OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A fired Oklahoma Department of Human Services child welfare worker has been charged with stealing nearly $3,700 from three disabled foster children.
Michelle Fausett, of Oklahoma City, has been charged with three counts of financial exploitation of a minor.
A working telephone number for Fausett could not be found Saturday. Online court records show a warrant has been issued for her arrest, but do not list an attorney for her and county jail records did not list her as an inmate.
The charges filed Monday by Oklahoma County prosecutors allege that Fausett used federal disability payments to the children in order to by video game systems, laptop computers and televisions, but never delivered the items to the foster homes where the children were living.
One child lost $972, another lost $1,446, and the third lost $1,247, according to prosecutors.
Fausett, who was fired Jan. 20 for dereliction of duty because she stopped coming to work, was charged after DHS completed an internal investigation and sent the findings to prosecutors.
DHS "holds its employees to a very high standard because of the vulnerable people we serve," department spokeswoman Sheree Powell told The Oklahoman for a story published Saturday.
"The financial exploitation of a foster child is particularly disgraceful, and we will not tolerate any employee committing such an act," Powell said.
Fausett, who had worked at the agency more than three years, turned in her DHS identification badge, cellphone and computer Dec. 7 after a co-worker confronted her Dec. 5 about why a foster child never got items purchased for him in August, DHS records show.
Source http://www.necn.com/03/10/12/Ex-Okla-child-welfare-worker-charged-wit/landing_nation.html?&apID=91c6c2b24d034f64b74ac2346c8b5498
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 investigation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label investigation. Show all posts
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Family not notified about daughter's alleged abuse at school - Texas
by CRAIG CIVALE
FORNEY, Texas - A Forney family has filed a compliant with the state, claiming that Child Protective Services and Forney ISD failed to tell them about an abuse investigation involving their daughter.
Four-year-old Bella Holt is a special needs student at Henderson Elementary School in Forney. On Jan. 31, school officials were notified by an employee that Holt's teacher reportedly pushed the child to the ground.
"CPS told me she fell on her bottom, hit her elbows, her head, and started crying," her mother, Tana, said.
The district looked into the incident and during the investigation reassigned the teacher to another school. Child Protective Services was also asked to look into the matter.
But at no time was the little girl's family contacted about what was going on.
It wasn't until March 1, four weeks later, they say they received a call from a CPS case worker.
"The first thing out of her mouth was, 'I apoligize for not contacting you,' said Rene Keitch, the child's grandmother.
"She was there four times, observing the child, but not once was her parent, [or] her grandparent notified," she continued. "Not one time."
The family says the case worker interviewed and photographed 4-year-old Bella without their permission.
Child Protective Services would not comment on the incident, or the allegations against their case worker. School district officials confirm Bella's family was not contacted by the school.
A spokesperson for Forney ISD said the teacher's transfer had nothing to do with the investigation, and called the timing of her move a coincidence.
Source http://www.khou.com/news/texas-news/Family-not-notified-about-daughters-alleged-abuse-at-school-142068933.html
FORNEY, Texas - A Forney family has filed a compliant with the state, claiming that Child Protective Services and Forney ISD failed to tell them about an abuse investigation involving their daughter.
Four-year-old Bella Holt is a special needs student at Henderson Elementary School in Forney. On Jan. 31, school officials were notified by an employee that Holt's teacher reportedly pushed the child to the ground.
"CPS told me she fell on her bottom, hit her elbows, her head, and started crying," her mother, Tana, said.
The district looked into the incident and during the investigation reassigned the teacher to another school. Child Protective Services was also asked to look into the matter.
But at no time was the little girl's family contacted about what was going on.
It wasn't until March 1, four weeks later, they say they received a call from a CPS case worker.
"The first thing out of her mouth was, 'I apoligize for not contacting you,' said Rene Keitch, the child's grandmother.
"She was there four times, observing the child, but not once was her parent, [or] her grandparent notified," she continued. "Not one time."
The family says the case worker interviewed and photographed 4-year-old Bella without their permission.
Child Protective Services would not comment on the incident, or the allegations against their case worker. School district officials confirm Bella's family was not contacted by the school.
A spokesperson for Forney ISD said the teacher's transfer had nothing to do with the investigation, and called the timing of her move a coincidence.
Source http://www.khou.com/news/texas-news/Family-not-notified-about-daughters-alleged-abuse-at-school-142068933.html
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Teacher's aide at a special needs school arrested on child abuse charges
By Jessica Janner
Las Vegas, NV (KTNV) -- A teacher's aide at Variety School in Las Vegas was arrested on Tuesday on child abuse charges after school district police obtained surveillance video of the alleged acts.
The teacher's aide has been identified as 28-year-old Lachelle James. James has worked directly with special needs children, at Variety School, for more than seven years.
She was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on five counts of felony child abuse charges and one count of battery.
According to the arrest report, James hurt an 11-year-old student by "dragging him to the floor and using physical force to restrain him." In the report, she is also accused of battery against another student by "pushing him twice" and "grabbing him by the face and pinning him to rolling wardrobe cabinets."
Surveillance video was obtained by Clark County School District Police. The alleged crimes occurred on March 6 according to police paperwork.
The Clark County School District said a school police investigation led to the arrest of the teacher's aide. The superintendent ordered her suspended without pay and she will be terminated upon approval of an arbitrator.
"Our community should be assured that the district will not tolerate this behavior by any employee and that our police department will work swiftly on this case," a spokersperon with the district said.
Video:http://bcove.me/y34erhrr
Source http://www.ktnv.com/news/local/141831883.html
Las Vegas, NV (KTNV) -- A teacher's aide at Variety School in Las Vegas was arrested on Tuesday on child abuse charges after school district police obtained surveillance video of the alleged acts.
The teacher's aide has been identified as 28-year-old Lachelle James. James has worked directly with special needs children, at Variety School, for more than seven years.
She was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on five counts of felony child abuse charges and one count of battery.
According to the arrest report, James hurt an 11-year-old student by "dragging him to the floor and using physical force to restrain him." In the report, she is also accused of battery against another student by "pushing him twice" and "grabbing him by the face and pinning him to rolling wardrobe cabinets."
Surveillance video was obtained by Clark County School District Police. The alleged crimes occurred on March 6 according to police paperwork.
The Clark County School District said a school police investigation led to the arrest of the teacher's aide. The superintendent ordered her suspended without pay and she will be terminated upon approval of an arbitrator.
"Our community should be assured that the district will not tolerate this behavior by any employee and that our police department will work swiftly on this case," a spokersperon with the district said.
Video:http://bcove.me/y34erhrr
Source http://www.ktnv.com/news/local/141831883.html
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Kaylee Rice died despite 18 state investigations - Florida
CHRIS OLWELL
Editor’s note: This story is based on interviews with friends and family of Kaylee Rice, people involved in the juvenile dependency system, and hundreds of pages of records from the Department of Children and Families, Big Bend Community Based Care, criminal and civil court files, and law enforcement.
PANAMA CITY BEACH — Even as her life descended into a spiral of abuse and addiction, Courtney Coughlin was determined to keep her daughter, Kaylee Ann Rice.
Coughlin gave up two other kids for adoption, an older girl and a younger boy, and Kaylee was removed from her care by the state on more than one occasion. Still, Coughlin fought to keep Kaylee.
Once she succeeded, said one woman who knew Kaylee, the child never stood a chance.
Kaylee was airlifted to Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital in the hours after a July 11, 2011, car accident in Lynn Haven. She and mother Courtney Coughlin, a drug addict and ex-convict with a long criminal history, were not wearing seat belts. Coughlin’s facial muscles were pulled from her crushed skull, and she had missing teeth and limited vision in one eye.
Kaylee fared worse.
Twelve hours after the crash, an investigator with the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) filed a preliminary report of the findings of an investigation. The investigator interviewed only doctors; Kaylee was unconscious, father Ray Rice was in prison and her mother was in the hospital on her way to jail, where she would remain until she was sentenced to 25 years in prison. The investigator was there to assess the risk to Kaylee.
“The overall safety assessment at this time is low as it pertains to the parent/caregiver not having access for further abuse/neglect to the child. However, risk is increased due to the injuries Kaylee has sustained and her current condition may potentially be fatal.”
The report documented the 18th and final time DCF had investigated allegations Kaylee had been abused or neglected.
Coughlin and Rice met in the late ’90s when they were kicking around the beach, hanging out in clubs, partying and getting into drugs. Back then it was pot and valium; later it was meth and painkillers. They had dated about a month when Coughlin showed up with a small child, Rice remembered during an interview with The News Herald.
Both were more interested in partying than parenthood, and Coughlin decided to give her daughter up for adoption. The adoption was a strain on the relationship. Rice said he started thinking, “This chick might be crazy.”
She knew how to push his buttons, and “sometimes I would try to control her,” said Rice, who was arrested several times for domestic violence. “I’m not an angel by any means.”
