayton requesting immediate action to address the problem.
White Earth tribal officials want to take on responsibility for the tribe's children in Hennepin County, hundreds of miles south of the reservation. White Earth children make up a quarter of Hennepin County's American Indian caseload, or about 2 percent of the county's overall cases.
Margaret Thunder, a program manager for Hennepin County child protection, is enthusiastic about the tribe's effort.
"I think it's a huge deal," said Thunder, a member of the Red Lake band of Ojibwe. "They will have 100-percent say. Not that they don't already have a fair percent."
Tribes do have a seat at the table in child protection cases.
The 1978 federal Indian Child Welfare Act requires tribes be notified and involved in decision-making for their children. Hennepin County, with its large urban Indian population, has a high volume of these cases. The county gets high marks for complying with the act, and that's one of the reasons White Earth officials believe addressing the needs of the tribe's children there is a next logical step.
Transferring such cases to the tribe would give it complete control over American Indian cases such as a recent one heard in juvenile court.
Four children, ages 4, 2, 1 and one month, were placed in emergency foster care following reports that their parents were abusing drugs and neglecting the children. The parents didn't show up for the court hearing. Their father is a member of the White Earth band and their mother is enrolled in the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin.
"Her current address is technically St. Joseph's hospital where the treatment center was," said Mike Hogan, a courtroom monitor for the Minneapolis American Indian Center. "No one's quite sure where she is, even her attorney."
A Ho-Chunk attorney who joined the hearing by speaker phone said the tribe would prepare a list of relatives who could care for the children. White Earth officials agreed to let the mother's tribe take the lead, but they agreed to compile a list of paternal relatives.
A guardian ad litem said the children were doing well under the care of their foster care families.
Hogan's boss, Sheri Riemers, said the embrace of extended families offers the most hopeful outcome for children in such tough situations.
"We do believe when children are removed that their spirit is left behind," said Riemers, program director of Indian Child Welfare for the Minneapolis American Indian Center.
Other tribes around the state and around the country are watching closely.
Erin Sullivan Sutton, assistant commissioner of the state Department of Human Services, said she is not aware of another state transferring public child welfare from a state or county to a tribal system. But there are good reasons to do so, said Sutton, the state's point person on child welfare.
"We're thinking that if services can be provided in a cultural context to Indian families and by tribal agencies that there may be more success," she said.
For state and tribal officials success won't mean eliminating out-of-home placements. There will always be children who need to be removed from unsafe situations, but they hope more tribal involvement will reduce the disparate treatment of American Indian children.
Vizenor said the Hennepin County program could be the beginning of an ambitious venture to expand care for children living off the reservation.
"Without a doubt, I know we will be successful and gradually, we will phase in the metro area and eventually all our children in the state of Minnesota," she said.
White Earth and the state will present a report to the legislature in January. The timeline for the Hennepin County transfer, and the costs, are still to be determined.
Source http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/11/30/american-indian-children-foster-care/
St. Paul, Minn. — Each year about 1,500 American Indian children in Minnesota spend time in foster care or other out-of-home-care, often after allegations of neglect or substance abuse by a parent.
In Minnesota, American Indian children are 14 times more likely to be placed in out-of-home care than white children - the widest such gap in the nation. Officials place 66 percent of the children with relatives or with American Indian foster families.
Even as the total number of Minnesota children in foster care dropped 44 percent in the last decade, the number of American Indian children placed in foster care dropped by only 16 percent.
That worries tribal officials like Erma Vizenor, chairwoman of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. She said the tribes should be able to determine which of their families need intervention, and what kind.
"When we do not have the decision making and the authority and the control to determine what is best for them, it has become a major concern," Vizenor said.
Aiming to reduce the break-up of Indian families, the White Earth and the Leech Lake band of Ojibwe have taken over responsibility for child welfare on tribal lands. Now the White Earth, Minnesota's largest tribe, is now preparing to care for its children living hundreds of miles away in Hennepin County.
High poverty among American Indian families makes it more difficult to meet a child's basic needs, but that doesn't completely explain why Indian children are much more likely to be removed from their parents' care.
The tribes have questioned whether racial bias is a factor in such decisions, and they've worked with state officials to develop training for county workers to reduce bias in deciding which cases to investigate. The training also seeks to help outsiders understand the traditional role extended families play in raising Indian children.
Dawn Blanchard, the state's ombudsperson for American Indian Families, said removing American Indian children from their homes is "a daily reality."
Blanchard sorts cases into those she can solve over the phone, and those that require an investigation. She reports wide variation in how well counties follow a federal law designed to keep Indian children with other family members, or to at least place them with an Indian foster family.
Blanchard said the most common complaints she handles are disagreements between county social workers and tribes over where children should go.
"The tribe will say we want them to go to Aunt Betty and the county will say, 'we have problems with Aunt Betty. We think that she's not a good person,' " Blanchard said. "Maybe she's too old. 'We've heard' — that's a big one 'we've heard that she's drinking.' Is it substantiated? Do we know for sure if she has a history of drinking or was it 10 or 15 years ago and she's cleaned up her life now?"
Representatives of Minnesota's 11 tribes were so concerned that the needs of their children were not adequately addressed that late last year they sent letters to then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Gov.-elect Mark Dayton requesting immediate action to address the problem.
White Earth tribal officials want to take on responsibility for the tribe's children in Hennepin County, hundreds of miles south of the reservation. White Earth children make up a quarter of Hennepin County's American Indian caseload, or about 2 percent of the county's overall cases.
Margaret Thunder, a program manager for Hennepin County child protection, is enthusiastic about the tribe's effort.
"I think it's a huge deal," said Thunder, a member of the Red Lake band of Ojibwe. "They will have 100-percent say. Not that they don't already have a fair percent."
Tribes do have a seat at the table in child protection cases.
The 1978 federal Indian Child Welfare Act requires tribes be notified and involved in decision-making for their children. Hennepin County, with its large urban Indian population, has a high volume of these cases. The county gets high marks for complying with the act, and that's one of the reasons White Earth officials believe addressing the needs of the tribe's children there is a next logical step.
Transferring such cases to the tribe would give it complete control over American Indian cases such as a recent one heard in juvenile court.
Four children, ages 4, 2, 1 and one month, were placed in emergency foster care following reports that their parents were abusing drugs and neglecting the children. The parents didn't show up for the court hearing. Their father is a member of the White Earth band and their mother is enrolled in the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin.
"Her current address is technically St. Joseph's hospital where the treatment center was," said Mike Hogan, a courtroom monitor for the Minneapolis American Indian Center. "No one's quite sure where she is, even her attorney."
A Ho-Chunk attorney who joined the hearing by speaker phone said the tribe would prepare a list of relatives who could care for the children. White Earth officials agreed to let the mother's tribe take the lead, but they agreed to compile a list of paternal relatives.
A guardian ad litem said the children were doing well under the care of their foster care families.
Hogan's boss, Sheri Riemers, said the embrace of extended families offers the most hopeful outcome for children in such tough situations.
"We do believe when children are removed that their spirit is left behind," said Riemers, program director of Indian Child Welfare for the Minneapolis American Indian Center.
Other tribes around the state and around the country are watching closely.
Erin Sullivan Sutton, assistant commissioner of the state Department of Human Services, said she is not aware of another state transferring public child welfare from a state or county to a tribal system. But there are good reasons to do so, said Sutton, the state's point person on child welfare.
"We're thinking that if services can be provided in a cultural context to Indian families and by tribal agencies that there may be more success," she said.
For state and tribal officials success won't mean eliminating out-of-home placements. There will always be children who need to be removed from unsafe situations, but they hope more tribal involvement will reduce the disparate treatment of American Indian children.
Vizenor said the Hennepin County program could be the beginning of an ambitious venture to expand care for children living off the reservation.
"Without a doubt, I know we will be successful and gradually, we will phase in the metro area and eventually all our children in the state of Minnesota," she said.
White Earth and the state will present a report to the legislature in January. The timeline for the Hennepin County transfer, and the costs, are still to be determined.
Source http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/11/30/american-indian-children-foster-care/
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Doctor at Austin State Hospital accused of child sex abuse - Texas
By Andrea Ball and Eric Dexheimer
The state Department of Family and Protective Services has accused a longtime staff child psychiatrist for the Austin State Hospital of sexually abusing at least one child in his care, and investigators from an independent oversight agency have opened a wider inquiry into accusations from at least eight possible victims dating back a decade.
The state agency alerted hospital officials three weeks ago that it had confirmed that Dr. Charles Fischer had been involved in two separate instances of sexual abuse, said Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the agency. The agency terms an incident "confirmed" if its investigation shows the allegation is supported by a preponderance of the evidence.
Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman for the Department of State Health Services, which runs the Austin hospital, said Fischer, 59, was fired effective Monday.
The state hospital is a residential facility for people with mental illness. The child and adolescent unit where Fischer worked houses youths up to the age of 18. The Adult Protective Services division of the Department of Family and Protective Services is required by law to investigate allegations of abuse and neglect in state hospitals.
Crimmins said police have been notified of the agency's findings; however, an Austin police spokeswoman said Fischer has not been charged with any crimes.
Contacted at his West Lake Hills home, Fischer declined to comment. "You'll have to ask the hospital about that," he said.
The Texas Medical Board, which licenses physicians, shows Fischer has an unblemished disciplinary record. Details of the case against Fischer were still unclear late Wednesday. Williams did not say when the two confirmed incidents occurred, how they were confirmed, if the youth was a boy or a girl, or whether he or she was still a hospital resident.
But, she said, Fischer, who earned $185,000 a year from the state, had been accused of sexually abusing patients in the past.
"There were previous allegations against Dr. Fischer over the years," she said. "Each was reported and investigated outside the agency, but the allegations were never confirmed."
Crimmins said the Department of Family and Protective Services investigated each of the abuse allegations as they became known.
"We have received several reports alleging sexual abuse by Dr. Charles Fischer dating back several years. In each instance in which sexual abuse by Dr. Fischer was alleged, law enforcement was notified at the time of the initial report, and again when a finding was made," he wrote in an email response to questions.
"Each case was investigated thoroughly, but none were confirmed until October, when two separate allegations of sexual abuse against Dr. Fischer were confirmed, and the Department of State Health Services was notified."
A spokeswoman for the state Health and Human Services Commission said the agency's internal investigative arm was looking into the abuse allegations. Stephanie Goodman declined to say whether the Office of Inspector General was investigating the incidents of alleged abuse or the agency's response to them.
