From wire service reports
LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed Tuesday to pay $500,000 to settle a lawsuit involving the sexual assault of a 9- year-old girl by a 17-year-old boy in foster care.
"The certified foster parents allowed children to have unsupervised, unmonitored play behind closed doors resulting in the assault of a 9-year-old girl by a 17-year-old boy," according to the case summary provided by county attorneys.
The girl -- listed as Jane Doe in the suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Oct. 28, 2009 -- is the biological child of the boy's foster parents.
Other details of the case, including the parents' names, were not disclosed.
The county has already spent more than $287,000 -- more than half the settlement amount -- on attorneys' fees and costs related to the claim, according to the attorneys' summary.
The supervisors met behind closed doors with their lawyers to discuss the case before voting 3-1 in open session to approve the settlement, with Supervisor Michael Antonovich casting the dissenting vote and Supervisor Gloria Molina absent due to illness.
Source http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_20170623/county-pay-500k-settle-foster-care-sexual-abuse
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 foster child. Show all posts
Showing posts with label foster child. Show all posts
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Friday, November 11, 2011
Lawsuit involving foster child, DSS workers settled - SD
by Scott Waltman
A lawsuit alleging that officials should have known they were placing a girl in a potentially unsafe Aberdeen foster home has been settled without a trial.
Terms of the agreement cannot be disclosed, according to court paperwork.
The case was filed by a woman appointed to represent the girl against Northeastern Mental Health, two state Department of Social Services workers, the foster parents and another foster child. Documents concerning the settlement were sealed to protect the victim, according to case paperwork.
The Department of Social Services' Child Protection Services was responsible for care of the girl when Northeast Mental Health placed her with the Steve and Stephanie Schuman family of Aberdeen in December 2007, according to the lawsuit. The girl stayed with the foster family until March 2008 and turned 9 during that time.
A 17-year-old male "with a propensity to sexually act out" — one of the defendants — had previously been placed in the foster home. The lawsuit claims that the older boy sexually abused the girl during the time they lived in the same home. The defendants should have known the boy was a threat to the girl and failed to properly address the issue, according to the lawsuit.
Department of Social Services employees Amy Reyes and Laura Woolverton, who worked on the girl's case, were listed as defendants.
Agreements settle the case with the Schumans, Northeastern Mental Health, Reyes and Woolverton. The other foster child is not mentioned in the settlement.
Previously, a $25,000 proposed settlement from Northeast Mental Health and the Schumans had been rejected.
Source http://www.aberdeennews.com/news/aan-lawsuit-involving-foster-child-dss-workers-settled-20111110,0,7424685.story
A lawsuit alleging that officials should have known they were placing a girl in a potentially unsafe Aberdeen foster home has been settled without a trial.
Terms of the agreement cannot be disclosed, according to court paperwork.
The case was filed by a woman appointed to represent the girl against Northeastern Mental Health, two state Department of Social Services workers, the foster parents and another foster child. Documents concerning the settlement were sealed to protect the victim, according to case paperwork.
The Department of Social Services' Child Protection Services was responsible for care of the girl when Northeast Mental Health placed her with the Steve and Stephanie Schuman family of Aberdeen in December 2007, according to the lawsuit. The girl stayed with the foster family until March 2008 and turned 9 during that time.
A 17-year-old male "with a propensity to sexually act out" — one of the defendants — had previously been placed in the foster home. The lawsuit claims that the older boy sexually abused the girl during the time they lived in the same home. The defendants should have known the boy was a threat to the girl and failed to properly address the issue, according to the lawsuit.
Department of Social Services employees Amy Reyes and Laura Woolverton, who worked on the girl's case, were listed as defendants.
Agreements settle the case with the Schumans, Northeastern Mental Health, Reyes and Woolverton. The other foster child is not mentioned in the settlement.
Previously, a $25,000 proposed settlement from Northeast Mental Health and the Schumans had been rejected.