Coughlin was pregnant again in December 1998 when she applied for a restraining order the day after one incident. She withdrew the request a week later.
“I lost one child, kind of, you know — that’s how I felt about it — and I was giving her something better,” Coughlin said in an interview. “… I wanted Kaylee to have both of her parents there, you know, just a normal upbringing. I wanted to give her everything I didn’t have.”
Six months later, on July 10, 1999, Kaylee Rice was born in a Bay County hospital to 21-year-old Rice and 23-year-old Coughlin. It was only a matter of months before the complaints to the police and the DCF began pouring in.
Both Rice and Coughlin were involved in a major meth manufacturing case in 2004 after Rice’s mother, Yurdanur “Sunny” Rice, took a trunk with a meth lab and more than 1,000 grams of meth oil to the dump at her son’s request. The meth had belonged to one of Ray Rice’s roommates. He had allowed the roommate to cook meth at his place, but he said he never cooked meth himself and court records support him.
He ended up in a federal prison. Coughlin, who was jittery and had fresh needle marks on her arms when police came, was not charged, but DCF again took custody of Kaylee, who began the least documented period of her short life.
Coughlin was arrested in December 2004 for aggravated assault for a road rage incident in which she allegedly pointed a gun at another driver. She entered a court-ordered rehab program, but quickly failed and ended up in prison.
Kaylee moved in with Charlene Hodge for the first time. The Hodges are a large Bonifay family made larger by the many children they have fostered over the years, but not too large to take Kaylee in 2004.
With the exception of a few months spent with another relative in Michigan, Kaylee spent the next year-and-a half with the Hodges.
“My family just considered her a part of our family,” Hodge said. “She just felt at home at our house.”
When she left the Hodges’ home, Kaylee moved in with Sunny Rice, who was appointed Kaylee’s caretaker in February 2007, about six months before Coughlin’s release from prison.
In December 2008, DCF received the first report regarding Kaylee in more than four years. Rice, then 71 years old, had fallen and broken her hip. She had been hospitalized and wouldn’t be capable of caring for herself, let alone a 9-year-old girl, for at least six months. Kaylee had been staying with various friends, mainly Sean and Melinda Hall.
The Halls didn’t mind looking after Kaylee, and Judge Elijah Smiley ordered Kaylee be placed with the family. Coughlin was allowed supervised visitation.
Coughlin was released from prison in August 2007. She was off drugs and determined to resume her life with the only child she had left.
She completed parenting courses, a mental health assessment, domestic violence awareness courses and substance abuse treatment. She paid child support. Her visits required supervision.
In May 2009, DCF developed a case plan with the stated goal of reuniting Coughlin and Kaylee. The law says that a child removed by the state cannot be returned until “the circumstances which caused the creation of the case plan have been significantly remedied to the extent that the well-being and safety of the child will not be endangered upon the child’s remaining with or being returned to the child’s parent.”
Big Bend Community Based Care, a private company that contracts with the state to monitor cases like Kaylee’s, cited federal and state laws when it refused to provide documents of Coughlin’s drug tests, but logs of in-home visits show Coughlin passed at least nine random drug tests before and after the reunion.
During an in-home visit at Sunny Rice’s by the case worker in July 2009, just before the reunion, the case worker noted in her report that Kaylee was “chippery and happy.” Kaylee said she wanted to live with her mother.
On Aug. 13, 2009, Judge James Fensom held a hearing to get an update on Coughlin’s progress. All drug tests were clean, and DCF recommended Kaylee’s reunification with her mother. Fensom called a brief recess and went into the hall to speak privately with Kaylee. When he returned, he ordered the reunification.
Rosemary Ring was Kaylee’s Sunday school teacher and a friend of Sunny Rice, who had hired a lawyer and tried to fight the reunification. She said she went to court with Sunny that day, and she was disappointed Fensom chose to put Kaylee with Coughlin instead of Sunny, who had taken the child to church, dance lessons and tennis lessons.
“Sunny was a good and moral person and she would have seen to K.K.’s care,” Ring said. “Courts don’t look at the moral aspect of it.”
Kaylee had been more or less born into the system. By her first birthday, Kaylee had been removed from home by child protection teams and returned. DCF had investigated allegations that Kaylee had been exposed to drugs or family violence five times before her second birthday, and investigators often found at least some indication the allegations were true.
Of course, just as often there was no evidence to support the allegations, the DCF is required to conduct investigations in any case, said Courtney Peel, operations manager for DCF in Bay County.
DCF has goals that at times seem to be in conflict. One is to protect children, and the other is to keep families together.
“It is, and I guess it should be, difficult to terminate a parent’s rights,” Fensom said.
A child must be in immediate danger for the DCF to take steps toward taking the child from the parents. Even then, DCF doesn’t have the authority to remove them; that decision must be made by a judge in a shelter hearing.
“Some judges are hesitant to work as a dependency judge because of the reality: some cases go bad,” said Fensom, who said Kaylee’s case isn’t the only one where a child has died as a result of abuse or neglect. It’s not even the most egregious — just the most public.
The work of a dependency court judge is difficult and emotional, Fensom said, because “everyone’s doing their best, then the case goes bad.”
After she won her daughter back, Coughlin remained under supervision of Big Bend Community Based Care. Case agents performed in-home visits for six months after the reunification to see Kaylee and ensure Coughlin was seeing to her needs. They also administered drug tests.
“She was doing extremely well, I thought,” Ray Rice said. “I was actually proud of her.”
Coughlin remembers exactly the day she relapsed. After seven years drug-free, four of which she spent in prison, she started taking painkillers May 14, 2010. It had been about three months since she had passed her final drug test and her case was closed. DCF no longer had the authority to compel a drug test.
She was despondent. Her girlfriend kicked her out of their apartment and Coughlin, who was almost immediately shooting up powerful narcotic painkillers, stole her checkbook on her way out the door. Within a month, she had attempted suicide and been committed.
“That’s what I want, for the suffering to stop,” Coughlin wrote in a suicide note to her ex-girlfriend. “I know that everyone will be better off with me out of their lives. I’m sorry for the pain I caused you. … I will never forgive myself for it coming to this.”
The day before she had allegedly stolen some painkillers from Sunny, and six months later the criminal charges were starting to stack up. She was arrested in February for grand theft and uttering a forged instrument for allegedly writing bad checks from her ex’s checkbook.
In March, Coughlin was arrested after she sold four oxycodone pills to a confidential police informant. Bob and Jacqui Coughlin, the grandparents who had raised Coughlin since childhood while her mother drank herself to death, let her sit in jail for two weeks, hoping she might sober up again.
During this period, Bob Coughlin and Charlene Hodge had several discussions about moving Kaylee back in with the Hodges. They both agreed it was best for Kaylee, and it was best to do it over the summer so she wouldn’t have to change schools mid-year, but Courtney Coughlin wouldn’t go for it.
“I had talked to Courtney several times in recent months about giving K.K. up, but she refused to consider it,” Bob Coughlin said. “We still knew we had to do something with her before too long.”
Hodge remembers a long conversation with the Coughlins just before Kaylee finished sixth grade. She didn’t go into details but she said she felt very strongly that Kaylee needed to come live with her again.
“Let’s just say that I kept talking to Kaylee and she was not a happy little girl. Her life was upside down,” Hodge said. “If they needed us, we would be there for them. A child’s security means everything.”
Everyone around Coughlin could tell she was falling apart. From his prison cell, Rice would call Kaylee and ask her if Coughlin was using. Kaylee said she wasn’t, but he felt she was either covering for her mother or didn’t know. He considered reporting Coughlin to DCF, but he didn’t.
“I knew Courtney was messing up. I knew she was on drugs,” he said. “I didn’t want Kaylee to be mad at me for taking her away.”
On July 11, Coughlin was trying to cash a check that wasn’t hers. Police came to the Lynn Haven bank and pinned her in, but she stomped the accelerator and took off. She made it less than a mile.
From the wreckage of the car, investigators recovered purses and checkbooks that belonged to other women. They also found needles and a blackened spoon that tested positive for narcotics.
Two days later at Sacred Heart, staff busied themselves making arrangements with Coughlin and Rice for permission to allow their daughter’s organs to be donated. Knowing Kaylee’s heart still beats in the chest of another child is a comfort to Rice.
“I know Kaylee would’ve wanted that because she was such a sweet girl,” he said.
He’s torn up that he wasn’t there for his little girl. He used to apologize to her over the phone from the prison until she’d forgive him.
“ ‘Daddy stop already; stop that. I forgive you,’ ” he remembered her as saying. “That meant a lot, especially now; I’m so glad that she said that.”
Momma Hodge, as Kaylee referred to her, went in to be with Kaylee while the rest of her family waited in the lobby.
“I just wanted to get to her and hold her hand and let her know that I was there,” Hodge said. “I was the only one with her.”
Doctors and nurses watched with tears in their eyes. For hours after the machines that had kept Kaylee alive were turned off, Hodge was there.