And on Wednesday, Disability Rights Texas — a nonprofit organization officially designated by the federal government to protect the rights of the state's disabled — said it had launched an inquiry into cases involving eight potential victims in incidents involving Fischer dating back to 2001. Because of its federal affiliation, the organization has access to records at state hospitals and can bring lawsuits against the state on behalf of people with disabilities.
Beth Mitchell, an attorney for the organization, said she did not yet know if the eight cases it had been notified of included the two abuse incidents confirmed by the Department of Family and Protective Services.
"We are all heartbroken over these allegations," Williams said. "These kids come to us to heal, and the situation is very sad and extremely troubling for everyone involved."
State records show Fischer received his medical license in 1978 from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. He completed a residency in general psychiatry and further specialized training in child psychiatry, the records show.
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/doctor-at-austin-state-hospital-accused-of-child-1974447.html
The state Department of Family and Protective Services has accused a longtime staff child psychiatrist for the Austin State Hospital of sexually abusing at least one child in his care, and investigators from an independent oversight agency have opened a wider inquiry into accusations from at least eight possible victims dating back a decade.
The state agency alerted hospital officials three weeks ago that it had confirmed that Dr. Charles Fischer had been involved in two separate instances of sexual abuse, said Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the agency. The agency terms an incident "confirmed" if its investigation shows the allegation is supported by a preponderance of the evidence.
Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman for the Department of State Health Services, which runs the Austin hospital, said Fischer, 59, was fired effective Monday.
The state hospital is a residential facility for people with mental illness. The child and adolescent unit where Fischer worked houses youths up to the age of 18. The Adult Protective Services division of the Department of Family and Protective Services is required by law to investigate allegations of abuse and neglect in state hospitals.
Crimmins said police have been notified of the agency's findings; however, an Austin police spokeswoman said Fischer has not been charged with any crimes.
Contacted at his West Lake Hills home, Fischer declined to comment. "You'll have to ask the hospital about that," he said.
The Texas Medical Board, which licenses physicians, shows Fischer has an unblemished disciplinary record. Details of the case against Fischer were still unclear late Wednesday. Williams did not say when the two confirmed incidents occurred, how they were confirmed, if the youth was a boy or a girl, or whether he or she was still a hospital resident.
But, she said, Fischer, who earned $185,000 a year from the state, had been accused of sexually abusing patients in the past.
"There were previous allegations against Dr. Fischer over the years," she said. "Each was reported and investigated outside the agency, but the allegations were never confirmed."
Crimmins said the Department of Family and Protective Services investigated each of the abuse allegations as they became known.
"We have received several reports alleging sexual abuse by Dr. Charles Fischer dating back several years. In each instance in which sexual abuse by Dr. Fischer was alleged, law enforcement was notified at the time of the initial report, and again when a finding was made," he wrote in an email response to questions.
"Each case was investigated thoroughly, but none were confirmed until October, when two separate allegations of sexual abuse against Dr. Fischer were confirmed, and the Department of State Health Services was notified."
A spokeswoman for the state Health and Human Services Commission said the agency's internal investigative arm was looking into the abuse allegations. Stephanie Goodman declined to say whether the Office of Inspector General was investigating the incidents of alleged abuse or the agency's response to them.
And on Wednesday, Disability Rights Texas — a nonprofit organization officially designated by the federal government to protect the rights of the state's disabled — said it had launched an inquiry into cases involving eight potential victims in incidents involving Fischer dating back to 2001. Because of its federal affiliation, the organization has access to records at state hospitals and can bring lawsuits against the state on behalf of people with disabilities.
Beth Mitchell, an attorney for the organization, said she did not yet know if the eight cases it had been notified of included the two abuse incidents confirmed by the Department of Family and Protective Services.
"We are all heartbroken over these allegations," Williams said. "These kids come to us to heal, and the situation is very sad and extremely troubling for everyone involved."
State records show Fischer received his medical license in 1978 from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. He completed a residency in general psychiatry and further specialized training in child psychiatry, the records show.
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/doctor-at-austin-state-hospital-accused-of-child-1974447.html
Friday, November 11, 2011
Police: Fugitive who sexually abused foster children arrested
Blog authros note:
What is with these fosters who are so vile? Why didn't someone at CPS or whoever licensed them do a thorough check on these people? They couldn't have really checked into these people because this seems like something too weird to have just started when this man was 40. It makes us sick to think that CPS's failures are why so many children suffer such horrendous abuse simply due to CPS negligence.
-----
by Naxiely Lopez
McALLEN — A combined effort by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies led to the arrest of a man wanted in connection with the sexual assault of three children who were under his care for more than a year.
Investigators believe Jose Luis Cazares, 40, abused three foster children — all under the age of 10 — while they lived with him and his wife, Belinda, from January 2008 to April 2009, court documents showed. The children were placed in foster care because their mother was deported to Honduras.
Police learned about the alleged abuse only after a second foster family took the children in.
A woman who claimed to be the victims’ half-sister went to police in May and told them the children had made an outcry, records showed. Police did not reveal the woman’s identity.
Investigators took the victims to the Children’s Advocacy Center in Edinburg in June, where they were interviewed separately by professionals. There, the children detailed their lives with the Cazares.
One girl told staff at the center Cazares would take her to his room, where he would sexually assault her or use sex toys to do so, records showed.
The girl told police she pleaded with Cazares to stop, but he wouldn’t.
If she told, he would slap her in the mouth, the child said.
The abuse happened “every day in a while after school,” a probable cause affidavit quotes her saying.
A second girl told staff Cazares would buy something for them if they engaged in sex with him and his wife.
That child detailed an incident during Halloween in which he took her costume off and assaulted her.
A third victim, a boy, did not make an outcry, police said. But his sisters told staff they saw Cazares sexually abusing him.
The children began showing signs of abuse shortly after the second foster family began caring for them in April 2009, the half-sister told police.
The family reached out to Child Protective Services at the time to alert them about the assault, but the family was never contacted by anyone, records showed. They reached out again in 2010 to the children’s physician, but again no one followed up.
By the time police were involved, Cazares and his wife had already relocated.
That’s when the Gulf Coast Violent Offenders Fugitive Task Force got involved. The team comprises officers from various law enforcement agencies, including U.S. Marshals Service; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Texas Department of Criminal Justice; U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Hidalgo and Starr County sheriff’s offices; and police departments in McAllen, Mission, San Juan and Weslaco.
Officers tracked Cazares down in Prairie Gillette, Wyo., using documentation from Child Protective Services, police said. Investigators contacted the Gillette police and they assisted in questioning the pair.
Both denied the allegations, investigators said.
Gillette police also assisted in interviewing a fourth female minor who was living with them in Wyoming, police said.
The girl apparently had a child at a young age, which sparked investigators’ interest.
The fourth victim initially told police her baby’s father was a boy at school, but she eventually admitted Cazares raped her when she was living with him in McAllen, police said.
That girl told police she was at home taking care of the three foster children when Cazares ordered them to their rooms and raped her on the couch by holding her down.
On Tuesday, investigators received information that Cazares was once again in the area and was working at Hayashi Hibachi, records showed. Police arrested him there about 4:45 p.m.
Investigators continued working on filing charges against Cazares’ wife, Belinda.
A McAllen Municipal judge charged Jose Luis Cazares with two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child — a first-degree felony — sexual assault and prohibited sexual conduct, both second-degree felonies. His bond was set at $550,000.
If convicted, he could face up to life imprisonment and a fine of up to $10,000.
Source http://www.themonitor.com/news/fugitive-56493-mcallen-abused.html
What is with these fosters who are so vile? Why didn't someone at CPS or whoever licensed them do a thorough check on these people? They couldn't have really checked into these people because this seems like something too weird to have just started when this man was 40. It makes us sick to think that CPS's failures are why so many children suffer such horrendous abuse simply due to CPS negligence.
-----
by Naxiely Lopez
McALLEN — A combined effort by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies led to the arrest of a man wanted in connection with the sexual assault of three children who were under his care for more than a year.
Investigators believe Jose Luis Cazares, 40, abused three foster children — all under the age of 10 — while they lived with him and his wife, Belinda, from January 2008 to April 2009, court documents showed. The children were placed in foster care because their mother was deported to Honduras.
Police learned about the alleged abuse only after a second foster family took the children in.
A woman who claimed to be the victims’ half-sister went to police in May and told them the children had made an outcry, records showed. Police did not reveal the woman’s identity.
Investigators took the victims to the Children’s Advocacy Center in Edinburg in June, where they were interviewed separately by professionals. There, the children detailed their lives with the Cazares.
One girl told staff at the center Cazares would take her to his room, where he would sexually assault her or use sex toys to do so, records showed.
The girl told police she pleaded with Cazares to stop, but he wouldn’t.
If she told, he would slap her in the mouth, the child said.
The abuse happened “every day in a while after school,” a probable cause affidavit quotes her saying.
A second girl told staff Cazares would buy something for them if they engaged in sex with him and his wife.
That child detailed an incident during Halloween in which he took her costume off and assaulted her.
A third victim, a boy, did not make an outcry, police said. But his sisters told staff they saw Cazares sexually abusing him.
The children began showing signs of abuse shortly after the second foster family began caring for them in April 2009, the half-sister told police.
The family reached out to Child Protective Services at the time to alert them about the assault, but the family was never contacted by anyone, records showed. They reached out again in 2010 to the children’s physician, but again no one followed up.
By the time police were involved, Cazares and his wife had already relocated.
That’s when the Gulf Coast Violent Offenders Fugitive Task Force got involved. The team comprises officers from various law enforcement agencies, including U.S. Marshals Service; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Texas Department of Criminal Justice; U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Hidalgo and Starr County sheriff’s offices; and police departments in McAllen, Mission, San Juan and Weslaco.
Officers tracked Cazares down in Prairie Gillette, Wyo., using documentation from Child Protective Services, police said. Investigators contacted the Gillette police and they assisted in questioning the pair.
Both denied the allegations, investigators said.
Gillette police also assisted in interviewing a fourth female minor who was living with them in Wyoming, police said.
The girl apparently had a child at a young age, which sparked investigators’ interest.
The fourth victim initially told police her baby’s father was a boy at school, but she eventually admitted Cazares raped her when she was living with him in McAllen, police said.
That girl told police she was at home taking care of the three foster children when Cazares ordered them to their rooms and raped her on the couch by holding her down.