Source http://www.aberdeennews.com/news/aan-lawsuit-involving-foster-child-dss-workers-settled-20111110,0,7424685.story
Friday, October 28, 2011
Georgia Advocate Speaks Out Against Psychiatric Medication Use in Nation’s Foster Care System
Written by: James Swift
Alongside photographs of rocker Jon Bon Jovi and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, Giovan Bazan looks downright blithe. Although they tower over him, the tuxedo-clad Bazan wearing a slight smirk, his gelled hair and pierced ears sharply contrasting his suit-and-tie apparel.
With his cheery disposition, you wouldn’t suspect Bazan had a troubled childhood. In reality, the 21-year-old has spent a majority of his life in foster homes, and for most of his childhood, he was prescribed anti-depressants and behavioral disorder drugs.
“I went into foster care at 11 months old,” the Los Angeles native said. “When I was six, they put me on medication.”
By many accounts Bazan has come a long way since his days in foster care. In September he spoke at Atlanta-based CHRIS KIDS‘ 11th annual fundraiser alongside towering protraits of celebrities. He has adressed state legislature multiple times about issues pressing foster youth in the state. He has managed to turn his troubled childhood into a stepping stone, not a crux.
Kathy Colbenson, CEO of CHRIS KIDS and co-organizer of the fundraiser, said Bazan’s combination of determination, will and outlook has set a tremendous example for children around the nation facing similar circumstances.
“I think what he’s doing is awesome,” she said.
Today Bazan holds a number of titles. He is the JUSTGeorgia project coordinator for EmpowerMEnt, an initiative of Multi-Agency Alliance for Children, Inc. that is designed to help at-risk youth within the state. He also serves as a Youth Support Specialist Georgia Department of Family and Children Services, a liaison for the White House Council for Community Solutions, and as owner and CEO of the National Executive Protection Agency.
“It’s a travesty how frequently kids in the foster care system are medicated, and I feel like my foster mom wanted to keep me medicated,” Bazan said. “When they put me on medication, when they started to sedate me, it abused my emotions and controlled my mind to the point where I went from being a child to being nothing short of a vegetable.”
Bazan started receiving psychotropic medication following the death of one of his foster mothers, he said.
“Mommy Karen was very caring, she was very supportive, very loving,” he said, recalling her life. “If I scratched a knee, she would be there to hold me.”
Bazan remembered taking cross-country road trips from California to South Carolina. But he didn’t know the “vacations” were actually for his foster mother to receive chemotherapy treatments. She died of cancer when he was just four-years-old, he said.
After her death, Bazan was taken in by a foster mother that he claimed was vindictive and hostile toward him.
“She was always angry about something that I did,” Bazan said. “I always felt that, for some reason, she always resented me.”
Bazan began receiving behavioral treatment drugs shortly after, he said.
“It started with Ritalin,” Bazan said. Soon after he was prescribed, what he called, a “cocktail of medication” by psychiatrists – primarily anti-depressant drugs.
“That little childhood personality that kids have was void,” Bazan said about his experiences in elementary school. “I would come to class and just put my head down and not talk to my classmates. I couldn’t explain it, I didn’t know what was going on.”
Originally he was medicated for displaying symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder, he said.
“When I was medicated, it was to eradicate a specific problem, which was [being] overactive and hyper,” Bazan said. “In other words, being a child. They medicated me to prevent me from being a child.”
Bazan said it was too much, considering himself overmedicated as a child.
“As time progressed, the dosage of the medication would have to increase because my body would adjust to the medication,” he said. “This medication that they would give me had so many side effects that they would have to counter those side effects with more medication.”
As a child, Bazan said, he was given experimental dosages of psychotropic medication. In elementary school, he said, he received treatment doses that were equivalent to those given to teenagers and young adults.
“Ultimately, that’s what they were doing … they were testing on me,” he said. “I was having seizures, I would have horrendous nosebleeds. It was more detrimental than it was helpful.”