Source http://www.newsherald.com/news/state-99695-died-editor.html
Editor’s note: This story is based on interviews with friends and family of Kaylee Rice, people involved in the juvenile dependency system, and hundreds of pages of records from the Department of Children and Families, Big Bend Community Based Care, criminal and civil court files, and law enforcement.
PANAMA CITY BEACH — Even as her life descended into a spiral of abuse and addiction, Courtney Coughlin was determined to keep her daughter, Kaylee Ann Rice.
Coughlin gave up two other kids for adoption, an older girl and a younger boy, and Kaylee was removed from her care by the state on more than one occasion. Still, Coughlin fought to keep Kaylee.
Once she succeeded, said one woman who knew Kaylee, the child never stood a chance.
Kaylee was airlifted to Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital in the hours after a July 11, 2011, car accident in Lynn Haven. She and mother Courtney Coughlin, a drug addict and ex-convict with a long criminal history, were not wearing seat belts. Coughlin’s facial muscles were pulled from her crushed skull, and she had missing teeth and limited vision in one eye.
Kaylee fared worse.
Twelve hours after the crash, an investigator with the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) filed a preliminary report of the findings of an investigation. The investigator interviewed only doctors; Kaylee was unconscious, father Ray Rice was in prison and her mother was in the hospital on her way to jail, where she would remain until she was sentenced to 25 years in prison. The investigator was there to assess the risk to Kaylee.
“The overall safety assessment at this time is low as it pertains to the parent/caregiver not having access for further abuse/neglect to the child. However, risk is increased due to the injuries Kaylee has sustained and her current condition may potentially be fatal.”
The report documented the 18th and final time DCF had investigated allegations Kaylee had been abused or neglected.
Coughlin and Rice met in the late ’90s when they were kicking around the beach, hanging out in clubs, partying and getting into drugs. Back then it was pot and valium; later it was meth and painkillers. They had dated about a month when Coughlin showed up with a small child, Rice remembered during an interview with The News Herald.
Both were more interested in partying than parenthood, and Coughlin decided to give her daughter up for adoption. The adoption was a strain on the relationship. Rice said he started thinking, “This chick might be crazy.”
She knew how to push his buttons, and “sometimes I would try to control her,” said Rice, who was arrested several times for domestic violence. “I’m not an angel by any means.”
Coughlin was pregnant again in December 1998 when she applied for a restraining order the day after one incident. She withdrew the request a week later.
“I lost one child, kind of, you know — that’s how I felt about it — and I was giving her something better,” Coughlin said in an interview. “… I wanted Kaylee to have both of her parents there, you know, just a normal upbringing. I wanted to give her everything I didn’t have.”
Six months later, on July 10, 1999, Kaylee Rice was born in a Bay County hospital to 21-year-old Rice and 23-year-old Coughlin. It was only a matter of months before the complaints to the police and the DCF began pouring in.
Both Rice and Coughlin were involved in a major meth manufacturing case in 2004 after Rice’s mother, Yurdanur “Sunny” Rice, took a trunk with a meth lab and more than 1,000 grams of meth oil to the dump at her son’s request. The meth had belonged to one of Ray Rice’s roommates. He had allowed the roommate to cook meth at his place, but he said he never cooked meth himself and court records support him.
He ended up in a federal prison. Coughlin, who was jittery and had fresh needle marks on her arms when police came, was not charged, but DCF again took custody of Kaylee, who began the least documented period of her short life.
Coughlin was arrested in December 2004 for aggravated assault for a road rage incident in which she allegedly pointed a gun at another driver. She entered a court-ordered rehab program, but quickly failed and ended up in prison.
Kaylee moved in with Charlene Hodge for the first time. The Hodges are a large Bonifay family made larger by the many children they have fostered over the years, but not too large to take Kaylee in 2004.
With the exception of a few months spent with another relative in Michigan, Kaylee spent the next year-and-a half with the Hodges.
“My family just considered her a part of our family,” Hodge said. “She just felt at home at our house.”
When she left the Hodges’ home, Kaylee moved in with Sunny Rice, who was appointed Kaylee’s caretaker in February 2007, about six months before Coughlin’s release from prison.
In December 2008, DCF received the first report regarding Kaylee in more than four years. Rice, then 71 years old, had fallen and broken her hip. She had been hospitalized and wouldn’t be capable of caring for herself, let alone a 9-year-old girl, for at least six months. Kaylee had been staying with various friends, mainly Sean and Melinda Hall.
The Halls didn’t mind looking after Kaylee, and Judge Elijah Smiley ordered Kaylee be placed with the family. Coughlin was allowed supervised visitation.
Coughlin was released from prison in August 2007. She was off drugs and determined to resume her life with the only child she had left.
She completed parenting courses, a mental health assessment, domestic violence awareness courses and substance abuse treatment. She paid child support. Her visits required supervision.
In May 2009, DCF developed a case plan with the stated goal of reuniting Coughlin and Kaylee. The law says that a child removed by the state cannot be returned until “the circumstances which caused the creation of the case plan have been significantly remedied to the extent that the well-being and safety of the child will not be endangered upon the child’s remaining with or being returned to the child’s parent.”
Big Bend Community Based Care, a private company that contracts with the state to monitor cases like Kaylee’s, cited federal and state laws when it refused to provide documents of Coughlin’s drug tests, but logs of in-home visits show Coughlin passed at least nine random drug tests before and after the reunion.
During an in-home visit at Sunny Rice’s by the case worker in July 2009, just before the reunion, the case worker noted in her report that Kaylee was “chippery and happy.” Kaylee said she wanted to live with her mother.
On Aug. 13, 2009, Judge James Fensom held a hearing to get an update on Coughlin’s progress. All drug tests were clean, and DCF recommended Kaylee’s reunification with her mother. Fensom called a brief recess and went into the hall to speak privately with Kaylee. When he returned, he ordered the reunification.
Rosemary Ring was Kaylee’s Sunday school teacher and a friend of Sunny Rice, who had hired a lawyer and tried to fight the reunification. She said she went to court with Sunny that day, and she was disappointed Fensom chose to put Kaylee with Coughlin instead of Sunny, who had taken the child to church, dance lessons and tennis lessons.
“Sunny was a good and moral person and she would have seen to K.K.’s care,” Ring said. “Courts don’t look at the moral aspect of it.”
Kaylee had been more or less born into the system. By her first birthday, Kaylee had been removed from home by child protection teams and returned. DCF had investigated allegations that Kaylee had been exposed to drugs or family violence five times before her second birthday, and investigators often found at least some indication the allegations were true.
Of course, just as often there was no evidence to support the allegations, the DCF is required to conduct investigations in any case, said Courtney Peel, operations manager for DCF in Bay County.
DCF has goals that at times seem to be in conflict. One is to protect children, and the other is to keep families together.
“It is, and I guess it should be, difficult to terminate a parent’s rights,” Fensom said.
A child must be in immediate danger for the DCF to take steps toward taking the child from the parents. Even then, DCF doesn’t have the authority to remove them; that decision must be made by a judge in a shelter hearing.
“Some judges are hesitant to work as a dependency judge because of the reality: some cases go bad,” said Fensom, who said Kaylee’s case isn’t the only one where a child has died as a result of abuse or neglect. It’s not even the most egregious — just the most public.
The work of a dependency court judge is difficult and emotional, Fensom said, because “everyone’s doing their best, then the case goes bad.”
After she won her daughter back, Coughlin remained under supervision of Big Bend Community Based Care. Case agents performed in-home visits for six months after the reunification to see Kaylee and ensure Coughlin was seeing to her needs. They also administered drug tests.
“She was doing extremely well, I thought,” Ray Rice said. “I was actually proud of her.”
Coughlin remembers exactly the day she relapsed. After seven years drug-free, four of which she spent in prison, she started taking painkillers May 14, 2010. It had been about three months since she had passed her final drug test and her case was closed. DCF no longer had the authority to compel a drug test.
She was despondent. Her girlfriend kicked her out of their apartment and Coughlin, who was almost immediately shooting up powerful narcotic painkillers, stole her checkbook on her way out the door. Within a month, she had attempted suicide and been committed.
“That’s what I want, for the suffering to stop,” Coughlin wrote in a suicide note to her ex-girlfriend. “I know that everyone will be better off with me out of their lives. I’m sorry for the pain I caused you. … I will never forgive myself for it coming to this.”
The day before she had allegedly stolen some painkillers from Sunny, and six months later the criminal charges were starting to stack up. She was arrested in February for grand theft and uttering a forged instrument for allegedly writing bad checks from her ex’s checkbook.
In March, Coughlin was arrested after she sold four oxycodone pills to a confidential police informant. Bob and Jacqui Coughlin, the grandparents who had raised Coughlin since childhood while her mother drank herself to death, let her sit in jail for two weeks, hoping she might sober up again.
