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 foster father. Show all posts
Showing posts with label foster father. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
The High Cost of Foster Care Abuse
FLUSHING, NY, February 09, 2012
More than 500,000 children in the U.S. reside in some form of foster care. Within one year of their initial placement, at least 15 percent of them will experience neglect, abuse, or other harmful conditions. Six times as many children die in foster care than in the general population. Children in placement are also far more likely to suffer physical and sexual abuse than other children. In group homes, where many of the residents abuse each other, there is more than ten times the rate of physical abuse and 28 times the rate of sexual abuse as in the general population. And these are just the reported cases. Since foster care agencies cannot always be relied upon to police themselves, the actual rates are likely to be much higher.
Lawsuits are a necessary consequence of foster care abuse. Often, they provide the only means for victims to seek monetary compensation for grievous harm. They are also instrumental in publicizing these tragedies, forcing state and private foster care providers to account for their actions and, hopefully, rectify them. Here is a sampling of recent foster care abuse lawsuits:
A Florida mother accused state and local child care providers of failing to protect her son from sexual abuse. Placed at age 10, the child was moved to 11 different foster homes in an 18 month period and twice attempted suicide.
Three young Maryland men filed suit against an agency that had notice of a sexually abusing foster father but failed to take action. The agency specialized in placements for children and adolescents with mental disabilities as well as brain and spinal cord injuries.
A lawsuit on behalf of a young girl repeatedly raped in foster care over a period of ten months was filed in Philadelphia. The rapist, who was not supposed to be residing in the home, was the foster mother's teen-aged son.
Lawyers in Colorado sued agency social workers on behalf of three boys placed in an adoptive home. Although the adoptive parents knew the boys had been abused in their biological home, social workers failed to warn them of just how heinous and extensive the abuse had been. The children engaged in incestuous acts with each other, necessitating strenuous efforts on the part of the adoptive parents to prevent the abuse. Ultimately, the strain of caring for the children caused the adoptive parents to divorce.
The payout for such lawsuits can be quite substantial. New Jersey has spent $51.7 million in 317 lawsuits brought on behalf of abused foster children dating as far back as 1996. Since 2005, the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (DHS) has paid out more than $3.4 million in civil lawsuit settlements. In a recently settled class action lawsuit involving foster care abuse, Oklahoma DHS spent $7 million in outside attorney fees in defense of the lawsuit, with $2 million more set aside for future costs. Additional class action lawsuits are pending on behalf of thousands of foster children in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Texas. Even when such cases do not result in monetary awards to the original plaintiffs, attorney fees can run well into the millions.
Foster care abuse exacts an enormous toll in emotional, psychological and physical damage. Lawsuits filed on behalf of these injured children, while essential, are prohibitively expensive for state and local governments. In a better world, all those tens of millions would be spent on preventing the very problems that put children in foster care in the first place. Sometimes, the price for the harm that results from the remedy is just too high.
Written by Ruth C. Stern on behalf of Orlow, Orlow & Orlow, New York Personal Injury Lawyers located at 7118 Main Street, Flushing, NY 11367
Phone: 212-203-4053
http://www.orlowlaw.com
More than 500,000 children in the U.S. reside in some form of foster care. Within one year of their initial placement, at least 15 percent of them will experience neglect, abuse, or other harmful conditions. Six times as many children die in foster care than in the general population. Children in placement are also far more likely to suffer physical and sexual abuse than other children. In group homes, where many of the residents abuse each other, there is more than ten times the rate of physical abuse and 28 times the rate of sexual abuse as in the general population. And these are just the reported cases. Since foster care agencies cannot always be relied upon to police themselves, the actual rates are likely to be much higher.
Lawsuits are a necessary consequence of foster care abuse. Often, they provide the only means for victims to seek monetary compensation for grievous harm. They are also instrumental in publicizing these tragedies, forcing state and private foster care providers to account for their actions and, hopefully, rectify them. Here is a sampling of recent foster care abuse lawsuits:
A Florida mother accused state and local child care providers of failing to protect her son from sexual abuse. Placed at age 10, the child was moved to 11 different foster homes in an 18 month period and twice attempted suicide.
Three young Maryland men filed suit against an agency that had notice of a sexually abusing foster father but failed to take action. The agency specialized in placements for children and adolescents with mental disabilities as well as brain and spinal cord injuries.
A lawsuit on behalf of a young girl repeatedly raped in foster care over a period of ten months was filed in Philadelphia. The rapist, who was not supposed to be residing in the home, was the foster mother's teen-aged son.
Lawyers in Colorado sued agency social workers on behalf of three boys placed in an adoptive home. Although the adoptive parents knew the boys had been abused in their biological home, social workers failed to warn them of just how heinous and extensive the abuse had been. The children engaged in incestuous acts with each other, necessitating strenuous efforts on the part of the adoptive parents to prevent the abuse. Ultimately, the strain of caring for the children caused the adoptive parents to divorce.
The payout for such lawsuits can be quite substantial. New Jersey has spent $51.7 million in 317 lawsuits brought on behalf of abused foster children dating as far back as 1996. Since 2005, the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (DHS) has paid out more than $3.4 million in civil lawsuit settlements. In a recently settled class action lawsuit involving foster care abuse, Oklahoma DHS spent $7 million in outside attorney fees in defense of the lawsuit, with $2 million more set aside for future costs. Additional class action lawsuits are pending on behalf of thousands of foster children in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Texas. Even when such cases do not result in monetary awards to the original plaintiffs, attorney fees can run well into the millions.
Foster care abuse exacts an enormous toll in emotional, psychological and physical damage. Lawsuits filed on behalf of these injured children, while essential, are prohibitively expensive for state and local governments. In a better world, all those tens of millions would be spent on preventing the very problems that put children in foster care in the first place. Sometimes, the price for the harm that results from the remedy is just too high.
Written by Ruth C. Stern on behalf of Orlow, Orlow & Orlow, New York Personal Injury Lawyers located at 7118 Main Street, Flushing, NY 11367
Phone: 212-203-4053
http://www.orlowlaw.com
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