In 2010, the Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute released a report showing that overmedication within the foster care system was indeed a problem. About 52 percent of kids in the system had been prescribed psychotropic medication. Bazan found the findings both alarming and horrifying.
“One of the biggest changes that we’re looking to in the future deals with regulating psychotropic medication being administered to foster care children,” he said. “They’re being medicated because they’re coming from abusive homes, when what really happens is the system tends to look at a case and say ‘oh, well they’re having trouble paying attention.’ Well, yeah, they’re having trouble paying attention in school because they’re getting beat up at home and they’re being abused at home. Whatever stress a normal kid has, theirs is exponentially multiplied.”
In 2011, Georgia legislators introduced House Bill 23 (HB 23), a bill aimed at regulating and monitoring psychotropic drug prescriptions within the foster care system. But the bill, also known as the ”Foster Children’s Psychotropic Medication Monitoring Act,” never made it into law.
Bazan said anyone that doesn’t see the dangers of overprescribing psychiatric drugs, to kids or to anyone, should try taking them for themselves.
“Take it for a couple of years,” he said. “That’s what happens to the foster kids. They’re not given medication for a couple of months, and bam, the problem’s solved. Psychotropic medication isn’t designed to be taken like antibiotics, where you can take them for a certain amount of time and the problem is eliminated. You have to take a higher dosage, and you have to take a higher dosage and when it no longer affects you, you have to switch to a more powerful medication.”
According to Bazan, behavioral drugs and other forms of psychiatric medicine pose an imminent threat to kids in Georgia foster care and throughout the nation.
“If you can find valid proof that [discredits] what evidence has shown over and over again that it is harmful to youth, then by all means, let me know,” he said. “But you won’t find that evidence outside of pharmaceutical companies, who push that kind of information out there.”
Source http://jjie.org/georgia-advocate-speaks-out-against-psychiatric-medication-use-nations-foster-care-system/52283
Alongside photographs of rocker Jon Bon Jovi and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, Giovan Bazan looks downright blithe. Although they tower over him, the tuxedo-clad Bazan wearing a slight smirk, his gelled hair and pierced ears sharply contrasting his suit-and-tie apparel.
With his cheery disposition, you wouldn’t suspect Bazan had a troubled childhood. In reality, the 21-year-old has spent a majority of his life in foster homes, and for most of his childhood, he was prescribed anti-depressants and behavioral disorder drugs.
“I went into foster care at 11 months old,” the Los Angeles native said. “When I was six, they put me on medication.”
By many accounts Bazan has come a long way since his days in foster care. In September he spoke at Atlanta-based CHRIS KIDS‘ 11th annual fundraiser alongside towering protraits of celebrities. He has adressed state legislature multiple times about issues pressing foster youth in the state. He has managed to turn his troubled childhood into a stepping stone, not a crux.
Kathy Colbenson, CEO of CHRIS KIDS and co-organizer of the fundraiser, said Bazan’s combination of determination, will and outlook has set a tremendous example for children around the nation facing similar circumstances.
“I think what he’s doing is awesome,” she said.
Today Bazan holds a number of titles. He is the JUSTGeorgia project coordinator for EmpowerMEnt, an initiative of Multi-Agency Alliance for Children, Inc. that is designed to help at-risk youth within the state. He also serves as a Youth Support Specialist Georgia Department of Family and Children Services, a liaison for the White House Council for Community Solutions, and as owner and CEO of the National Executive Protection Agency.
“It’s a travesty how frequently kids in the foster care system are medicated, and I feel like my foster mom wanted to keep me medicated,” Bazan said. “When they put me on medication, when they started to sedate me, it abused my emotions and controlled my mind to the point where I went from being a child to being nothing short of a vegetable.”
Bazan started receiving psychotropic medication following the death of one of his foster mothers, he said.
“Mommy Karen was very caring, she was very supportive, very loving,” he said, recalling her life. “If I scratched a knee, she would be there to hold me.”