During this period, Bob Coughlin and Charlene Hodge had several discussions about moving Kaylee back in with the Hodges. They both agreed it was best for Kaylee, and it was best to do it over the summer so she wouldn’t have to change schools mid-year, but Courtney Coughlin wouldn’t go for it.
“I had talked to Courtney several times in recent months about giving K.K. up, but she refused to consider it,” Bob Coughlin said. “We still knew we had to do something with her before too long.”
Hodge remembers a long conversation with the Coughlins just before Kaylee finished sixth grade. She didn’t go into details but she said she felt very strongly that Kaylee needed to come live with her again.
“Let’s just say that I kept talking to Kaylee and she was not a happy little girl. Her life was upside down,” Hodge said. “If they needed us, we would be there for them. A child’s security means everything.”
Everyone around Coughlin could tell she was falling apart. From his prison cell, Rice would call Kaylee and ask her if Coughlin was using. Kaylee said she wasn’t, but he felt she was either covering for her mother or didn’t know. He considered reporting Coughlin to DCF, but he didn’t.
“I knew Courtney was messing up. I knew she was on drugs,” he said. “I didn’t want Kaylee to be mad at me for taking her away.”
On July 11, Coughlin was trying to cash a check that wasn’t hers. Police came to the Lynn Haven bank and pinned her in, but she stomped the accelerator and took off. She made it less than a mile.
From the wreckage of the car, investigators recovered purses and checkbooks that belonged to other women. They also found needles and a blackened spoon that tested positive for narcotics.
Two days later at Sacred Heart, staff busied themselves making arrangements with Coughlin and Rice for permission to allow their daughter’s organs to be donated. Knowing Kaylee’s heart still beats in the chest of another child is a comfort to Rice.
“I know Kaylee would’ve wanted that because she was such a sweet girl,” he said.
He’s torn up that he wasn’t there for his little girl. He used to apologize to her over the phone from the prison until she’d forgive him.
“ ‘Daddy stop already; stop that. I forgive you,’ ” he remembered her as saying. “That meant a lot, especially now; I’m so glad that she said that.”
Momma Hodge, as Kaylee referred to her, went in to be with Kaylee while the rest of her family waited in the lobby.
“I just wanted to get to her and hold her hand and let her know that I was there,” Hodge said. “I was the only one with her.”
Doctors and nurses watched with tears in their eyes. For hours after the machines that had kept Kaylee alive were turned off, Hodge was there.
Source http://www.newsherald.com/news/state-99695-died-editor.html
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
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Orange County Deputy arrested and relieved from duty - Florida
Blogger note:
Finally, we can say that a CPS call turned out to help. The sad part is, the people we are to trust, such as this Deputy Sheriff, prove to be the offenders of the very thing that many of us have been accused of. Yet, people like this testify in courtrooms everyday and are believed without question when the accusations are made against regular people, even though what they testify to is usually a blatant lie.
-----
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL Fox 35) - An Orange County Deputy has been arrested for battery with bodily injury and relieved from duty.
On Friday, just before 7pm, a Lake Mary Police Officer was responding to the residence of Deputy Sheriff Michael Shambaugh to assist with a Child Protection Services investigation. While at the residence, the Lake Mary Police Officer observed the physical condition of Shambaugh’s wife and determined there was probable cause to take Deputy Sheriff Shambaugh into custody. Deputy Shambaugh was transported to the Seminole County Jail for processing.
An Orange County Watch Commander responded to the Seminole County Jail and confiscated Deputy Shambaugh's law enforcement credentials and firearms, and relieved him from duty as an Orange County Deputy Sheriff.
The Orange County Sheriff's Office Professional Standards Section will be conducting an administrative review of the circumstances.
Source http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/orange_news/121711-orange-county-deputy-arrested-and-relieved-from-duty
Finally, we can say that a CPS call turned out to help. The sad part is, the people we are to trust, such as this Deputy Sheriff, prove to be the offenders of the very thing that many of us have been accused of. Yet, people like this testify in courtrooms everyday and are believed without question when the accusations are made against regular people, even though what they testify to is usually a blatant lie.
-----
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL Fox 35) - An Orange County Deputy has been arrested for battery with bodily injury and relieved from duty.
On Friday, just before 7pm, a Lake Mary Police Officer was responding to the residence of Deputy Sheriff Michael Shambaugh to assist with a Child Protection Services investigation. While at the residence, the Lake Mary Police Officer observed the physical condition of Shambaugh’s wife and determined there was probable cause to take Deputy Sheriff Shambaugh into custody. Deputy Shambaugh was transported to the Seminole County Jail for processing.
An Orange County Watch Commander responded to the Seminole County Jail and confiscated Deputy Shambaugh's law enforcement credentials and firearms, and relieved him from duty as an Orange County Deputy Sheriff.
The Orange County Sheriff's Office Professional Standards Section will be conducting an administrative review of the circumstances.
Source http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/orange_news/121711-orange-county-deputy-arrested-and-relieved-from-duty
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Police: Boy Tied Up, Beaten To Death By Dad - Indiana
Blogger note:
CPS failed, once again! Shame on them. When will CPS ever be held criminally accountable for their failure to protect children and being neglectful in their duties?
-----
Caseworker Reported Nothing Wrong In Home, Records Show
SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The father and grandmother of a 10-year-old boy who was beaten to death have been charged, yet a caseworker who investigated the family months before found nothing wrong, records show.
Tramelle Sturgis died earlier this month after he and his older brother were tied up with duct tape and beaten with a club by their father, Terry Sturgis, over several hours, in the family's South Bend home, police said.
The 10-year-old was found to have both old and new injuries, including a broken arm and leg, bruising across his body and marks from the club, police said.
His older brother survived the attack but also suffered bruises and welts, police said.
Terry Sturgis has been charged with one count of murder and two counts of felony battery. His mother, Dellia Castile, 53, the boys' grandmother, was charged Wednesday with three counts of felony neglect of a dependent.
Police said Castile, who lived with her son and his five children, was in the home the night that her grandson was killed and heard the boys screaming but did nothing to stop the abuse.
Indiana Department of Child Services records obtained by the Call 6 Investigators show at least one person reported ongoing abuse in the home in May.
According to the complaint, the parents "beat the children with two-by-fours" and that one of them "might be bleeding internally."
Records show that a caseworker went to the home to investigate but found the report to be unsubstantiated. The caseworker said the children didn't show signs of being abused.
Sandy Runkle-Delorme with Prevent Child Abuse Indiana said it is critical to study child fatalities to determine how other children might be saved in the future.
"Who knows where the responsibility lies, other than with the perpetrator, ultimately," she said. "Anyone with whom that child had contact with -- where was the missing link and who failed this child?"
Due to confidentiality rules, DCS officials were unable to comment on the case.
Source http://www.theindychannel.com/news/29787510/detail.html
CPS failed, once again! Shame on them. When will CPS ever be held criminally accountable for their failure to protect children and being neglectful in their duties?
-----
Caseworker Reported Nothing Wrong In Home, Records Show
SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The father and grandmother of a 10-year-old boy who was beaten to death have been charged, yet a caseworker who investigated the family months before found nothing wrong, records show.
Tramelle Sturgis died earlier this month after he and his older brother were tied up with duct tape and beaten with a club by their father, Terry Sturgis, over several hours, in the family's South Bend home, police said.
The 10-year-old was found to have both old and new injuries, including a broken arm and leg, bruising across his body and marks from the club, police said.
His older brother survived the attack but also suffered bruises and welts, police said.
Terry Sturgis has been charged with one count of murder and two counts of felony battery. His mother, Dellia Castile, 53, the boys' grandmother, was charged Wednesday with three counts of felony neglect of a dependent.
Police said Castile, who lived with her son and his five children, was in the home the night that her grandson was killed and heard the boys screaming but did nothing to stop the abuse.
Indiana Department of Child Services records obtained by the Call 6 Investigators show at least one person reported ongoing abuse in the home in May.
According to the complaint, the parents "beat the children with two-by-fours" and that one of them "might be bleeding internally."
Records show that a caseworker went to the home to investigate but found the report to be unsubstantiated. The caseworker said the children didn't show signs of being abused.
Sandy Runkle-Delorme with Prevent Child Abuse Indiana said it is critical to study child fatalities to determine how other children might be saved in the future.
"Who knows where the responsibility lies, other than with the perpetrator, ultimately," she said. "Anyone with whom that child had contact with -- where was the missing link and who failed this child?"
Due to confidentiality rules, DCS officials were unable to comment on the case.
Source http://www.theindychannel.com/news/29787510/detail.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."
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
ACLU to probe if SD breaks child-protection laws
Associated Press
The American Civil Liberties Union is investigating whether the South Dakota Department of Social Services violated federal law by removing Native American children from their homes and placing them in foster care instead of with relatives.
Tate Walker, an ACLU spokeswoman in Sioux Falls, said the civil rights organization has fielded individual complaints for years from families who said the state violated the federal Indian Child Welfare Act. The law directs officials to place Native American children removed from homes with their relatives or tribes except in unusual situations.