On Tuesday, investigators received information that Cazares was once again in the area and was working at Hayashi Hibachi, records showed. Police arrested him there about 4:45 p.m.
Investigators continued working on filing charges against Cazares’ wife, Belinda.
A McAllen Municipal judge charged Jose Luis Cazares with two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child — a first-degree felony — sexual assault and prohibited sexual conduct, both second-degree felonies. His bond was set at $550,000.
If convicted, he could face up to life imprisonment and a fine of up to $10,000.
Source http://www.themonitor.com/news/fugitive-56493-mcallen-abused.html
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Accusations of child sex, cover-up rock Penn State
Associated Press
STATE COLLEGE, Pa.—An explosive sex abuse scandal and allegations of a cover-up rocked Happy Valley after former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, once considered Joe Paterno's heir apparent, was charged with sexually assaulting eight boys over 15 years. Among the allegations was that a graduate assistant saw Sandusky assault a boy in the shower at the team's practice center in 2002.
Sandusky retired in 1999 but continued to use the school's facilities for his work with The Second Mile, a foundation he established to help at-risk kids, where authorities say he encountered the boys. The case took on added dimension Saturday when perjury charges were announced against Tim Curley, Penn State's athletic director, and Gary Schultz, vice president for finance and business. They were also accused of failing to alert police and other agencies -- as required by state law -- of their investigation of the allegations.
"This is a case about a sexual predator who used his position within the university and community to repeatedly prey on young boys," state Attorney General Linda Kelly said Saturday in a statement.
Paterno, who last week became the coach with the most wins in Division I football history, wasn't charged, and the grand jury report didn't appear to implicate him in wrongdoing.
"Joe Paterno was a witness who cooperated and testified before the grand jury," said Nils Frederiksen, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office. "He's not a suspect."
Frederiksen called questions about whether Paterno might testify premature and speculation.
"That's putting the cart way ahead of the horse," he said. "We're certainly not going to be discussing the lineup of potential witnesses."
Under Paterno's four-decades-and-counting stewardship, the Nittany Lions became a bedrock in the college game, and fans packed the stadium in State College, a campus town routinely ranked among America's best places to live and nicknamed Happy Valley. Paterno's teams were revered both for winning games -- including two national championships -- and largely steering clear of trouble. Sandusky, whose defenses were usually anchored by tough-guy linebackers -- hence the moniker "Linebacker U" -- spent three decades at the school. The charges against him cover the period from 1994 to 2009.
Sandusky, 67, was arrested Saturday and released on $100,000 bail after being arraigned on 40 criminal counts. Curley, 57, and Schultz, 62, were expected to turn themselves in on Monday in Harrisburg.
The school said Sunday that it would bar Sandusky from campus.
The allegations against Sandusky, who started The Second Mile in 1977, range from sexual advances to touching to oral and anal sex. The young men testified before a state grand jury that they were in their early teens when some of the abuse occurred; there is evidence even younger children may have been victimized. Sandusky's attorney Joe Amendola said his client has been aware of the accusations for about three years and has maintained his innocence.
"He's shaky, as you can expect," Amendola told WJAC-TV after Sandusky was arraigned on Saturday. "Being 67 years old, never having faced criminal charges in his life and having the distinguished career that he's had, these are very serious allegations."
A preliminary hearing scheduled for Wednesday would likely be delayed, Amendola said. Sandusky is charged with multiple counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, corruption of minors, endangering the welfare of a child, indecent assault and unlawful contact with a minor, as well as single counts of aggravated indecent assault and attempted indecent assault.
No one answered a knock at the door at Sandusky's modest, two-story brick home at the end of a dead-end road in State College. A man who answered the door at The Second Mile office in State College declined to give his name and said the organization had no comment.
The grand jury said eight boys were targets of sexual advances or assaults by Sandusky. None was named, and in at least one case, the jury said the child's identity remains unknown to authorities.
One accuser, now 27, testified that Sandusky initiated contact with a "soap battle" in the shower that led to multiple instances of involuntary sexual intercourse and indecent assault at Sandusky's hands, the grand jury report said.
He said he traveled to charity functions and Penn State games with Sandusky, even being listed as a member of the Sandusky family party for the 1998 Outback Bowl and 1999 Alamo Bowl. But when the boy resisted his advances, Sandusky threatened to send him home from the Alamo Bowl, the report said.
Sandusky also gave him clothes, shoes, a snowboard, golf clubs, hockey gear and football jerseys, and even guaranteed that he could walk on to the football team, the grand jury said, and the boy also appeared with Sandusky in a photo in Sports Illustrated. He testified that Sandusky once gave him $50 to buy marijuana, drove him to purchase it and then drove him home as the boy smoked the drug.
The first case to come to light was a boy who met Sandusky when he was 11 or 12, the grand jury said. The boy received expensive gifts and trips to sports events from Sandusky, and physical contact began during his overnight stays at Sandusky's home, jurors said. Eventually, the boy's mother reported the allegations of sexual assault to his high school, and Sandusky was banned from the child's school district in Clinton County in 2009. That triggered the state investigation that culminated in charges Saturday.
But the report also alleges much earlier instances of abuse and details failed efforts to stop it by some who became aware of what was happening.
Another child, known only as a boy about 11 to 13, was seen by a janitor pinned against a wall while Sandusky performed oral sex on him in fall 2000, the grand jury said.
And in 2002, Kelly said, a graduate assistant saw Sandusky sexually assault a naked boy, estimated to be about 10 years old, in a team locker room shower. The grad student and his father reported what he saw to Paterno, who immediately told Curley, prosecutors said.
The Patriot-News of Harrisburg identified the assistant as Mike McQueary, now a Penn State wide receivers coach and the team's recruiting coordinator. McQueary was out of town on a recruiting trip Sunday, according to his father, John McQueary, who declined to comment about the case or say whether they were the two named in the grand jury report.
"I know it's online, and I know it's available," John McQueary told The Associated Press. "I have gone out of my way not to read it for a number of reasons."
Curley and Schultz met with the graduate assistant about a week and a half after the alleged attack, Kelly said.
"Despite a powerful eyewitness statement about the sexual assault of a child, this incident was not reported to any law enforcement or child protective agency, as required by Pennsylvania law," Kelly said.
There's no indication that anyone at school attempted to find the boy or follow up with the witness, she said.
Pennsylvania's Child Protective Services Law requires certain people associated with schools and other institutions to report suspected abuse immediately to the ChildLine service, which makes referrals to police, and to follow up within two days with written reports to the county children and youth services agency and to the state Department of Public Welfare.
Curley denied that the assistant had reported anything of a sexual nature, calling it "merely `horsing around,'" the 23-page grand jury report said. But he also testified that he barred Sandusky from bringing children onto campus and that he advised Penn State President Graham Spanier of the matter.
The grand jury said Curley was lying, Kelly said, adding that it also deemed portions of Schultz's testimony not to be credible.
Schultz told the jurors he also knew of a 1998 investigation involving sexually inappropriate behavior by Sandusky with a boy in the showers the football team used.
But despite his job overseeing campus police, he never reported the 2002 allegations to any authorities, "never sought or received a police report on the 1998 incident and never attempted to learn the identity of the child in the shower in 2002," the jurors wrote. "No one from the university did so."
Lawyers for both Curley and Schultz issued statements saying they are innocent of all charges.
In response to a request for comment from Paterno, a spokesman for the athletic department said all such questions would be referred to university representatives, who released a statement from Spanier calling the allegations against Sandusky "troubling" and adding that Curley and Schultz had his unconditional support.
He predicted they will be exonerated.
"I have known and worked daily with Tim and Gary for more than 16 years," Spanier said. "I have complete confidence in how they handled the allegations about a former university employee."
The university is also paying legal costs for Curley and Schultz because the allegations against them concern how they fulfilled their responsibilities as employees, spokeswoman Lisa Powers said.
Sandusky, once considered a potential successor to Paterno, drew up the defenses for the Nittany Lions' national-title teams in 1982 and 1986. The team is enjoying another successful run this season; at 8-1, Penn State is ranked No. 16 in the AP Top 25 and is the last undefeated squad in Big Ten play.
The Nittany Lions were off Saturday, which Frederiksen, the prosecutors' spokesman, said had nothing to do with the timing of charges.
He said the attorney general's office and state police had agreed ahead of time to act quickly once a presentment was issued.
"If somebody months ago was able to foresee the Friday before an off weekend, the grand jury would issue a presentment, they should be counting cards in Las Vegas," he said.
As the head football coach, Paterno has spent years cultivating a reputation for putting integrity ahead of modern college-sports economics. It's a notion that has benefited Penn State's marketing and recruiting efforts over the decades and one that the Big Ten school's alumni proudly tout years after they leave.
"We're supposed to be one of the universities to follow after, someone to look up to," said sophomore Brian Prewitt of Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "Now that people on the top are involved, it's going to be bad."
STATE COLLEGE, Pa.—An explosive sex abuse scandal and allegations of a cover-up rocked Happy Valley after former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, once considered Joe Paterno's heir apparent, was charged with sexually assaulting eight boys over 15 years. Among the allegations was that a graduate assistant saw Sandusky assault a boy in the shower at the team's practice center in 2002.
Sandusky retired in 1999 but continued to use the school's facilities for his work with The Second Mile, a foundation he established to help at-risk kids, where authorities say he encountered the boys. The case took on added dimension Saturday when perjury charges were announced against Tim Curley, Penn State's athletic director, and Gary Schultz, vice president for finance and business. They were also accused of failing to alert police and other agencies -- as required by state law -- of their investigation of the allegations.
"This is a case about a sexual predator who used his position within the university and community to repeatedly prey on young boys," state Attorney General Linda Kelly said Saturday in a statement.
Paterno, who last week became the coach with the most wins in Division I football history, wasn't charged, and the grand jury report didn't appear to implicate him in wrongdoing.
"Joe Paterno was a witness who cooperated and testified before the grand jury," said Nils Frederiksen, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office. "He's not a suspect."
Frederiksen called questions about whether Paterno might testify premature and speculation.
"That's putting the cart way ahead of the horse," he said. "We're certainly not going to be discussing the lineup of potential witnesses."