Bazan remembered taking cross-country road trips from California to South Carolina. But he didn’t know the “vacations” were actually for his foster mother to receive chemotherapy treatments. She died of cancer when he was just four-years-old, he said.
After her death, Bazan was taken in by a foster mother that he claimed was vindictive and hostile toward him.
“She was always angry about something that I did,” Bazan said. “I always felt that, for some reason, she always resented me.”
Bazan began receiving behavioral treatment drugs shortly after, he said.
“It started with Ritalin,” Bazan said. Soon after he was prescribed, what he called, a “cocktail of medication” by psychiatrists – primarily anti-depressant drugs.
“That little childhood personality that kids have was void,” Bazan said about his experiences in elementary school. “I would come to class and just put my head down and not talk to my classmates. I couldn’t explain it, I didn’t know what was going on.”
Originally he was medicated for displaying symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder, he said.
“When I was medicated, it was to eradicate a specific problem, which was [being] overactive and hyper,” Bazan said. “In other words, being a child. They medicated me to prevent me from being a child.”
Bazan said it was too much, considering himself overmedicated as a child.
“As time progressed, the dosage of the medication would have to increase because my body would adjust to the medication,” he said. “This medication that they would give me had so many side effects that they would have to counter those side effects with more medication.”
As a child, Bazan said, he was given experimental dosages of psychotropic medication. In elementary school, he said, he received treatment doses that were equivalent to those given to teenagers and young adults.
“Ultimately, that’s what they were doing … they were testing on me,” he said. “I was having seizures, I would have horrendous nosebleeds. It was more detrimental than it was helpful.”
In 2010, the Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute released a report showing that overmedication within the foster care system was indeed a problem. About 52 percent of kids in the system had been prescribed psychotropic medication. Bazan found the findings both alarming and horrifying.
“One of the biggest changes that we’re looking to in the future deals with regulating psychotropic medication being administered to foster care children,” he said. “They’re being medicated because they’re coming from abusive homes, when what really happens is the system tends to look at a case and say ‘oh, well they’re having trouble paying attention.’ Well, yeah, they’re having trouble paying attention in school because they’re getting beat up at home and they’re being abused at home. Whatever stress a normal kid has, theirs is exponentially multiplied.”
In 2011, Georgia legislators introduced House Bill 23 (HB 23), a bill aimed at regulating and monitoring psychotropic drug prescriptions within the foster care system. But the bill, also known as the ”Foster Children’s Psychotropic Medication Monitoring Act,” never made it into law.
Bazan said anyone that doesn’t see the dangers of overprescribing psychiatric drugs, to kids or to anyone, should try taking them for themselves.
“Take it for a couple of years,” he said. “That’s what happens to the foster kids. They’re not given medication for a couple of months, and bam, the problem’s solved. Psychotropic medication isn’t designed to be taken like antibiotics, where you can take them for a certain amount of time and the problem is eliminated. You have to take a higher dosage, and you have to take a higher dosage and when it no longer affects you, you have to switch to a more powerful medication.”
According to Bazan, behavioral drugs and other forms of psychiatric medicine pose an imminent threat to kids in Georgia foster care and throughout the nation.
“If you can find valid proof that [discredits] what evidence has shown over and over again that it is harmful to youth, then by all means, let me know,” he said. “But you won’t find that evidence outside of pharmaceutical companies, who push that kind of information out there.”
Source http://jjie.org/georgia-advocate-speaks-out-against-psychiatric-medication-use-nations-foster-care-system/52283
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Jury awards former foster child $2 million from state of Oregon over abuse suffered at hands of foster parents
By Aimee Green, The Oregonian The Oregonian
A Multnomah County jury unanimously awarded $2 million Wednesday to a former foster child who was abused and starved for two years while under the watch of state child welfare workers.
An attorney for the boy successfully argued that the Oregon Department of Human Services repeatedly failed to protect the boy despite repeated reports to a child-abuse hotline. The boy lived in the Clackamas County foster home of Thelma and William Beaver from 2002 to 2004. He weighed more at age 1, when he moved into the home, than at age 3, about the time he was removed from the home.