But the cases had been too scattered and disparate to tackle, Walker said, until a recent National Public Radio series accused the state of routinely breaking the law and disrupting the lives of hundreds of Native Americans each year.
"That aired and then boom: We're getting calls left and right," Walker told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "The outcry was phenomenal, not only from people demanding that something be done, but also from several potential plaintiffs."
The ACLU investigation could lead to a potential lawsuit that would unite complainants as plaintiffs against the state.
The three-part NPR report described Native American children as being placed in South Dakota's foster care system at a disproportionate rate: More than half of all children in foster care are Native American, despite them accounting for just 15 percent of the state's child population.
The series suggested that the motive might be money, since the state gets federal financial assistance for each child removed from his or her home. It also suggested a conflict of interest in Gov. Dennis Daugaard's work for Children's Home Society of South Dakota when he was a lieutenant governor. That organization received millions of dollars for housing Native American children under contracts the state awarded without competitive bid.
The governor's office criticized the report and went on the defensive even before the series began airing last week, releasing a memo titled "Setting the Record Straight" that accused NPR's reporter of being unfair and biased. According to the memo, Children's Home Society has had contracts with the state since 1978, long before Daugaard became its chief operating officer in 2002.
While Walker commended the NPR report, she said the ACLU isn't out to attack the governor.
"It's not about the governor. It's about these kids," she said. "They deserve someone to check into this."
At the center of the conflict, she said, is a merging of state, federal and tribal jurisdiction that is difficult to navigate. The ACLU hopes the spotlight on the issue will prompt new legislation to make it easier for child-protective services workers to do their jobs.
On its website, NPR describes the three-part series as the culmination of a yearlong investigation.
"Some children are removed from their homes for legitimate reasons," the series' introduction reads. "But in South Dakota very few are taken because they've been physically or sexually abused. Most are taken under a far more subjective set of circumstances."
After the series began airing, two members of Congress _ U.S. Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass, and Dan Boren, D-Okla. _ sent a letter to the Interior Department of Indian Affairs calling for an investigation.
"If the information on the NPR article is accurate, it would appear that the state of South Dakota has failed not only to abide by the mandates of federal law but also failed its Indian children, their families and their tribes by violating the letter and spirit" of the Indian Child Welfare Act, the congressmen wrote to Larry Echo Hawk, Indian Affairs' assistant secretary.
The federal law was passed in 1978 to help ensure that Native American children weren't separated from their families and tribes through involuntary removal.
Gubernatorial aide Tony Venhuizen told the Rapid City Journal it was unfortunate that two members of Congress representing other states didn't contact South Dakota officials before seeking an investigation into allegations about the state.
"These congressmen based their letter on an NPR report that was deeply flawed," he said. "It's really too bad that they took this step without even asking the Department of Social Services or anyone in South Dakota for the facts."
Walker, the ACLU spokeswoman, said the NPR piece highlighted an important and overlooked issue affecting Native American families.
"I have much respect for the (Department of Social Services) workers. I have to imagine that meeting all of the requirements they have to meet can get tricky," she said. "I think that some statutory legislative could potentially ease some of the burden."
Source http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/state-and-regional/aclu-to-probe-if-sd-breaks-child-protection-laws/article_2210024d-e8c1-5de7-a2d5-b2bcaacebf39.html
The American Civil Liberties Union is investigating whether the South Dakota Department of Social Services violated federal law by removing Native American children from their homes and placing them in foster care instead of with relatives.
Tate Walker, an ACLU spokeswoman in Sioux Falls, said the civil rights organization has fielded individual complaints for years from families who said the state violated the federal Indian Child Welfare Act. The law directs officials to place Native American children removed from homes with their relatives or tribes except in unusual situations.
But the cases had been too scattered and disparate to tackle, Walker said, until a recent National Public Radio series accused the state of routinely breaking the law and disrupting the lives of hundreds of Native Americans each year.
"That aired and then boom: We're getting calls left and right," Walker told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "The outcry was phenomenal, not only from people demanding that something be done, but also from several potential plaintiffs."
The ACLU investigation could lead to a potential lawsuit that would unite complainants as plaintiffs against the state.
The three-part NPR report described Native American children as being placed in South Dakota's foster care system at a disproportionate rate: More than half of all children in foster care are Native American, despite them accounting for just 15 percent of the state's child population.
The series suggested that the motive might be money, since the state gets federal financial assistance for each child removed from his or her home. It also suggested a conflict of interest in Gov. Dennis Daugaard's work for Children's Home Society of South Dakota when he was a lieutenant governor. That organization received millions of dollars for housing Native American children under contracts the state awarded without competitive bid.
The governor's office criticized the report and went on the defensive even before the series began airing last week, releasing a memo titled "Setting the Record Straight" that accused NPR's reporter of being unfair and biased. According to the memo, Children's Home Society has had contracts with the state since 1978, long before Daugaard became its chief operating officer in 2002.
While Walker commended the NPR report, she said the ACLU isn't out to attack the governor.
"It's not about the governor. It's about these kids," she said. "They deserve someone to check into this."
At the center of the conflict, she said, is a merging of state, federal and tribal jurisdiction that is difficult to navigate. The ACLU hopes the spotlight on the issue will prompt new legislation to make it easier for child-protective services workers to do their jobs.
On its website, NPR describes the three-part series as the culmination of a yearlong investigation.
"Some children are removed from their homes for legitimate reasons," the series' introduction reads. "But in South Dakota very few are taken because they've been physically or sexually abused. Most are taken under a far more subjective set of circumstances."
After the series began airing, two members of Congress _ U.S. Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass, and Dan Boren, D-Okla. _ sent a letter to the Interior Department of Indian Affairs calling for an investigation.
"If the information on the NPR article is accurate, it would appear that the state of South Dakota has failed not only to abide by the mandates of federal law but also failed its Indian children, their families and their tribes by violating the letter and spirit" of the Indian Child Welfare Act, the congressmen wrote to Larry Echo Hawk, Indian Affairs' assistant secretary.
The federal law was passed in 1978 to help ensure that Native American children weren't separated from their families and tribes through involuntary removal.
Gubernatorial aide Tony Venhuizen told the Rapid City Journal it was unfortunate that two members of Congress representing other states didn't contact South Dakota officials before seeking an investigation into allegations about the state.
"These congressmen based their letter on an NPR report that was deeply flawed," he said. "It's really too bad that they took this step without even asking the Department of Social Services or anyone in South Dakota for the facts."
Walker, the ACLU spokeswoman, said the NPR piece highlighted an important and overlooked issue affecting Native American families.
"I have much respect for the (Department of Social Services) workers. I have to imagine that meeting all of the requirements they have to meet can get tricky," she said. "I think that some statutory legislative could potentially ease some of the burden."
Source http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/state-and-regional/aclu-to-probe-if-sd-breaks-child-protection-laws/article_2210024d-e8c1-5de7-a2d5-b2bcaacebf39.html
Friday, October 21, 2011
Panel won’t delve deeper into Arizona CPS woes
by Mary K. Reinhart on Oct. 21, 2011
An Arizona legislative committee, apparently satisfied that the state’s child-welfare agency has adequately responded to problems raised by three state audits since 2009, declined to delve deeper Thursday into broader troubles within the system.
Sen. Linda Gray, R-Glendale, co-chair of the committee, said after the hearing that she wanted to see what comes from a child-safety task force before deciding whether to hold additional hearings on Child Protective Services. Gov. Jan Brewer is expected to name members of the task force in the next few days. Brewer wants recommendations from the task force by Dec. 31.
But during public testimony, several people said critical problems within the CPS need urgent attention.
“I think the system is struggling greatly – all aspects of the system,” said Dana Wolfe Naimark, CEO of Children’s Action Alliance. “What we’ve heard today really doesn’t tell you the story of CPS.”
One of the audits, from September 2009, said the agency inconsistently reviewed relatives willing to take temporary custody of children and failed to properly document efforts to place children with relatives. The agency has since implemented specific guidelines for workers to assess the fitness of relatives and is still working on getting staff to better document efforts to find relatives.
About one-third of Arizona’s foster children live with relatives.
Clarence Carter, director of the Department of Economic Security, which oversees CPS, said in response to a question that grandparents and other relatives who take in foster children have access to all the services that unrelated foster families and shelter operators do.
“The fact that a child is placed with a relative doesn’t change the needs of that child,” Carter told Sen. Leah Landrum Taylor, D-Phoenix.
But Suzanne Schunk, director of family services for Southwest Human Development, told the committee that grandparents and other relatives don’t get the same support as foster parents. They aren’t paid to care for the kids, and they often can’t find services that the children need or can’t afford to pay for them, she said.
Landrum Taylor agreed.
“A lot of times they’re unable to do it, so it just doesn’t happen,” she said.