Under Paterno's four-decades-and-counting stewardship, the Nittany Lions became a bedrock in the college game, and fans packed the stadium in State College, a campus town routinely ranked among America's best places to live and nicknamed Happy Valley. Paterno's teams were revered both for winning games -- including two national championships -- and largely steering clear of trouble. Sandusky, whose defenses were usually anchored by tough-guy linebackers -- hence the moniker "Linebacker U" -- spent three decades at the school. The charges against him cover the period from 1994 to 2009.
Sandusky, 67, was arrested Saturday and released on $100,000 bail after being arraigned on 40 criminal counts. Curley, 57, and Schultz, 62, were expected to turn themselves in on Monday in Harrisburg.
The school said Sunday that it would bar Sandusky from campus.
The allegations against Sandusky, who started The Second Mile in 1977, range from sexual advances to touching to oral and anal sex. The young men testified before a state grand jury that they were in their early teens when some of the abuse occurred; there is evidence even younger children may have been victimized. Sandusky's attorney Joe Amendola said his client has been aware of the accusations for about three years and has maintained his innocence.
"He's shaky, as you can expect," Amendola told WJAC-TV after Sandusky was arraigned on Saturday. "Being 67 years old, never having faced criminal charges in his life and having the distinguished career that he's had, these are very serious allegations."
A preliminary hearing scheduled for Wednesday would likely be delayed, Amendola said. Sandusky is charged with multiple counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, corruption of minors, endangering the welfare of a child, indecent assault and unlawful contact with a minor, as well as single counts of aggravated indecent assault and attempted indecent assault.
No one answered a knock at the door at Sandusky's modest, two-story brick home at the end of a dead-end road in State College. A man who answered the door at The Second Mile office in State College declined to give his name and said the organization had no comment.
The grand jury said eight boys were targets of sexual advances or assaults by Sandusky. None was named, and in at least one case, the jury said the child's identity remains unknown to authorities.
One accuser, now 27, testified that Sandusky initiated contact with a "soap battle" in the shower that led to multiple instances of involuntary sexual intercourse and indecent assault at Sandusky's hands, the grand jury report said.
He said he traveled to charity functions and Penn State games with Sandusky, even being listed as a member of the Sandusky family party for the 1998 Outback Bowl and 1999 Alamo Bowl. But when the boy resisted his advances, Sandusky threatened to send him home from the Alamo Bowl, the report said.
Sandusky also gave him clothes, shoes, a snowboard, golf clubs, hockey gear and football jerseys, and even guaranteed that he could walk on to the football team, the grand jury said, and the boy also appeared with Sandusky in a photo in Sports Illustrated. He testified that Sandusky once gave him $50 to buy marijuana, drove him to purchase it and then drove him home as the boy smoked the drug.
The first case to come to light was a boy who met Sandusky when he was 11 or 12, the grand jury said. The boy received expensive gifts and trips to sports events from Sandusky, and physical contact began during his overnight stays at Sandusky's home, jurors said. Eventually, the boy's mother reported the allegations of sexual assault to his high school, and Sandusky was banned from the child's school district in Clinton County in 2009. That triggered the state investigation that culminated in charges Saturday.
But the report also alleges much earlier instances of abuse and details failed efforts to stop it by some who became aware of what was happening.
Another child, known only as a boy about 11 to 13, was seen by a janitor pinned against a wall while Sandusky performed oral sex on him in fall 2000, the grand jury said.
And in 2002, Kelly said, a graduate assistant saw Sandusky sexually assault a naked boy, estimated to be about 10 years old, in a team locker room shower. The grad student and his father reported what he saw to Paterno, who immediately told Curley, prosecutors said.
The Patriot-News of Harrisburg identified the assistant as Mike McQueary, now a Penn State wide receivers coach and the team's recruiting coordinator. McQueary was out of town on a recruiting trip Sunday, according to his father, John McQueary, who declined to comment about the case or say whether they were the two named in the grand jury report.
"I know it's online, and I know it's available," John McQueary told The Associated Press. "I have gone out of my way not to read it for a number of reasons."
Curley and Schultz met with the graduate assistant about a week and a half after the alleged attack, Kelly said.
"Despite a powerful eyewitness statement about the sexual assault of a child, this incident was not reported to any law enforcement or child protective agency, as required by Pennsylvania law," Kelly said.
There's no indication that anyone at school attempted to find the boy or follow up with the witness, she said.
Pennsylvania's Child Protective Services Law requires certain people associated with schools and other institutions to report suspected abuse immediately to the ChildLine service, which makes referrals to police, and to follow up within two days with written reports to the county children and youth services agency and to the state Department of Public Welfare.
Curley denied that the assistant had reported anything of a sexual nature, calling it "merely `horsing around,'" the 23-page grand jury report said. But he also testified that he barred Sandusky from bringing children onto campus and that he advised Penn State President Graham Spanier of the matter.
The grand jury said Curley was lying, Kelly said, adding that it also deemed portions of Schultz's testimony not to be credible.
Schultz told the jurors he also knew of a 1998 investigation involving sexually inappropriate behavior by Sandusky with a boy in the showers the football team used.
But despite his job overseeing campus police, he never reported the 2002 allegations to any authorities, "never sought or received a police report on the 1998 incident and never attempted to learn the identity of the child in the shower in 2002," the jurors wrote. "No one from the university did so."
Lawyers for both Curley and Schultz issued statements saying they are innocent of all charges.
In response to a request for comment from Paterno, a spokesman for the athletic department said all such questions would be referred to university representatives, who released a statement from Spanier calling the allegations against Sandusky "troubling" and adding that Curley and Schultz had his unconditional support.
He predicted they will be exonerated.
"I have known and worked daily with Tim and Gary for more than 16 years," Spanier said. "I have complete confidence in how they handled the allegations about a former university employee."
The university is also paying legal costs for Curley and Schultz because the allegations against them concern how they fulfilled their responsibilities as employees, spokeswoman Lisa Powers said.
Sandusky, once considered a potential successor to Paterno, drew up the defenses for the Nittany Lions' national-title teams in 1982 and 1986. The team is enjoying another successful run this season; at 8-1, Penn State is ranked No. 16 in the AP Top 25 and is the last undefeated squad in Big Ten play.
The Nittany Lions were off Saturday, which Frederiksen, the prosecutors' spokesman, said had nothing to do with the timing of charges.
He said the attorney general's office and state police had agreed ahead of time to act quickly once a presentment was issued.
"If somebody months ago was able to foresee the Friday before an off weekend, the grand jury would issue a presentment, they should be counting cards in Las Vegas," he said.
As the head football coach, Paterno has spent years cultivating a reputation for putting integrity ahead of modern college-sports economics. It's a notion that has benefited Penn State's marketing and recruiting efforts over the decades and one that the Big Ten school's alumni proudly tout years after they leave.
"We're supposed to be one of the universities to follow after, someone to look up to," said sophomore Brian Prewitt of Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "Now that people on the top are involved, it's going to be bad."
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Kentucky - Social worker says she falsified records
By Valarie Honeycutt Spears
A former Kentucky state social worker indicted by an Anderson County grand jury in August has told investigators that she falsified records in abuse and neglect cases, according to a court document recently filed.
Margaret "Geri" Murphy, who resigned in January, is charged with nine counts of tampering with public records in her role investigating allegations of child abuse and neglect for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.
Details of nine cases, several involving child sexual abuse, were outlined in a document titled the Commonwealth's Bill of Particulars, filed in Anderson Circuit Court Oct. 18 by Attorney General Jack Conway's office.
The court document says that in one case, which ran from December 2007 through April 2008, Murphy investigated an allegation of sexual abuse of an infant by the infant's mother's boyfriend. In deeming the allegation "unsubstantiated," Murphy allegedly documented that a state police trooper told her that a hair found in the baby's pubic area was tested and found to be dog hair rather than a human hair.
But the officer told an investigator that he never told Murphy that the hair was dog hair, and that it had not been tested.
Two agencies, including police, filed complaints about Murphy's actions in the case, the court document said.
The mother later reunited with her boyfriend, and the case was reopened in October 2010 on the basis of new allegations of sexual abuse by the boyfriend, the document said.
"During that time, Murphy attempted to take part of an interview and examination of the child at an agency in Lexington, and the KSP trooper told Murphy to leave and has indicated he believes Murphy's actions contributed to the child being abused again," the court document said.
Murphy's attorney William Patrick said Friday that he could not comment on the case. But Patrick said a pre-trial conference was set for November. Murphy was issued a criminal summons in August and has pleaded not guilty.
In abuse and neglect cases, social workers make findings about the validity of allegations and document their work in a report titled a "continuous quality assessment."
In a case involving the alleged sexual abuse of an 11-year-old child by her father, Murphy admitted to falsifying the continuous quality assessment, the court document said. In that case, Murphy is accused of documenting that the suspect had been interviewed by state police. Murphy also is accused of documenting that the perpetrator denied the abuse and passed a polygraph.
However, police told an investigator that the suspect had never been interviewed or taken a polygraph.
Murphy "stated that this particular case 'bothered her' because she had falsified information. She admitted that she believed the child had been sexually abused, but still unsubstantiated and closed her case," the court document said.
In 2010, Murphy investigated a report of the sexual abuse of a 7-year-old child and deemed it "unsubstantiated." She had said that the child made inconsistent statements and that she had interviewed the suspect with police, and that the suspect denied the allegations and passed a polygraph test, according to a court document.
But police said they never interviewed the suspect and the suspect never took a polygraph, according to the court document.
The cabinet will not respond specifically to the cases in the bill of particulars, spokeswoman Jill Midkiff said.
"However, upon discovering that there were problems with the way in which Ms. Murphy conducted her investigations in these and other cases not involving falsifications, the Commissioner of the (Department of Community Based Services) had Ms. Murphy's cases reviewed to ensure that appropriate action was taken in accordance with the policies and procedures of the agency," Midkiff said.
Officials in Conway's office would not comment Friday. But in August, Conway said that his office began investigating after receiving a complaint from a resident whose family was in a court case to which Murphy had been assigned.
Tampering with public records is a Class D felony punishable by one to five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 on each count.
Here's a link to the court document:
http://media.kentucky.com/smedia/2011/10/28/23/45/155LTT.So.79.pdf
Source http://www.kentucky.com/2011/10/29/1938928/court-document-describes-former.html
A former Kentucky state social worker indicted by an Anderson County grand jury in August has told investigators that she falsified records in abuse and neglect cases, according to a court document recently filed.
Margaret "Geri" Murphy, who resigned in January, is charged with nine counts of tampering with public records in her role investigating allegations of child abuse and neglect for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.