B.D.'s older sister, then known as Jordan Knapp, also suffered. She weighed just 28 pounds at age 5, when she was flown by Life Flight helicopter to OHSU with a broken skull. The girl's injury -- not a long list of reports of suspected abuse to the hotline -- spurred DHS to remove the children from the foster home for good.
Attorney Scott Kocher filed suit on behalf of Jordan, and days before B.D.'s trial, settled the case with the state for $1.5 million.
The children, along with a younger sister, have since been adopted by one family. Their adopted mom hugged B.D.'s attorney, John Devlin, after the Wednesday's verdict was announced.
Jurors awarded precisely the amount Devlin had asked for.
"This isn't just about helping (B.D.), it's also about helping other foster children by getting DHS to do a better job," Devlin said. "The defense was not only that (DHS) didn't do anything wrong, but that (B.D.) wasn't abused and starved."
Attorneys representing DHS weren't available for comment Wednesday.
Juror David Filmer said he was convinced that DHS didn't do enough to protect the boy, especially after his second hospitalization for failing to gain weight.
"We all really felt that the system was flawed," Filmer said. "That calls would come into the help line, and ...the response was insufficient."
At least 10 of the jurors spread the fault among the State of Oregon and five current and former DHS caseworkers and supervisors: Lesley Willette, Steve Duerscherl, Shirley Vollmuller, Peggy Gilmer and Audrey Riggs. Willette and Vollmuller still work at DHS, while the others have retired, Devlin said.
Because the jury also found that the boy's civil rights were violated, Devlin can seek that his attorneys fees be paid for by the state.
The 3 1/2 week trial included testimony from about 50 witnesses, said Devlin. The boy, who is now 10, took the stand for a short while. He spoke of lingering memories of life in the double-wide trailer that his foster parents and seven other children shared. He said he remembered being forced to sleep in the dog house.
According to lawsuits filed on behalf of the boy and Jordan, the Beavers horribly mistreated the children. A child advocate nicknamed the boy "Mr. Won't Smile." And DHS workers didn't believe Jordan when she repeatedly told them of her suffering. According to her lawsuit, her hands were beaten with a wooden spoon, she was hit with a hairbrush, she was held upside down by her feet and her head slammed against furniture and door frames, and she was forced her to sleep outdoors without blankets.
Thelma Beaver was sentenced to five years in prison for criminal mistreatment of Jordan, and William Beaver received two years of probation. for a lesser charge.
Jordan still faces challenges in her life, but the settlement "will make a big difference in making sure her future is as good as it can be," said Jordan's attorney, Kocher.
The boy has made a "remarkable" physical recovery, Devlin said. The jury's award will compensate the boy for what could be life-long psychological trauma.
"He's not the same kid he was when he was placed in the Beaver home," Devlin said.
Source http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/10/jury_awards_foster_child_2_mil.html
A Multnomah County jury unanimously awarded $2 million Wednesday to a former foster child who was abused and starved for two years while under the watch of state child welfare workers.
An attorney for the boy successfully argued that the Oregon Department of Human Services repeatedly failed to protect the boy despite repeated reports to a child-abuse hotline. The boy lived in the Clackamas County foster home of Thelma and William Beaver from 2002 to 2004. He weighed more at age 1, when he moved into the home, than at age 3, about the time he was removed from the home.
B.D.'s older sister, then known as Jordan Knapp, also suffered. She weighed just 28 pounds at age 5, when she was flown by Life Flight helicopter to OHSU with a broken skull. The girl's injury -- not a long list of reports of suspected abuse to the hotline -- spurred DHS to remove the children from the foster home for good.
Attorney Scott Kocher filed suit on behalf of Jordan, and days before B.D.'s trial, settled the case with the state for $1.5 million.
The children, along with a younger sister, have since been adopted by one family. Their adopted mom hugged B.D.'s attorney, John Devlin, after the Wednesday's verdict was announced.