And Brenda Gloria of Phoenix, who cares for two grandchildren, said CPS caseworkers gave their parents too many chances. She said it was heartbreaking to have the children sent back home year after year, only to be removed and returned to her.
CPS supervisors also are reviewing a backlog of nearly 10,000 inactive abuse and neglect cases and trying out a streamlined investigation process that could shave weeks off the average case, which now takes five to six months to complete.
Source http://tucsoncitizen.com/arizona-news/2011/10/21/panel-wont-delve-deeper-into-cps-woes/
An Arizona legislative committee, apparently satisfied that the state’s child-welfare agency has adequately responded to problems raised by three state audits since 2009, declined to delve deeper Thursday into broader troubles within the system.
Sen. Linda Gray, R-Glendale, co-chair of the committee, said after the hearing that she wanted to see what comes from a child-safety task force before deciding whether to hold additional hearings on Child Protective Services. Gov. Jan Brewer is expected to name members of the task force in the next few days. Brewer wants recommendations from the task force by Dec. 31.
But during public testimony, several people said critical problems within the CPS need urgent attention.
“I think the system is struggling greatly – all aspects of the system,” said Dana Wolfe Naimark, CEO of Children’s Action Alliance. “What we’ve heard today really doesn’t tell you the story of CPS.”
One of the audits, from September 2009, said the agency inconsistently reviewed relatives willing to take temporary custody of children and failed to properly document efforts to place children with relatives. The agency has since implemented specific guidelines for workers to assess the fitness of relatives and is still working on getting staff to better document efforts to find relatives.
About one-third of Arizona’s foster children live with relatives.
Clarence Carter, director of the Department of Economic Security, which oversees CPS, said in response to a question that grandparents and other relatives who take in foster children have access to all the services that unrelated foster families and shelter operators do.
“The fact that a child is placed with a relative doesn’t change the needs of that child,” Carter told Sen. Leah Landrum Taylor, D-Phoenix.
But Suzanne Schunk, director of family services for Southwest Human Development, told the committee that grandparents and other relatives don’t get the same support as foster parents. They aren’t paid to care for the kids, and they often can’t find services that the children need or can’t afford to pay for them, she said.
Landrum Taylor agreed.
“A lot of times they’re unable to do it, so it just doesn’t happen,” she said.
And Brenda Gloria of Phoenix, who cares for two grandchildren, said CPS caseworkers gave their parents too many chances. She said it was heartbreaking to have the children sent back home year after year, only to be removed and returned to her.
CPS supervisors also are reviewing a backlog of nearly 10,000 inactive abuse and neglect cases and trying out a streamlined investigation process that could shave weeks off the average case, which now takes five to six months to complete.
Source http://tucsoncitizen.com/arizona-news/2011/10/21/panel-wont-delve-deeper-into-cps-woes/
Friday, September 30, 2011
More CPS Incompetence: Lakeland mom charged with negligence, manslaughter in 3-month-old daughter’s death
Blog authors note:
The gross negligence and incompetence by CPS is so horrible - children are injurred and killed daily - while under the watch of CPS. Why? If CPS is truly doing the job that they are trained to do, how does this happen so frequently? They are trained professionals in the field of child abuse, right?
---
By: Jeff Butera
LAKELAND, Fla. - A Lakeland mother is charged with negligent manslaughter in the death of her 3-month-old daughter, and is also accused of lying to police about what happened.
Kylee Copeland, 21, was arrested earlier this week after her daughter, Nataley Agee, was found dead at their house in Briarwood Estates near the county line.
Copeland claimed she had found Nataley dead at 9 a.m. on Monday. Investigators said that was a lie. They said evidence on Nataley’s body indicated she had been dead for at least eight hours before Copeland called 911.
They also said roaches, which “infested the residence,” had bitten Nataley after she died but well before Copeland called for help.
Multiple neighbors at Briarwood Estates confirmed that the house was infested with roaches, including in Nataley's crib.
The medical examiner also determined Nataley's cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head, consistent with child abuse.
Copeland told detectives in a subsequent story that the child had fallen on the couch cushion and bounced to the floor, but investigators determined that to be false based on the trauma Nataley received to her brain.
Copeland faces a first-degree felony charge of negligent manslaughter.
“I don’t know how a mother could do that,” said Samantha O’Neill, a neighbor.
“I didn’t know that Kylee. I don’t want to know that Kylee. I just want justice for Nataley,” said Ashley Leath, Nataley’s godmother and neighbor.
According to law enforcement, Copeland disappeared for a few days in 2009 while raising her then 6-month old son. She did not come home from her job as a nightclub dancer, but turned up a few days later.
Copeland has two sons in addition to Nataley. They are now in foster care, according to Carrie Hoeppner, director of communications with the Department of Children and Families.
Hoeppner said DCF was currently investigating the family after an incident in August involving the childrens’ father. That investigation remains open. DCF also has four other reports about the family on file.
A social worker visited the family as recently as last week, Hoeppner said, but the social worker had not found any evidence of abuse and did not believe there was reason to suspect future violence.
Source http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/region_polk/lakeland/lakeland-mom-charged-with-negligence,-manslaughter-in-3-month-old-daughter%E2%80%99s-death
The gross negligence and incompetence by CPS is so horrible - children are injurred and killed daily - while under the watch of CPS. Why? If CPS is truly doing the job that they are trained to do, how does this happen so frequently? They are trained professionals in the field of child abuse, right?
---
By: Jeff Butera
LAKELAND, Fla. - A Lakeland mother is charged with negligent manslaughter in the death of her 3-month-old daughter, and is also accused of lying to police about what happened.
Kylee Copeland, 21, was arrested earlier this week after her daughter, Nataley Agee, was found dead at their house in Briarwood Estates near the county line.
Copeland claimed she had found Nataley dead at 9 a.m. on Monday. Investigators said that was a lie. They said evidence on Nataley’s body indicated she had been dead for at least eight hours before Copeland called 911.
They also said roaches, which “infested the residence,” had bitten Nataley after she died but well before Copeland called for help.
Multiple neighbors at Briarwood Estates confirmed that the house was infested with roaches, including in Nataley's crib.
The medical examiner also determined Nataley's cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head, consistent with child abuse.
Copeland told detectives in a subsequent story that the child had fallen on the couch cushion and bounced to the floor, but investigators determined that to be false based on the trauma Nataley received to her brain.
Copeland faces a first-degree felony charge of negligent manslaughter.
“I don’t know how a mother could do that,” said Samantha O’Neill, a neighbor.
“I didn’t know that Kylee. I don’t want to know that Kylee. I just want justice for Nataley,” said Ashley Leath, Nataley’s godmother and neighbor.
According to law enforcement, Copeland disappeared for a few days in 2009 while raising her then 6-month old son. She did not come home from her job as a nightclub dancer, but turned up a few days later.
Copeland has two sons in addition to Nataley. They are now in foster care, according to Carrie Hoeppner, director of communications with the Department of Children and Families.
Hoeppner said DCF was currently investigating the family after an incident in August involving the childrens’ father. That investigation remains open. DCF also has four other reports about the family on file.
A social worker visited the family as recently as last week, Hoeppner said, but the social worker had not found any evidence of abuse and did not believe there was reason to suspect future violence.
Source http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/region_polk/lakeland/lakeland-mom-charged-with-negligence,-manslaughter-in-3-month-old-daughter%E2%80%99s-death
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Oregon woman loses fight to keep sons from home of child killer
August 30, 2011
She was a Brownie troop leader, a room mother, a Sunday school teacher and almost the definition of an Orange County soccer mom -- until she shot her two small daughters to death in 1991 while they slept in their home in Laguna Niguel, Calif.
Kristine Cushing, then 39, said she was the victim of anti-depression medication, a debilitating heart condition and worry over the impending dissolution of her 17-year marriage to former Marine Corps fighter pilot John Cushing Jr. when she shot her daughters, ages 4 and 8, and then attempted to kill herself.
She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent four years in a mental hospital. In 2005, California authorities concluded that she posed no risk and granted her an unconditional release.
Fast forward to now: The Cushings are back together, living on Vashon Island in Washington state, and an Oregon woman who married John Cushing four years after the killings has temporarily lost her legal bid to prevent her own teenage sons from living with the couple.
In his ruling, King County Superior Court Judge William Downing said Trisha Conlon, who only recently discovered that Kristine was living in the home, has not proved that Kristine Cushing poses an immediate threat to Conlon's two boys, ages 13 and 14, though he called for a full investigation to determine an appropriate final order.
John Cushing married Conlon in 1995, and the couple had two sons. But they divorced in 2005 and Cushing, unbeknownst to Conlon until recently, got back together with his first wife.
Conlon's elder son has been living with the Cushings full time during the school year; custody of the two boys is shared during summers and holidays.
Both boys until recently had been told by their father to refer to the woman who had effectively become their stepmother simply as "Mrs. M." After learning the truth, Conlon, who lives in Silverton, Ore., went immediately to court to try to modify the custody order to keep her boys away from Kristine Cushing.