Details of nine cases, several involving child sexual abuse, were outlined in a document titled the Commonwealth's Bill of Particulars, filed in Anderson Circuit Court Oct. 18 by Attorney General Jack Conway's office.
The court document says that in one case, which ran from December 2007 through April 2008, Murphy investigated an allegation of sexual abuse of an infant by the infant's mother's boyfriend. In deeming the allegation "unsubstantiated," Murphy allegedly documented that a state police trooper told her that a hair found in the baby's pubic area was tested and found to be dog hair rather than a human hair.
But the officer told an investigator that he never told Murphy that the hair was dog hair, and that it had not been tested.
Two agencies, including police, filed complaints about Murphy's actions in the case, the court document said.
The mother later reunited with her boyfriend, and the case was reopened in October 2010 on the basis of new allegations of sexual abuse by the boyfriend, the document said.
"During that time, Murphy attempted to take part of an interview and examination of the child at an agency in Lexington, and the KSP trooper told Murphy to leave and has indicated he believes Murphy's actions contributed to the child being abused again," the court document said.
Murphy's attorney William Patrick said Friday that he could not comment on the case. But Patrick said a pre-trial conference was set for November. Murphy was issued a criminal summons in August and has pleaded not guilty.
In abuse and neglect cases, social workers make findings about the validity of allegations and document their work in a report titled a "continuous quality assessment."
In a case involving the alleged sexual abuse of an 11-year-old child by her father, Murphy admitted to falsifying the continuous quality assessment, the court document said. In that case, Murphy is accused of documenting that the suspect had been interviewed by state police. Murphy also is accused of documenting that the perpetrator denied the abuse and passed a polygraph.
However, police told an investigator that the suspect had never been interviewed or taken a polygraph.
Murphy "stated that this particular case 'bothered her' because she had falsified information. She admitted that she believed the child had been sexually abused, but still unsubstantiated and closed her case," the court document said.
In 2010, Murphy investigated a report of the sexual abuse of a 7-year-old child and deemed it "unsubstantiated." She had said that the child made inconsistent statements and that she had interviewed the suspect with police, and that the suspect denied the allegations and passed a polygraph test, according to a court document.
But police said they never interviewed the suspect and the suspect never took a polygraph, according to the court document.
The cabinet will not respond specifically to the cases in the bill of particulars, spokeswoman Jill Midkiff said.
"However, upon discovering that there were problems with the way in which Ms. Murphy conducted her investigations in these and other cases not involving falsifications, the Commissioner of the (Department of Community Based Services) had Ms. Murphy's cases reviewed to ensure that appropriate action was taken in accordance with the policies and procedures of the agency," Midkiff said.
Officials in Conway's office would not comment Friday. But in August, Conway said that his office began investigating after receiving a complaint from a resident whose family was in a court case to which Murphy had been assigned.
Tampering with public records is a Class D felony punishable by one to five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 on each count.
Here's a link to the court document:
http://media.kentucky.com/smedia/2011/10/28/23/45/155LTT.So.79.pdf
Source http://www.kentucky.com/2011/10/29/1938928/court-document-describes-former.html
Records shows Boy Scout officials failed to report leader who molested children in California
By Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Boy Scout officials in the U.S. and Canada not only failed to stop an admitted child molester in their ranks, but sometimes helped cover his tracks, according to confidential records, court files and interviews with victims and their families.
A Los Angeles Times and Canadian Broadcasting Corp. investigation (http://lat.ms/tYtWBX ) published Saturday finds scout leader Rick Turley molested at least 15 children over nearly two decades, most of whom he met through American and Canadian Scouting beginning in the 1970s.
Boy Scouts of America officials didn’t call police in 1979 after Turley acknowledged molesting three Orange County boys, records show.
“You do not want to broadcast to the entire population that these things happen,” A. Buford Hill Jr., a former Orange County Scouting executive, said of officials’ decision not to contact authorities. “You take care of it quietly and make sure it never happens again.”
It happened again. Turley returned to his native Canada, where he signed on with Scouts Canada, and continued his abuses for at least a decade.
Now 58 and working at an Alberta truck-stop motel, Turley says he is surprised by how often he got away with it.
“It was easy,” he said in an interview with the CBC, adding that he has learned to control his impulses.
Turley was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted in 1996 of five counts of molesting children. Paroled in 2000, he was later caught trying to draw two pre-teen boys into a relationship and sent back to prison. He was released two years later.
Turley is one of more than 5,000 suspected child molesters named in confidential documents kept by the Boy Scouts of America. The records — called the “perversion files” by the Scouts — include admissions of guilt as well as unproven allegations.
Those files have come to light in recent years in lawsuits by former Scouts, accusing the group of failing to detect abuses, exclude known pedophiles, or turn in offenders to authorities.
The Oregon Supreme Court is now weighing a request by newspapers, a wire service and broadcasters to open about 1,200 more files in the wake of a nearly $20-million judgment in a Portland sex abuse case last year.
The Scouts’ handling of sex-abuse allegations is similar to that of the Catholic Church in the face of accusations against its priests, some attorneys told the Times and the CBC.
“It’s the same institutional reaction: scandal prevention,” said Seattle attorney Timothy Kosnoff, who has filed seven suits in the last year by former Scouts.
Current Boy Scouts of America officials declined to be interviewed and would not say how many files exist or what is in them. Their lawyers have said the records are confidential, to protect victims and because some of the files are based on unsubstantiated tips.
“The BSA has continued to enhance its youth protection efforts as society has increased its understanding of the dangers children face,” the Scouts said in a statement.
Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/records-boy-scout-officials-failed-to-report-leader-who-molested-children-in-california/2011/10/29/gIQA7bNtSM_story.html
LOS ANGELES — Boy Scout officials in the U.S. and Canada not only failed to stop an admitted child molester in their ranks, but sometimes helped cover his tracks, according to confidential records, court files and interviews with victims and their families.
A Los Angeles Times and Canadian Broadcasting Corp. investigation (http://lat.ms/tYtWBX ) published Saturday finds scout leader Rick Turley molested at least 15 children over nearly two decades, most of whom he met through American and Canadian Scouting beginning in the 1970s.
Boy Scouts of America officials didn’t call police in 1979 after Turley acknowledged molesting three Orange County boys, records show.
“You do not want to broadcast to the entire population that these things happen,” A. Buford Hill Jr., a former Orange County Scouting executive, said of officials’ decision not to contact authorities. “You take care of it quietly and make sure it never happens again.”
It happened again. Turley returned to his native Canada, where he signed on with Scouts Canada, and continued his abuses for at least a decade.
Now 58 and working at an Alberta truck-stop motel, Turley says he is surprised by how often he got away with it.
“It was easy,” he said in an interview with the CBC, adding that he has learned to control his impulses.
Turley was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted in 1996 of five counts of molesting children. Paroled in 2000, he was later caught trying to draw two pre-teen boys into a relationship and sent back to prison. He was released two years later.
Turley is one of more than 5,000 suspected child molesters named in confidential documents kept by the Boy Scouts of America. The records — called the “perversion files” by the Scouts — include admissions of guilt as well as unproven allegations.
Those files have come to light in recent years in lawsuits by former Scouts, accusing the group of failing to detect abuses, exclude known pedophiles, or turn in offenders to authorities.
The Oregon Supreme Court is now weighing a request by newspapers, a wire service and broadcasters to open about 1,200 more files in the wake of a nearly $20-million judgment in a Portland sex abuse case last year.
The Scouts’ handling of sex-abuse allegations is similar to that of the Catholic Church in the face of accusations against its priests, some attorneys told the Times and the CBC.
“It’s the same institutional reaction: scandal prevention,” said Seattle attorney Timothy Kosnoff, who has filed seven suits in the last year by former Scouts.
Current Boy Scouts of America officials declined to be interviewed and would not say how many files exist or what is in them. Their lawyers have said the records are confidential, to protect victims and because some of the files are based on unsubstantiated tips.
“The BSA has continued to enhance its youth protection efforts as society has increased its understanding of the dangers children face,” the Scouts said in a statement.
Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/records-boy-scout-officials-failed-to-report-leader-who-molested-children-in-california/2011/10/29/gIQA7bNtSM_story.html
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Hitler's Parents Claim Judge Found No Abuse of Little Adolf, Aryan Nation
Hitler's Parents Claim Judge Found No Abuse of Little Adolf, Aryan Nation
Parents of "Adolf Hitler" and "Aryan Nation" claim a judge found no evidence of abuse, but the state still hasn't given their kids back
By Teresa Masterson
Heath and Deborah Campbell, who named two of their children Adolf Hitler and JoyceLynn Aryan Nation, are claiming that a court vindicated them of all abuse allegations last month. But after 33 months in foster care, the children are still not home.
New Jersey Family Court officials had no comment Tuesday.
“Actually, the judge and DYFS told us that there was no evidence of abuse and that it was the names! They were taken over the children's names,” Heath Campbell told NBC 10 Tuesday.
Court records last year stated that the children were not removed from the home because of their names, but because of tangible evidence of abuse or neglect.
Protesting the fact that they still don't have their kids, the Campbells picketed with three other people outside of child services offices in Flemington, N.J. Tuesday. The couple spoke exclusively to NBC 10, saying that the state has no right to keep their children away from them now that the court allegedly ruled that the kids were taken away without cause.
“I don’t sleep, I don’t eat much. I miss my kids. Miss their pitter patters on the floor,” Heath Campbell told NBC 10’s Doug Shimell. “It’s hard. I fall asleep with their pictures.”
The Campbell’s three small children were removed from their Holland Township home by the state in January 2009 after they asked a grocery store in Greenwich, N.J., to write “Adolf Hitler” on their son’s birthday cake.
Though a local Wal-Mart honored the birthday cake request, Adolf Hitler Campbell and siblings JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell were put into foster care.
“They beg to come home all of the time,” Deborah told NBC 10 Tuesday. “They beg to see their dad, they want to see their dad all the time.”
While the Campbells maintained from the beginning that the only reason their children were taken away is because of their given names, New Jersey court documents stated last year that there was alleged abuse and parental incompetence.
A New Jersey appeals court ruled in August 2010 that there was sufficient evidence of abuse or neglect because of domestic violence in the home, and though there was a gag order for both parties in the case (which the Campbells have broken multiple times to deny the allegations), authorities have stated in the past that putting the children into the foster system had nothing to do with their names.