Jurors awarded precisely the amount Devlin had asked for.
"This isn't just about helping (B.D.), it's also about helping other foster children by getting DHS to do a better job," Devlin said. "The defense was not only that (DHS) didn't do anything wrong, but that (B.D.) wasn't abused and starved."
Attorneys representing DHS weren't available for comment Wednesday.
Juror David Filmer said he was convinced that DHS didn't do enough to protect the boy, especially after his second hospitalization for failing to gain weight.
"We all really felt that the system was flawed," Filmer said. "That calls would come into the help line, and ...the response was insufficient."
At least 10 of the jurors spread the fault among the State of Oregon and five current and former DHS caseworkers and supervisors: Lesley Willette, Steve Duerscherl, Shirley Vollmuller, Peggy Gilmer and Audrey Riggs. Willette and Vollmuller still work at DHS, while the others have retired, Devlin said.
Because the jury also found that the boy's civil rights were violated, Devlin can seek that his attorneys fees be paid for by the state.
The 3 1/2 week trial included testimony from about 50 witnesses, said Devlin. The boy, who is now 10, took the stand for a short while. He spoke of lingering memories of life in the double-wide trailer that his foster parents and seven other children shared. He said he remembered being forced to sleep in the dog house.
According to lawsuits filed on behalf of the boy and Jordan, the Beavers horribly mistreated the children. A child advocate nicknamed the boy "Mr. Won't Smile." And DHS workers didn't believe Jordan when she repeatedly told them of her suffering. According to her lawsuit, her hands were beaten with a wooden spoon, she was hit with a hairbrush, she was held upside down by her feet and her head slammed against furniture and door frames, and she was forced her to sleep outdoors without blankets.
Thelma Beaver was sentenced to five years in prison for criminal mistreatment of Jordan, and William Beaver received two years of probation. for a lesser charge.
Jordan still faces challenges in her life, but the settlement "will make a big difference in making sure her future is as good as it can be," said Jordan's attorney, Kocher.
The boy has made a "remarkable" physical recovery, Devlin said. The jury's award will compensate the boy for what could be life-long psychological trauma.
"He's not the same kid he was when he was placed in the Beaver home," Devlin said.
Source http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/10/jury_awards_foster_child_2_mil.html
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
4 sue state over abusive Tacoma foster home
Four former foster children sue the state Department of Social and Health Services, saying their foster parents beat, drugged and sexually abused them.
By Christine Clarridge
Seattle Times staff reporter
The state Department of Social and Health Services has been sued by four former foster children who say they were beaten and sexually abused in a Tacoma foster home that never should have been licensed, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The victims were "sexually, physically and psychologically terrorized for the pleasure and profit of their foster-care providers."
"It was not a home," said Jeremy Johnston, an attorney for plaintiffs, who are now adults and living in Tacoma. "It was a house of horrors."
Thomas Shapley, a spokesman for the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), declined to comment on the suit, which was filed in Pierce County Superior Court.
The lawsuit alleges that the former foster parents, Jose and Juanita Miranda, were both on welfare and collecting disability payments when the state licensed them to operate a foster-care home between 1997 and 2003.
Jose Miranda died behind bars in 2009 after he had been sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for raping and molesting foster children. His wife died of a drug overdose in Tacoma's McKinley Park in 2006, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that the children were routinely drugged with sleeping pills and forced to engage in sexual acts with Jose Miranda, and the other foster children, in a padlocked room in the basement dedicated to that purpose
The suit also alleges that the Mirandas forced the children to wear diapers and pretend to have bed-wetting issues to increase their foster-care benefits, to eat expired food and consume their own vomit when they were sick.
The foster children were beaten with broomsticks, frying pans and nail-studded sticks, the suit alleges, and forced to clean their foster father after he had used the bathroom. One of the children was forced to wear a dog leash and walk around naked on her hands and knees, the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit charges that DSHS ignored years of complaints from social workers, guardians, teachers, neighbors, relatives, coaches, family friends, parents of the foster children and the children themselves.