John Cushing has argued in court that Kristine is fully recovered and has a good relationship with the boys. "She is busy, enjoys life and loves me and my sons," he wrote in a court declaration.
The court recognized that the elder boy has been thriving socially and academically under the Cushings' care. But Conlon was doubtful. Why, she wondered, had Kristine Cushing's therapist contacted Washington state's Child Protective Services in 2007, informing them that the children were living with his client, if there wasn't cause for some concern?
Court commissioner Leon Ponomarchuk ruled this summer that the current custody plan should remain in place, and Conlon was forced to drop off both boys with the Cushings at the beginning of August.
"It wasn’t easy," she said in an interview with NBC's Today show. "It was gut-wrenching. I don’t even have words to describe it."
Ponomarchuk acknowledged in his legal finding that there is no cause to remove the children from the Cushings' custody, but his personal inclination as a parent might be different.
"I have to look at this dispassionately," Ponomarchuk said. "Would I ever want my children around her? I would say no. But that is an emotional reaction coming from a parent."
The new ruling overturns the commissioner and says the parenting plan can be reviewed, but the judge found no reason to set it aside immediately, pending a thorough study by a court-appointed guardian over the next 90 days.
In the meantime, the judge ordered that John Cushing ensure that there are no firearms or other deadly weapons in the home, that he stop living with Kristine if she does not follow her doctors' recommendations, including those for medications, and that he comply with any "safety plan" imposed by state child protection workers.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/08/conlon-cushing-child-shootings-custody.html
She was a Brownie troop leader, a room mother, a Sunday school teacher and almost the definition of an Orange County soccer mom -- until she shot her two small daughters to death in 1991 while they slept in their home in Laguna Niguel, Calif.
Kristine Cushing, then 39, said she was the victim of anti-depression medication, a debilitating heart condition and worry over the impending dissolution of her 17-year marriage to former Marine Corps fighter pilot John Cushing Jr. when she shot her daughters, ages 4 and 8, and then attempted to kill herself.
She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent four years in a mental hospital. In 2005, California authorities concluded that she posed no risk and granted her an unconditional release.
Fast forward to now: The Cushings are back together, living on Vashon Island in Washington state, and an Oregon woman who married John Cushing four years after the killings has temporarily lost her legal bid to prevent her own teenage sons from living with the couple.
In his ruling, King County Superior Court Judge William Downing said Trisha Conlon, who only recently discovered that Kristine was living in the home, has not proved that Kristine Cushing poses an immediate threat to Conlon's two boys, ages 13 and 14, though he called for a full investigation to determine an appropriate final order.
John Cushing married Conlon in 1995, and the couple had two sons. But they divorced in 2005 and Cushing, unbeknownst to Conlon until recently, got back together with his first wife.
Conlon's elder son has been living with the Cushings full time during the school year; custody of the two boys is shared during summers and holidays.
Both boys until recently had been told by their father to refer to the woman who had effectively become their stepmother simply as "Mrs. M." After learning the truth, Conlon, who lives in Silverton, Ore., went immediately to court to try to modify the custody order to keep her boys away from Kristine Cushing.
John Cushing has argued in court that Kristine is fully recovered and has a good relationship with the boys. "She is busy, enjoys life and loves me and my sons," he wrote in a court declaration.
The court recognized that the elder boy has been thriving socially and academically under the Cushings' care. But Conlon was doubtful. Why, she wondered, had Kristine Cushing's therapist contacted Washington state's Child Protective Services in 2007, informing them that the children were living with his client, if there wasn't cause for some concern?
Court commissioner Leon Ponomarchuk ruled this summer that the current custody plan should remain in place, and Conlon was forced to drop off both boys with the Cushings at the beginning of August.
"It wasn’t easy," she said in an interview with NBC's Today show. "It was gut-wrenching. I don’t even have words to describe it."
Ponomarchuk acknowledged in his legal finding that there is no cause to remove the children from the Cushings' custody, but his personal inclination as a parent might be different.
"I have to look at this dispassionately," Ponomarchuk said. "Would I ever want my children around her? I would say no. But that is an emotional reaction coming from a parent."
The new ruling overturns the commissioner and says the parenting plan can be reviewed, but the judge found no reason to set it aside immediately, pending a thorough study by a court-appointed guardian over the next 90 days.
In the meantime, the judge ordered that John Cushing ensure that there are no firearms or other deadly weapons in the home, that he stop living with Kristine if she does not follow her doctors' recommendations, including those for medications, and that he comply with any "safety plan" imposed by state child protection workers.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/08/conlon-cushing-child-shootings-custody.html
Sunday, August 28, 2011
County says child-protection rifts are mending
By Courtney Vaughn
Hi-Desert Star
Published: Saturday, August 27, 2011 2:14 AM CDT
SAN BERNARDINO — A representative from the county’s Children’s Assessment Center says it is working with partner agencies to resolve many of the shortcomings identified in a grand jury report.
An investigation into the Children and Family Services Department of San Bernardino County and its partner agencies found a dysfunctional relationship between CFS and the assessment center. The Children’s Assessment Center is a private-public partnership that provides medical and psychological evaluations to children of physical and sexual abuse. It partners with CFS, along with Loma Linda University Medical Center, law enforcement, the District Attorney and county Health Department to ensure child abuse cases are properly handled.
According to the report, the center sees between 80 and 100 children each month.
The investigation of CFS, formerly referred to as Child Protective Services, was done on behalf of the grand jury’s Human Services Committee, which reviews social services operations in the county.
Spokesmen from the county don’t deny tensions and communication barriers among CFS, the assessment center and other partner agencies, but they reject many allegations made in the grand jury report.
Assessment center affiliates alleged to grand jurors that some of the county’s social workers were unqualified and didn’t follow protocol.
“There is confusion as to how to work a case. Morale is low,” investigators wrote in their final report.
Despite their statements, jurors do not provide evidence to show CFS ever did anything wrong in its operations.
The grand jury listed lack of accountability and oversight as endemic problems in the CFS department. Jurors say Riverside County CFS uses an auditing system called Technical Assistance, Review and Consultation (TRAC). San Bernardino County CFS was offered training for the system but turned down the offer.
CFS has a heavy burden of responsibility. The county agency takes on numerous cases of potentially harmful home environments each month. In Yucca Valley alone, 60 cases have been referred to the CFS office this month. A local office worker, who did not want to be identified, said the number of cases usually increases during the beginning of the school season.
Department dissolves board of advisors
Jurors charged that CFS has eroded the leadership structure at the assessment center. They noted that CFS representatives discontinued the Child Assessment Center’s advisory board a few years ago and stopped attending other partner agency meetings.
Gregory Devereaux, CEO of San Bernardino County and chairman of the assessment center, said what occurred was a gradual lack of participation by key people from partner agencies.
“When it started, it was a high-level partnership with high-level involvement by all the players…. Over time, responsibilities would get passed down to the next level and the next level and the next. It wasn’t that the commitment waned, but the board got passed down to lower levels in those organizations,” Devereaux said via phone on Friday.
He said the advisory board needed people who had the capability to solve resource problems.
Devereaux says CFS and other agencies were aware of the communication issues and were working to resolve them during the time of the grand jury investigation. He and county spokesman David Wert acknowledged the discord between partnerships, but say none of the behind-the-scenes problems ever affected service to families or children.
Shrinking budgets, tightening tensions
A rift between CFS and Loma Linda University Medical Center, which provides forensic medical exams for children at the assessment center, can be traced to budget constraints.
In 2007, Loma Linda raised its rates of service. David Wert, public information officer for the county, says county administrators instructed CFS to see if the work could be done by another medical facility for a lower rate.
“Everybody’s budgets were already getting tight,” Wert said in a telephone interview Friday. “Some tension developed at that point.”
After CFS requested proposals from other hospitals, it was determined that Loma Linda was the only facility with qualified staff to perform the services needed.
The grand jury report noted CFS started asking the Sheriff’s Department to request and fund forensic medical exams, to offset some of the financial pressure.
‘Right people’ are working at it, CEO says
Aside from visible tensions, the report stated CFS was uncooperative with the grand jury when asked to release information. And the jury wasn’t the only one. CFS also requested a subpoena before releasing any information to the assessment center’s Child Death Review Team, which was investigating a child’s death.
“CFS hides behind a screen of confidentiality, and does not want to give out any information,” jurors wrote.
Devereaux said the “screen of confidentiality” isn’t a screen, but the law.
“The people that they interviewed don’t know the law,” he said.
Devereaux said by law, no agency can release information about its clients or patients unless subpoenaed by a judge.
Allegations aside, Devereaux and Wert said working relationships that once faltered are being restored. “We’ve gone to a new structure. We’ve got the right people at the table and relationships are being rebuilt,” Devereaux said.