Court records stated last year that both parents were victims of childhood abuse and both were unemployed and suffering from unspecified physical and psychological disabilities.
The Campbells say that a judge will decide by early December if the kids will come home.
"Can't wait for the decision," Heath Campbell said Tuesday. "Can't wait for them to come home."
Source http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/weird/Hitler-Parents-Claim-Judge-Found-No-Abuse-of-Adolf-Aryan-Nation.html
Parents of "Adolf Hitler" and "Aryan Nation" claim a judge found no evidence of abuse, but the state still hasn't given their kids back
By Teresa Masterson
Heath and Deborah Campbell, who named two of their children Adolf Hitler and JoyceLynn Aryan Nation, are claiming that a court vindicated them of all abuse allegations last month. But after 33 months in foster care, the children are still not home.
New Jersey Family Court officials had no comment Tuesday.
“Actually, the judge and DYFS told us that there was no evidence of abuse and that it was the names! They were taken over the children's names,” Heath Campbell told NBC 10 Tuesday.
Court records last year stated that the children were not removed from the home because of their names, but because of tangible evidence of abuse or neglect.
Protesting the fact that they still don't have their kids, the Campbells picketed with three other people outside of child services offices in Flemington, N.J. Tuesday. The couple spoke exclusively to NBC 10, saying that the state has no right to keep their children away from them now that the court allegedly ruled that the kids were taken away without cause.
“I don’t sleep, I don’t eat much. I miss my kids. Miss their pitter patters on the floor,” Heath Campbell told NBC 10’s Doug Shimell. “It’s hard. I fall asleep with their pictures.”
The Campbell’s three small children were removed from their Holland Township home by the state in January 2009 after they asked a grocery store in Greenwich, N.J., to write “Adolf Hitler” on their son’s birthday cake.
Though a local Wal-Mart honored the birthday cake request, Adolf Hitler Campbell and siblings JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell were put into foster care.
“They beg to come home all of the time,” Deborah told NBC 10 Tuesday. “They beg to see their dad, they want to see their dad all the time.”
While the Campbells maintained from the beginning that the only reason their children were taken away is because of their given names, New Jersey court documents stated last year that there was alleged abuse and parental incompetence.
A New Jersey appeals court ruled in August 2010 that there was sufficient evidence of abuse or neglect because of domestic violence in the home, and though there was a gag order for both parties in the case (which the Campbells have broken multiple times to deny the allegations), authorities have stated in the past that putting the children into the foster system had nothing to do with their names.
Court records stated last year that both parents were victims of childhood abuse and both were unemployed and suffering from unspecified physical and psychological disabilities.
The Campbells say that a judge will decide by early December if the kids will come home.
"Can't wait for the decision," Heath Campbell said Tuesday. "Can't wait for them to come home."
Source http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/weird/Hitler-Parents-Claim-Judge-Found-No-Abuse-of-Adolf-Aryan-Nation.html
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Suit Filed Over Wrongful Child Abuse Allegation
By John Sullivan
Times Herald-Record
Published: 2:00 AM - 09/16/11
Goshen — A local couple wrongly accused of sexually abusing their child are taking the unusual step of drawing attention to themselves and their legal fight against the questioning of their daughter by Orange County Child Protective Service investigators.
Marie Condoluci and her husband, Steven Phillips, claim that CPS caseworkers had no good reason to question their daughter, then a student at Scotchtown Avenue Elementary School, without their permission in 2010. The investigation, which did not result in charges, stemmed from hearsay allegations that the child's father sexually abused her.
Condoluci and Phillips struggled with anxiety, isolation, and even physical revulsion after the investigation, Condoluci said.
Condoluci, who is a lawyer, filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. Southern District Court in White Plains. Parties named include the county and the Goshen School District. She says that CPS and the school district failed to vet the allegations against the couple before taking their child aside and asking her questions such as "whether Mommy or Daddy ever fight," whether they ever "touched her down there," and who sleeps with her.
Condoluci initially declined to identify herself, her husband or their daughter for fear of the impact on their child. The couple have since removed their daughter, now 7, from the school and taken their fight public. "I thought it's the only way to clear our names," she said.
The lawsuit raises a rare challenge to the practice of hastily conducting child abuse investigations, often on the basis of an anonymous tip to the state's child-abuse hotline.
In Condoluci's case, officials failed to question the fact that the call to the state hot line came from a pastor reporting hearsay about her family from a third-party source, Condoluci said. Condoluci allowed that reasonable cause, such as visible bruises or telling statements by a child, might justify an unfettered CPS investigation. But "that's different from somebody calling and saying I heard from someone else that there were concerns of abuse," she said. Defense lawyers in the case argue that their clients were just following state law. "The law was not violated," said Lewis Silverman, the Manhattan lawyer representing the school district.
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110916/NEWS/109160361
Times Herald-Record
Published: 2:00 AM - 09/16/11
Goshen — A local couple wrongly accused of sexually abusing their child are taking the unusual step of drawing attention to themselves and their legal fight against the questioning of their daughter by Orange County Child Protective Service investigators.
Marie Condoluci and her husband, Steven Phillips, claim that CPS caseworkers had no good reason to question their daughter, then a student at Scotchtown Avenue Elementary School, without their permission in 2010. The investigation, which did not result in charges, stemmed from hearsay allegations that the child's father sexually abused her.
Condoluci and Phillips struggled with anxiety, isolation, and even physical revulsion after the investigation, Condoluci said.
Condoluci, who is a lawyer, filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. Southern District Court in White Plains. Parties named include the county and the Goshen School District. She says that CPS and the school district failed to vet the allegations against the couple before taking their child aside and asking her questions such as "whether Mommy or Daddy ever fight," whether they ever "touched her down there," and who sleeps with her.
Condoluci initially declined to identify herself, her husband or their daughter for fear of the impact on their child. The couple have since removed their daughter, now 7, from the school and taken their fight public. "I thought it's the only way to clear our names," she said.
The lawsuit raises a rare challenge to the practice of hastily conducting child abuse investigations, often on the basis of an anonymous tip to the state's child-abuse hotline.
In Condoluci's case, officials failed to question the fact that the call to the state hot line came from a pastor reporting hearsay about her family from a third-party source, Condoluci said. Condoluci allowed that reasonable cause, such as visible bruises or telling statements by a child, might justify an unfettered CPS investigation. But "that's different from somebody calling and saying I heard from someone else that there were concerns of abuse," she said. Defense lawyers in the case argue that their clients were just following state law. "The law was not violated," said Lewis Silverman, the Manhattan lawyer representing the school district.
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110916/NEWS/109160361
Monday, September 5, 2011
Recent tragedies cast doubt on Montana's child-protection services
When CPS fails the children, which seems quite often, the children suffer or die. Why can't CPS get it right? Why do they take children from homes on false allegations yet leave other children in homes where abuse really is ocurring? Why?
-----
The name October Perez was on the radar of state social workers months before it made its way into headlines about her tragic death.
The 2-year-old died in June from injuries prosecutors allege were caused by abuse.
Perez's body was bruised, multiple bones were broken, her brain was swollen and she had suffered severe head trauma. She spent two days in a Salt Lake City hospital, then was taken off life support after being declared brain dead. Her mother's then-boyfriend, David Wayne Hyslop, was charged in the death of Perez. Hyslop pleaded not guilty to deliberate homicide, and a trial has been set for October.
Caseworkers from the Child and Family Services Division of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services had visited the house where Perez lived at least three times. Two of those visits were to investigate allegations of abuse involving the toddler, according to Child and Family Services documents obtained by the Tribune.
How the division handled the Perez case is being investigated by the Department of Public Health and Human Services, according to the agency's director.
"We've had people put on administrative leave during the investigation," Director Anna Whiting Sorrell said.
Sorrell added that other workers in the department made employment decisions, but she declined to elaborate, or to say who was put on administrative leave.
"I'm working hard every day to look at and examine this situation and circumstances around this case," Sorrell said.
From almost the moment Perez died of alleged abuse, questions swirled regarding what Child and Family Services knew about her home situation, and whether anything could or should have been done before her death.
It wasn't the first time such questions were asked.
In September 2010, 4-year-old Kiera Pulaski was found dead in Missouri less than three months after her 1-year-old half brother Darby Hodges died in Kalispell under mysterious circumstances. Family members said Child and Family Services was alerted to concerns about the children's safety before they died.
In 2009, after Kendra Bernardi's daughter went blind as a result of being slammed against a crib, she said the child protection system failed the child, Seraphina Bernardi. Alicia Jo Hocter eventually was convicted of beating the child and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Court documents from the initial investigation indicate Child and Family Services caseworkers received five reports regarding the conditions Seraphina Bernardi and Hocter's newborn daughter lived in prior to the abuse taking place in February 2009.
Perez's death spurred a petition drive organized by Blaine County child advocate and school superintendent Lisa Stroh, as well as members of Perez's family. The petition, which called for changes in the state's child welfare system, garnered about 3,000 signatures and eventually got the attention of Gov. Brian Schweitzer. On Aug. 3, a handful of Perez's family members met with Schweitzer and Sorrell.
"They did not feel that they were listened to (by Child and Family Services workers)," Sorrell said.
According to Child and Family Services documents, three earlier allegations of maltreatment of Perez were listed as unsubstantiated. April Hall, Perez's paternal grandmother, said that Child and Family Services caseworkers also investigated a claim of abuse involving Perez's 5-year-old half brother, which he reported in April to a teacher at Head Start. That report also was found to be unsubstantiated, Hall said.
Division documents describe caseworkers first going to the home where Perez lived based on allegations that the children were in a "filthy" environment. No allegations of abuse were mentioned. Social workers checked the home, deemed that Perez was safe, and closed the case, according to the documents.
The first time Hall called the division was in January, when she noticed bruises on Perez's body that seemed to come and go. While Hall said she couldn't know for sure what caused the injuries, it was unsettling enough for her to call the child abuse hotline.
"It was just getting pretty obvious that there were things, and it wasn't natural," she said. "A child doesn't constantly have bruises on them."
What followed was a series of visits to the home where Perez lived, followed by increasing frustration from family members who kept reporting abuse but couldn't get the girl out of an environment they thought was unsafe.
"We were treated like low-lifes who didn't know what we were talking about," said Hall's sister, Mary Leibrand, who also talked to Child and Family Services social workers about Perez. "The longer we worked with them, the more pathetic it got."