According to the lawsuit, DSHS approved Juanita Miranda as a foster parent despite a long history of drug use and criminal violations. Her own two biological children were taken from her by Child Protective Services in California because of drug use and neglect, and she was arrested in that state more than 50 times, the suit alleges.
The suit claims that Juanita Miranda was also under the supervision of Washington's Department of Corrections when she was granted her foster-care license and that DSHS failed to revoke her license even after later receiving reports about her criminal history.
She was never charged with a crime in connection with the abuse, the lawsuit claims.
According to the lawsuit, the abuse began when the children were as young as 5 and continued through their teens.
Tacoma police began an investigation in 2005 after Jose Miranda confessed his crimes to a nurse while he was hospitalized, according to the suit.
Court documents indicate that Jose Miranda was charged in 2007 with three counts of first-degree child rape, two counts of first-degree child molestation and two counts of third-degree assault of a child.
The lawsuit claims Jose and Juanita Miranda should never have been licensed and that their personal histories and their physical and financial circumstances should have made them ineligible to become foster parents.
"There were multiple opportunities for the state to save these children from this nightmare," said Johnston, the attorney for the four former foster children. "But they failed to act."
Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com.
Seattle Times news researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.
Source http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015990609_dshslawsuit24m.html
By Christine Clarridge
Seattle Times staff reporter
The state Department of Social and Health Services has been sued by four former foster children who say they were beaten and sexually abused in a Tacoma foster home that never should have been licensed, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The victims were "sexually, physically and psychologically terrorized for the pleasure and profit of their foster-care providers."
"It was not a home," said Jeremy Johnston, an attorney for plaintiffs, who are now adults and living in Tacoma. "It was a house of horrors."
Thomas Shapley, a spokesman for the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), declined to comment on the suit, which was filed in Pierce County Superior Court.
The lawsuit alleges that the former foster parents, Jose and Juanita Miranda, were both on welfare and collecting disability payments when the state licensed them to operate a foster-care home between 1997 and 2003.
Jose Miranda died behind bars in 2009 after he had been sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for raping and molesting foster children. His wife died of a drug overdose in Tacoma's McKinley Park in 2006, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that the children were routinely drugged with sleeping pills and forced to engage in sexual acts with Jose Miranda, and the other foster children, in a padlocked room in the basement dedicated to that purpose
The suit also alleges that the Mirandas forced the children to wear diapers and pretend to have bed-wetting issues to increase their foster-care benefits, to eat expired food and consume their own vomit when they were sick.
The foster children were beaten with broomsticks, frying pans and nail-studded sticks, the suit alleges, and forced to clean their foster father after he had used the bathroom. One of the children was forced to wear a dog leash and walk around naked on her hands and knees, the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit charges that DSHS ignored years of complaints from social workers, guardians, teachers, neighbors, relatives, coaches, family friends, parents of the foster children and the children themselves.
According to the lawsuit, DSHS approved Juanita Miranda as a foster parent despite a long history of drug use and criminal violations. Her own two biological children were taken from her by Child Protective Services in California because of drug use and neglect, and she was arrested in that state more than 50 times, the suit alleges.
The suit claims that Juanita Miranda was also under the supervision of Washington's Department of Corrections when she was granted her foster-care license and that DSHS failed to revoke her license even after later receiving reports about her criminal history.
She was never charged with a crime in connection with the abuse, the lawsuit claims.
According to the lawsuit, the abuse began when the children were as young as 5 and continued through their teens.
Tacoma police began an investigation in 2005 after Jose Miranda confessed his crimes to a nurse while he was hospitalized, according to the suit.
Court documents indicate that Jose Miranda was charged in 2007 with three counts of first-degree child rape, two counts of first-degree child molestation and two counts of third-degree assault of a child.