Source http://www.hidesertstar.com/articles/2011/08/27/news/doc4e5895c6d6ec4617887769.txt
Hi-Desert Star
Published: Saturday, August 27, 2011 2:14 AM CDT
SAN BERNARDINO — A representative from the county’s Children’s Assessment Center says it is working with partner agencies to resolve many of the shortcomings identified in a grand jury report.
An investigation into the Children and Family Services Department of San Bernardino County and its partner agencies found a dysfunctional relationship between CFS and the assessment center. The Children’s Assessment Center is a private-public partnership that provides medical and psychological evaluations to children of physical and sexual abuse. It partners with CFS, along with Loma Linda University Medical Center, law enforcement, the District Attorney and county Health Department to ensure child abuse cases are properly handled.
According to the report, the center sees between 80 and 100 children each month.
The investigation of CFS, formerly referred to as Child Protective Services, was done on behalf of the grand jury’s Human Services Committee, which reviews social services operations in the county.
Spokesmen from the county don’t deny tensions and communication barriers among CFS, the assessment center and other partner agencies, but they reject many allegations made in the grand jury report.
Assessment center affiliates alleged to grand jurors that some of the county’s social workers were unqualified and didn’t follow protocol.
“There is confusion as to how to work a case. Morale is low,” investigators wrote in their final report.
Despite their statements, jurors do not provide evidence to show CFS ever did anything wrong in its operations.
The grand jury listed lack of accountability and oversight as endemic problems in the CFS department. Jurors say Riverside County CFS uses an auditing system called Technical Assistance, Review and Consultation (TRAC). San Bernardino County CFS was offered training for the system but turned down the offer.
CFS has a heavy burden of responsibility. The county agency takes on numerous cases of potentially harmful home environments each month. In Yucca Valley alone, 60 cases have been referred to the CFS office this month. A local office worker, who did not want to be identified, said the number of cases usually increases during the beginning of the school season.
Department dissolves board of advisors
Jurors charged that CFS has eroded the leadership structure at the assessment center. They noted that CFS representatives discontinued the Child Assessment Center’s advisory board a few years ago and stopped attending other partner agency meetings.
Gregory Devereaux, CEO of San Bernardino County and chairman of the assessment center, said what occurred was a gradual lack of participation by key people from partner agencies.
“When it started, it was a high-level partnership with high-level involvement by all the players…. Over time, responsibilities would get passed down to the next level and the next level and the next. It wasn’t that the commitment waned, but the board got passed down to lower levels in those organizations,” Devereaux said via phone on Friday.
He said the advisory board needed people who had the capability to solve resource problems.
Devereaux says CFS and other agencies were aware of the communication issues and were working to resolve them during the time of the grand jury investigation. He and county spokesman David Wert acknowledged the discord between partnerships, but say none of the behind-the-scenes problems ever affected service to families or children.
Shrinking budgets, tightening tensions
A rift between CFS and Loma Linda University Medical Center, which provides forensic medical exams for children at the assessment center, can be traced to budget constraints.
In 2007, Loma Linda raised its rates of service. David Wert, public information officer for the county, says county administrators instructed CFS to see if the work could be done by another medical facility for a lower rate.
“Everybody’s budgets were already getting tight,” Wert said in a telephone interview Friday. “Some tension developed at that point.”
After CFS requested proposals from other hospitals, it was determined that Loma Linda was the only facility with qualified staff to perform the services needed.
The grand jury report noted CFS started asking the Sheriff’s Department to request and fund forensic medical exams, to offset some of the financial pressure.
‘Right people’ are working at it, CEO says
Aside from visible tensions, the report stated CFS was uncooperative with the grand jury when asked to release information. And the jury wasn’t the only one. CFS also requested a subpoena before releasing any information to the assessment center’s Child Death Review Team, which was investigating a child’s death.
“CFS hides behind a screen of confidentiality, and does not want to give out any information,” jurors wrote.
Devereaux said the “screen of confidentiality” isn’t a screen, but the law.
“The people that they interviewed don’t know the law,” he said.
Devereaux said by law, no agency can release information about its clients or patients unless subpoenaed by a judge.
Allegations aside, Devereaux and Wert said working relationships that once faltered are being restored. “We’ve gone to a new structure. We’ve got the right people at the table and relationships are being rebuilt,” Devereaux said.
Source http://www.hidesertstar.com/articles/2011/08/27/news/doc4e5895c6d6ec4617887769.txt
Friday, August 12, 2011
Child Protective Services Had Investigated Hospitalized 6-year-old’s Parents
by JJ Hensley on Aug. 12, 2011
State officials were already in the process of investigating an allegation of child abuse on a 6-year-old Phoenix boy when the child’s parents took him to the hospital earlier this week with injuries that Phoenix police allege the child received when one of his parents slammed the boy’s head into a bedroom wall.
Phoenix police arrested Jacob Gibson’s parents, Jennifer Paul, 37, and Benny Gibson, 49, at Phoenix Children’s Hospital earlier this week on suspicion of child abuse.
Jacob remains hospitalized with a swollen brain and is not expected to survive his injuries, according to police.
Child Protective Services officials have been a consistent presence in Jacob’s life, according to a preliminary report released Friday morning, investigating at least five allegations of child abuse during the past four years.
The most recent CPS investigation into allegations that Jacob had golf-ball sized knot on the side of his head and two black eyes was launched last month and is still ongoing, according to the brief CPS report on the state’s involvement with Jacob.
Another investigation -into allegations that Benny Gibson “put his hands around Jacob’s neck in a choking motion” after he picked the boy up from school in May- is also ongoing, according to the report.
CPS officials had also launched three prior investigations into allegations of abuse against Jacob in 2007, 2009 and 2010, but investigators determined each of those allegations were unsubstantiated and offered the family “community services.”
The unsubstantiated allegations listed in the report included:
- A 2007 claim that Jacob was seen with bruises on his legs.
- A report in 2009 that Benny Gibson was yelling at Jacob and hitting him on the head in addition to forcing the boy to sit outside the family’s apartment naked because Jacob wet his pants.
- A 2010 claim that the left side of Jacob’s face was swollen as a result of abuse and that “Benny Gibson rants and yells at Jacob and requires Jacob to stand on a box at attention for punishment.”
A Phoenix police spokesman said officers also went to the family’s apartment near 19th and Glendale avenues during the past two months to investigate a report that Jacob was abused, but no one was home at the time and officers left unable to follow up on the anonymous tip.
Source http://tucsoncitizen.com/arizona-news/2011/08/12/child-protective-services-had-investigated-hospitalized-6-year-olds-parents/
State officials were already in the process of investigating an allegation of child abuse on a 6-year-old Phoenix boy when the child’s parents took him to the hospital earlier this week with injuries that Phoenix police allege the child received when one of his parents slammed the boy’s head into a bedroom wall.
Phoenix police arrested Jacob Gibson’s parents, Jennifer Paul, 37, and Benny Gibson, 49, at Phoenix Children’s Hospital earlier this week on suspicion of child abuse.
Jacob remains hospitalized with a swollen brain and is not expected to survive his injuries, according to police.
Child Protective Services officials have been a consistent presence in Jacob’s life, according to a preliminary report released Friday morning, investigating at least five allegations of child abuse during the past four years.
The most recent CPS investigation into allegations that Jacob had golf-ball sized knot on the side of his head and two black eyes was launched last month and is still ongoing, according to the brief CPS report on the state’s involvement with Jacob.
Another investigation -into allegations that Benny Gibson “put his hands around Jacob’s neck in a choking motion” after he picked the boy up from school in May- is also ongoing, according to the report.
CPS officials had also launched three prior investigations into allegations of abuse against Jacob in 2007, 2009 and 2010, but investigators determined each of those allegations were unsubstantiated and offered the family “community services.”
The unsubstantiated allegations listed in the report included:
- A 2007 claim that Jacob was seen with bruises on his legs.
- A report in 2009 that Benny Gibson was yelling at Jacob and hitting him on the head in addition to forcing the boy to sit outside the family’s apartment naked because Jacob wet his pants.
- A 2010 claim that the left side of Jacob’s face was swollen as a result of abuse and that “Benny Gibson rants and yells at Jacob and requires Jacob to stand on a box at attention for punishment.”
A Phoenix police spokesman said officers also went to the family’s apartment near 19th and Glendale avenues during the past two months to investigate a report that Jacob was abused, but no one was home at the time and officers left unable to follow up on the anonymous tip.
Source http://tucsoncitizen.com/arizona-news/2011/08/12/child-protective-services-had-investigated-hospitalized-6-year-olds-parents/
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
LA, Alameda, Fresno & Sacramento County CPS Under Investigation
As usual, CPS feels that they are above the law. In the below article, CPS officials in Los Angeles county California are fighting to prevent a release of documents relating to 70 child deaths since 2008 to state officials wishing to audit the agencies. A subpeona for documents was issued but CPS defied it. It has now become a very adversarial situation. Read more at the link below:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-child-welfare-audit-20110801,0,2996347.story
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-child-welfare-audit-20110801,0,2996347.story
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