Child and Family Services was back at the home in February to investigate a fracture of Perez's left arm. The break was discovered after the child was taken to the emergency room when Hall and Perez's maternal grandmother saw Perez crying uncontrollably.
X-rays revealed a fracture to Perez's left forearm, plus a healed fracture to her right forearm that an orthopedic surgeon determined to be as old as 6 weeks, the documents state.
Great Falls Police were called that same day to investigate whether Perez's injuries were caused by abuse. However, after medical professionals at Benefis Health System were unable to determine whether the fractures were caused by abuse, the police dropped the investigation. Child and Family Services listed the initial abuse claim as unsubstantiated.
"It was determined by physicians that October's buckle fracture to her left arm was caused by an accident, not by a grab or twist," the division's report states.
In every investigation, caseworkers are required to make a decision on the merit of the initial report of maltreatment, as well as on the child's safety. Although the report of abuse was found to be unsubstantiated, the caseworker made another decision regarding Perez's safety. The child was determined to be in "impending danger," which is worse than "safe," but not as severe as "present danger" under the division's guidelines.
About two months later, the division was called to investigate the abuse allegation from Perez's half-brother. The boy told a teacher at Head Start, and the teacher reported it to Child and Family Services. Hall said a caseworker checked the boy for bruises and interviewed him, but eventually decided that the report was unsubstantiated. Without division intervention, the boy was sent to live with his father in Phoenix on April 9.
Later that month, a Child and Family Services worker paid another visit to the home to investigate reports that Perez had bruises on her forehead and cheeks and some of her teeth were falling out. The caseworker who visited the home noted bruises on the girl's head but was told by someone whose name was redacted from the report the Tribune received that those bruises were from Perez running into a countertop. The maltreatment reports were found to be unsubstantiated, but Perez was again found to be in "impending danger."
During this time, Perez's biological father, Michael Arndt, was stationed in Afghanistan with the Army. He retained Great Falls attorney David Dennis in an effort to gain custody of his daughter because he thought she was in danger. Dennis wrote a letter dated June 3 to Perez's caseworker, expressing his concern about the division's visits to the girl's home.
"It is my understanding that you are conducting home visits and monitoring October's care," the letter reads. "If this is the case, I am at a loss to understand how the department can justify subjecting October to further injury."
Toward the end of the letter, Dennis wrote: "She is suffering daily, and in danger of serious injury."
By the end of the month, Hall would learn while on a trip to New York City that her granddaughter was in the hospital and probably wouldn't survive.
"Every person tells me: 'April, you did everything right,'" she said. "If I did everything right, why is my baby dead?"
While questions piled up about the division's involvement with Perez before her death, it wasn't the first time a family asked those type of questions.
Tommy Hodges, who paid for the funerals of his son and stepdaughter within three months of each other, said he made Child and Family Services aware of his concerns about each child's safety.
In April 2010, Hodges was stationed at an Army base in Georgia when he placed a call to Child and Family Services asking if someone could check on the welfare of his son, Darby, and Darby's half-sister, Kiera Pulaski. Hodges had just separated from his wife, who then moved back home to Kalispell from Georgia. The response he received from the division surprised him.
"They said they don't do that kind of thing," Hodges said. "I thought that is exactly what they do."
On June 27, 2010, Darby was found dead in his crib. The cause of death was officially listed as undetermined, but his autopsy revealed bruises on his forehead and fractures of two of his ribs. His death is under investigation.
After Darby's death, Kiera was placed in a foster home for three days as a precaution, Hodges said. After that, she was placed back into the custody of her mother, who moved to Republic, Mo., shortly after Darby's death.
Hodges called Child and Family Services in Montana to express his concerns about Kiera's safety. He again was told there was nothing the division could do. On Sept. 17, 2010, Kiera died from what an autopsy determined was blunt-force trauma to her head. She was found dead in a hotel room in Missouri, with bruises on her chin, right ear, shoulder and knees.
Her death also is under investigation.
No one has been charged in the deaths of Darby Hodges or Kiera Pulaski, but Tommy Hodges, who now lives in Shelby, is convinced their deaths could have been prevented. So is his mother, Cheryl Hodges.
"All I wanted was for them to stop by and check it out," Tommy Hodges said of the first contact he made with Child and Family Services. "They just brushed it off."
"Everything slipped through the cracks," Cheryl Hodges added.
In accordance with state law, Children and Family Services is not allowed to comment on specific cases and actions taken by the department.
However, Cory Costello, field services director for Child and Family Services, said, speaking generally, that child protection specialists don't make decisions in a vacuum.
If a caseworker is sent to a call for child protective services because of a complaint the centralized intake division received, he or she is required to make contact with supervisors, if possible, before removing the child from a home. Sometimes that doesn't happen immediately.
"The first priority is to determine if the child is safe," Costello said. "Major decision points are staffed with a supervisor."
But supervisors aren't the only ones who are involved. If a child is removed, child protection specialists have 48 hours to file an affidavit with the court to grant temporary custody of a child to the department.
Even then, if it's a case of physical abuse or neglect, medical records and examinations have to be sought, and usually police are involved.
"There's quite a lot of information," Costello said. "We do what we have to do to keep a child safe."
But if a judge rules that the department doesn't have enough information to take temporary custody of a child, that child is returned to the home at the end of the 48-hour period.
"People worry then if a child will be safe," she said. "There are all these checks and balances, which support the rights of individuals."
Montana received a grade of "C" in terms of legal representation for abused and neglected children in the second edition of a report called Child's Right to Counsel, which was produced by First Star and the Children's Advocacy Institute.
That's not surprising to Kristina Davis, executive director of the Montana Children's Defense Fund.
During the 2011 session, Montana legislators signed onto a resolution supporting the efforts of the Parental Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The proposed federal amendment argues that federal and state governments shouldn't be able to interfere with aparent's right to parent a child.
Even though it was only a resolution, Davis said that sort of thinking — that government shouldn't intervene — makes it difficult to advance the cause of improving child protective services and the state's ability to act in the best interest of children when their parents can't or won't.
Montana also is one of 10 states that earned an "F" on a report card from First Star and the Children's Advocacy Institute when it comes to publicly disclosing child fatalities or near fatalities as a result of abuse and/or neglect.
Montana law states that not only is it a violation of confidentiality for any member of the child death review team to release information from its findings, it is also a misdemeanor crime.
National advocates say reporting of this data is crucial to understanding and developing policy that better strengthens child-protection laws.
"We're really protecting these kids to death," said Teresa Huizar, executive director of the National Children's Alliance. "I would like to see every state improve their performance."
Costello said laws in Montana are designed so that the department can intervene only when abuse and neglect happens, rather than before.
"It's more of an after-the-fact response mechanism," she said.
Costello said child-protection specialists — and the entire agency — have to work within the confines of the law, even if it's a law they don't feel is strong enough.
In the face of criticism that reuniting children with their parents — especially those that have been abusive — isn't the best policy, Costello said those critics need to listen to the children who have been a part of the system.
"When you talk to children, they will tell you they want to be connected to their roots," she said. "Even if they have been abused and neglected, they still love their parents."
Lisa Stroh was shocked when she read about Perez's death in the newspaper.
A couple of days later she found out that she was distantly related to the girl through marriage. As word got out that Child and Family Services had made contact with Perez on allegations of abuse before her death, the Blaine County schools superintendent felt like she was reading a familiar story.
As an educator, Stroh is required to report abuse if she suspects it, but she said she found herself running into walls at the division numerous times.
"I've made referrals that they've refused to take because I didn't know the birth dates of the kids," Stroh said. "If they do take a referral, they'll never tell you if they've even acted on it."
Even before Perez's death, Stroh decided that the system needed major changes. She said as much in a letter addressed to the Department of Public Health and Human Services.
"The role of this department is to keep children safe, and the people involved are not responsive when there is a critical need," she wrote in the letter, dated Oct. 26, 2010.
"After the experience I have gotten with (Child and Family Services), I will not only hesitate to report in the future, but I will also lobby my legislators and governor to have a complete audit and revision of the delivery model, because I do not believe it is meeting the tremendous needs of Montana's young people," Stroh wrote.
She said changes in the model are needed more than ever now.
While Stroh cited a lack of urgency from people who took her calls to the statewide hotline, she also faulted the system's framework for what she sees as a failure to protect children such as Perez.
"Most of the people that work for this agency truly care about children," Stroh said. "However, they are working within a system that does not have the proper checks and balances in place. Therefore, children are falling through the cracks."
Source http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20110904/NEWS01/109040302/Recent-tragedies-cast-doubt-Montana-s-child-protection-services?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFrontpage%7Cp
-----
The name October Perez was on the radar of state social workers months before it made its way into headlines about her tragic death.
The 2-year-old died in June from injuries prosecutors allege were caused by abuse.
Perez's body was bruised, multiple bones were broken, her brain was swollen and she had suffered severe head trauma. She spent two days in a Salt Lake City hospital, then was taken off life support after being declared brain dead. Her mother's then-boyfriend, David Wayne Hyslop, was charged in the death of Perez. Hyslop pleaded not guilty to deliberate homicide, and a trial has been set for October.
Caseworkers from the Child and Family Services Division of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services had visited the house where Perez lived at least three times. Two of those visits were to investigate allegations of abuse involving the toddler, according to Child and Family Services documents obtained by the Tribune.
How the division handled the Perez case is being investigated by the Department of Public Health and Human Services, according to the agency's director.
"We've had people put on administrative leave during the investigation," Director Anna Whiting Sorrell said.
Sorrell added that other workers in the department made employment decisions, but she declined to elaborate, or to say who was put on administrative leave.
"I'm working hard every day to look at and examine this situation and circumstances around this case," Sorrell said.
From almost the moment Perez died of alleged abuse, questions swirled regarding what Child and Family Services knew about her home situation, and whether anything could or should have been done before her death.
It wasn't the first time such questions were asked.
In September 2010, 4-year-old Kiera Pulaski was found dead in Missouri less than three months after her 1-year-old half brother Darby Hodges died in Kalispell under mysterious circumstances. Family members said Child and Family Services was alerted to concerns about the children's safety before they died.
In 2009, after Kendra Bernardi's daughter went blind as a result of being slammed against a crib, she said the child protection system failed the child, Seraphina Bernardi. Alicia Jo Hocter eventually was convicted of beating the child and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Court documents from the initial investigation indicate Child and Family Services caseworkers received five reports regarding the conditions Seraphina Bernardi and Hocter's newborn daughter lived in prior to the abuse taking place in February 2009.