The lawsuit claims Jose and Juanita Miranda should never have been licensed and that their personal histories and their physical and financial circumstances should have made them ineligible to become foster parents.
"There were multiple opportunities for the state to save these children from this nightmare," said Johnston, the attorney for the four former foster children. "But they failed to act."
Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com.
Seattle Times news researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.
Source http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015990609_dshslawsuit24m.html
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
52% of foster kids are prescribed psych drugs—One of them is fighting back
By CCHR Int - Original Article 06-23-2011
At just 6 years of age, still grieving over the death of the only mother he’d ever known, his foster mother, Giovan Bazan received the first of many psychiatric “diagnoses” and drugs that would plague him for the next twelve years of his life. Moved from foster home to foster home, orphanages and other modes of state care, Giovan was stigmatized with a plethora of psychiatric diagnoses and drugs until the age of 18, when he could finally make his own medical decisions and quit. Now a child advocate working part time at the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) in Georgia, Giovan is on a mission: To get a full-time job with DFCS and help enact laws to combat the wholesale labeling and drugging of foster children. In the video below, Giovan tells his story and why he decided to fight back against the abuse of kids in foster care.
Foster kids—often removed from family homes because of abuse—are further abused when they are prescribed psychotropic drugs under state care. Many of these children are on cocktails of prescribed drugs, including antipsychotics and antidepressants with documented side effects of diabetes, stroke, mania, psychosis, tumors, coma, suicide and death.
Yet, the rates with which these children are being given drugs has been increasing. The antipsychotic use rate among foster kids increased by 5.6% between 2004 and 2007 (from 11.7 percent to 12.4 percent). Another study in Pediatrics, revealed that youth in foster care covered by Medicaid insurance receive psychotropic medication at a rate more than 3 times that of Medicaid-insured youth who qualify by low family income.
Only half of state child welfare systems have a policy to review usage of these drugs, and those are weak policies at that.
The psychiatric drugging of foster kids has caused so much concern nationally that in July 2010, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) started an investigation into the use of these drugs in foster care, as they are widely used in dangerous combinations, and for so-called “off-label” uses to treat symptoms for which they have not been medically approved. The GAO is looking into the estimated hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud arising from this and is collecting and analyzing data from Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon and Texas.
At just 6 years of age, still grieving over the death of the only mother he’d ever known, his foster mother, Giovan Bazan received the first of many psychiatric “diagnoses” and drugs that would plague him for the next twelve years of his life. Moved from foster home to foster home, orphanages and other modes of state care, Giovan was stigmatized with a plethora of psychiatric diagnoses and drugs until the age of 18, when he could finally make his own medical decisions and quit. Now a child advocate working part time at the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) in Georgia, Giovan is on a mission: To get a full-time job with DFCS and help enact laws to combat the wholesale labeling and drugging of foster children. In the video below, Giovan tells his story and why he decided to fight back against the abuse of kids in foster care.
Foster kids—often removed from family homes because of abuse—are further abused when they are prescribed psychotropic drugs under state care. Many of these children are on cocktails of prescribed drugs, including antipsychotics and antidepressants with documented side effects of diabetes, stroke, mania, psychosis, tumors, coma, suicide and death.
Yet, the rates with which these children are being given drugs has been increasing. The antipsychotic use rate among foster kids increased by 5.6% between 2004 and 2007 (from 11.7 percent to 12.4 percent). Another study in Pediatrics, revealed that youth in foster care covered by Medicaid insurance receive psychotropic medication at a rate more than 3 times that of Medicaid-insured youth who qualify by low family income.
Only half of state child welfare systems have a policy to review usage of these drugs, and those are weak policies at that.
The psychiatric drugging of foster kids has caused so much concern nationally that in July 2010, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) started an investigation into the use of these drugs in foster care, as they are widely used in dangerous combinations, and for so-called “off-label” uses to treat symptoms for which they have not been medically approved. The GAO is looking into the estimated hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud arising from this and is collecting and analyzing data from Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon and Texas.
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