Perez's death spurred a petition drive organized by Blaine County child advocate and school superintendent Lisa Stroh, as well as members of Perez's family. The petition, which called for changes in the state's child welfare system, garnered about 3,000 signatures and eventually got the attention of Gov. Brian Schweitzer. On Aug. 3, a handful of Perez's family members met with Schweitzer and Sorrell.
"They did not feel that they were listened to (by Child and Family Services workers)," Sorrell said.
According to Child and Family Services documents, three earlier allegations of maltreatment of Perez were listed as unsubstantiated. April Hall, Perez's paternal grandmother, said that Child and Family Services caseworkers also investigated a claim of abuse involving Perez's 5-year-old half brother, which he reported in April to a teacher at Head Start. That report also was found to be unsubstantiated, Hall said.
Division documents describe caseworkers first going to the home where Perez lived based on allegations that the children were in a "filthy" environment. No allegations of abuse were mentioned. Social workers checked the home, deemed that Perez was safe, and closed the case, according to the documents.
The first time Hall called the division was in January, when she noticed bruises on Perez's body that seemed to come and go. While Hall said she couldn't know for sure what caused the injuries, it was unsettling enough for her to call the child abuse hotline.
"It was just getting pretty obvious that there were things, and it wasn't natural," she said. "A child doesn't constantly have bruises on them."
What followed was a series of visits to the home where Perez lived, followed by increasing frustration from family members who kept reporting abuse but couldn't get the girl out of an environment they thought was unsafe.
"We were treated like low-lifes who didn't know what we were talking about," said Hall's sister, Mary Leibrand, who also talked to Child and Family Services social workers about Perez. "The longer we worked with them, the more pathetic it got."
Child and Family Services was back at the home in February to investigate a fracture of Perez's left arm. The break was discovered after the child was taken to the emergency room when Hall and Perez's maternal grandmother saw Perez crying uncontrollably.
X-rays revealed a fracture to Perez's left forearm, plus a healed fracture to her right forearm that an orthopedic surgeon determined to be as old as 6 weeks, the documents state.
Great Falls Police were called that same day to investigate whether Perez's injuries were caused by abuse. However, after medical professionals at Benefis Health System were unable to determine whether the fractures were caused by abuse, the police dropped the investigation. Child and Family Services listed the initial abuse claim as unsubstantiated.
"It was determined by physicians that October's buckle fracture to her left arm was caused by an accident, not by a grab or twist," the division's report states.
In every investigation, caseworkers are required to make a decision on the merit of the initial report of maltreatment, as well as on the child's safety. Although the report of abuse was found to be unsubstantiated, the caseworker made another decision regarding Perez's safety. The child was determined to be in "impending danger," which is worse than "safe," but not as severe as "present danger" under the division's guidelines.
About two months later, the division was called to investigate the abuse allegation from Perez's half-brother. The boy told a teacher at Head Start, and the teacher reported it to Child and Family Services. Hall said a caseworker checked the boy for bruises and interviewed him, but eventually decided that the report was unsubstantiated. Without division intervention, the boy was sent to live with his father in Phoenix on April 9.
Later that month, a Child and Family Services worker paid another visit to the home to investigate reports that Perez had bruises on her forehead and cheeks and some of her teeth were falling out. The caseworker who visited the home noted bruises on the girl's head but was told by someone whose name was redacted from the report the Tribune received that those bruises were from Perez running into a countertop. The maltreatment reports were found to be unsubstantiated, but Perez was again found to be in "impending danger."
During this time, Perez's biological father, Michael Arndt, was stationed in Afghanistan with the Army. He retained Great Falls attorney David Dennis in an effort to gain custody of his daughter because he thought she was in danger. Dennis wrote a letter dated June 3 to Perez's caseworker, expressing his concern about the division's visits to the girl's home.
"It is my understanding that you are conducting home visits and monitoring October's care," the letter reads. "If this is the case, I am at a loss to understand how the department can justify subjecting October to further injury."
Toward the end of the letter, Dennis wrote: "She is suffering daily, and in danger of serious injury."
By the end of the month, Hall would learn while on a trip to New York City that her granddaughter was in the hospital and probably wouldn't survive.
"Every person tells me: 'April, you did everything right,'" she said. "If I did everything right, why is my baby dead?"
While questions piled up about the division's involvement with Perez before her death, it wasn't the first time a family asked those type of questions.
Tommy Hodges, who paid for the funerals of his son and stepdaughter within three months of each other, said he made Child and Family Services aware of his concerns about each child's safety.
In April 2010, Hodges was stationed at an Army base in Georgia when he placed a call to Child and Family Services asking if someone could check on the welfare of his son, Darby, and Darby's half-sister, Kiera Pulaski. Hodges had just separated from his wife, who then moved back home to Kalispell from Georgia. The response he received from the division surprised him.
"They said they don't do that kind of thing," Hodges said. "I thought that is exactly what they do."
On June 27, 2010, Darby was found dead in his crib. The cause of death was officially listed as undetermined, but his autopsy revealed bruises on his forehead and fractures of two of his ribs. His death is under investigation.
After Darby's death, Kiera was placed in a foster home for three days as a precaution, Hodges said. After that, she was placed back into the custody of her mother, who moved to Republic, Mo., shortly after Darby's death.
Hodges called Child and Family Services in Montana to express his concerns about Kiera's safety. He again was told there was nothing the division could do. On Sept. 17, 2010, Kiera died from what an autopsy determined was blunt-force trauma to her head. She was found dead in a hotel room in Missouri, with bruises on her chin, right ear, shoulder and knees.
Her death also is under investigation.
No one has been charged in the deaths of Darby Hodges or Kiera Pulaski, but Tommy Hodges, who now lives in Shelby, is convinced their deaths could have been prevented. So is his mother, Cheryl Hodges.
"All I wanted was for them to stop by and check it out," Tommy Hodges said of the first contact he made with Child and Family Services. "They just brushed it off."
"Everything slipped through the cracks," Cheryl Hodges added.
In accordance with state law, Children and Family Services is not allowed to comment on specific cases and actions taken by the department.
However, Cory Costello, field services director for Child and Family Services, said, speaking generally, that child protection specialists don't make decisions in a vacuum.
If a caseworker is sent to a call for child protective services because of a complaint the centralized intake division received, he or she is required to make contact with supervisors, if possible, before removing the child from a home. Sometimes that doesn't happen immediately.
"The first priority is to determine if the child is safe," Costello said. "Major decision points are staffed with a supervisor."
But supervisors aren't the only ones who are involved. If a child is removed, child protection specialists have 48 hours to file an affidavit with the court to grant temporary custody of a child to the department.
Even then, if it's a case of physical abuse or neglect, medical records and examinations have to be sought, and usually police are involved.
"There's quite a lot of information," Costello said. "We do what we have to do to keep a child safe."
But if a judge rules that the department doesn't have enough information to take temporary custody of a child, that child is returned to the home at the end of the 48-hour period.
"People worry then if a child will be safe," she said. "There are all these checks and balances, which support the rights of individuals."
Montana received a grade of "C" in terms of legal representation for abused and neglected children in the second edition of a report called Child's Right to Counsel, which was produced by First Star and the Children's Advocacy Institute.
That's not surprising to Kristina Davis, executive director of the Montana Children's Defense Fund.
During the 2011 session, Montana legislators signed onto a resolution supporting the efforts of the Parental Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The proposed federal amendment argues that federal and state governments shouldn't be able to interfere with aparent's right to parent a child.
Even though it was only a resolution, Davis said that sort of thinking — that government shouldn't intervene — makes it difficult to advance the cause of improving child protective services and the state's ability to act in the best interest of children when their parents can't or won't.
Montana also is one of 10 states that earned an "F" on a report card from First Star and the Children's Advocacy Institute when it comes to publicly disclosing child fatalities or near fatalities as a result of abuse and/or neglect.
Montana law states that not only is it a violation of confidentiality for any member of the child death review team to release information from its findings, it is also a misdemeanor crime.
National advocates say reporting of this data is crucial to understanding and developing policy that better strengthens child-protection laws.
"We're really protecting these kids to death," said Teresa Huizar, executive director of the National Children's Alliance. "I would like to see every state improve their performance."
Costello said laws in Montana are designed so that the department can intervene only when abuse and neglect happens, rather than before.
"It's more of an after-the-fact response mechanism," she said.
Costello said child-protection specialists — and the entire agency — have to work within the confines of the law, even if it's a law they don't feel is strong enough.
In the face of criticism that reuniting children with their parents — especially those that have been abusive — isn't the best policy, Costello said those critics need to listen to the children who have been a part of the system.
"When you talk to children, they will tell you they want to be connected to their roots," she said. "Even if they have been abused and neglected, they still love their parents."
Lisa Stroh was shocked when she read about Perez's death in the newspaper.
A couple of days later she found out that she was distantly related to the girl through marriage. As word got out that Child and Family Services had made contact with Perez on allegations of abuse before her death, the Blaine County schools superintendent felt like she was reading a familiar story.
As an educator, Stroh is required to report abuse if she suspects it, but she said she found herself running into walls at the division numerous times.
"I've made referrals that they've refused to take because I didn't know the birth dates of the kids," Stroh said. "If they do take a referral, they'll never tell you if they've even acted on it."
Even before Perez's death, Stroh decided that the system needed major changes. She said as much in a letter addressed to the Department of Public Health and Human Services.
"The role of this department is to keep children safe, and the people involved are not responsive when there is a critical need," she wrote in the letter, dated Oct. 26, 2010.
"After the experience I have gotten with (Child and Family Services), I will not only hesitate to report in the future, but I will also lobby my legislators and governor to have a complete audit and revision of the delivery model, because I do not believe it is meeting the tremendous needs of Montana's young people," Stroh wrote.
She said changes in the model are needed more than ever now.
While Stroh cited a lack of urgency from people who took her calls to the statewide hotline, she also faulted the system's framework for what she sees as a failure to protect children such as Perez.
"Most of the people that work for this agency truly care about children," Stroh said. "However, they are working within a system that does not have the proper checks and balances in place. Therefore, children are falling through the cracks."
Source http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20110904/NEWS01/109040302/Recent-tragedies-cast-doubt-Montana-s-child-protection-services?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFrontpage%7Cp
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