County to pay $500K to settle foster care sexual abuse case - California

From wire service reports

LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed Tuesday to pay $500,000 to settle a lawsuit involving the sexual assault of a 9- year-old girl by a 17-year-old boy in foster care.

"The certified foster parents allowed children to have unsupervised, unmonitored play behind closed doors resulting in the assault of a 9-year-old girl by a 17-year-old boy," according to the case summary provided by county attorneys.

The girl -- listed as Jane Doe in the suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Oct. 28, 2009 -- is the biological child of the boy's foster parents.

Other details of the case, including the parents' names, were not disclosed.

The county has already spent more than $287,000 -- more than half the settlement amount -- on attorneys' fees and costs related to the claim, according to the attorneys' summary.

The supervisors met behind closed doors with their lawyers to discuss the case before voting 3-1 in open session to approve the settlement, with Supervisor Michael Antonovich casting the dissenting vote and Supervisor Gloria Molina absent due to illness.

Source http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_20170623/county-pay-500k-settle-foster-care-sexual-abuse

One-Time Religious Publisher, Foster Parent Charged With Sex Abuse Of Two Girls - Illinois

RIVER FOREST, Ill. (STMW) – A River Forest man who took in dozens of foster children since 1996 and volunteered with local youth groups was charged Friday with the sexual abuse of two girls.

Robert L. Gaskill, 63, of the 600 block of Ashland Ave., was ordered held Saturday in lieu of $50 million full cash bond by Judge Gregory P. Vasquez.

In bond court Saturday, prosecutors said Gaskill sexually abused two adolescent girls over a period from 1996 to 2009.

He is scheduled to be arraigned at 9 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 9, at the Maybrook Courthouse in Maywood. Sources said the case is expected to go to a grand jury for possible formal indictment.

A River Forest detective assisted by members of the WEDGE task force arrested Gaskill at his home Thursday. On Friday the Cook County State’s Attorney approved two counts of predatory criminal sexual assault, which is a Class X felony.

Gaskill and his wife have operated a foster care service in their large three-story frame home on Ashland Avenue, and a foster care support system called Tapestry Chicago. He also served on the board of the River Forest Youth Soccer program and was a program coordinator in the late 1990s.

Gaskill currently works as the marketing director at Lydia Home in Chicago, a residential facility for abused children. He previously worked for Mercy Home for Boys and Girls in Chicago.

Gaskill is also a former publisher of the Oak Leaves/Pioneer Press West Group, where he worked for 16 years until the mid 1980s. Following that, he was the president and publisher of Chicago Catholic Publications, which publishes the Chicago Archdiocese’s official newspaper, the New World.

Gaskill was not currently an employee of the Catholic New World or New World Publications, Archdiocese of Chicago spokeswoman Susan Burritt said Saturday. She did not immediately have any information on when he had served as publisher for Chicago Catholic Publications.

In a 2009 interview with the Forest Leaves, Gaskill said he and his wife had “been opening their home to foster children for about 15 years.” Many of them had disabilities of some kind.

He said he had fostered “about 75 different children over that time.”

In 2009, the Gaskills had 12 children, four biological, six adopted and two in foster care.

“Long before we got married, while we were dating, we both agreed we wanted to have large families,” Rob Gaskill said in 2009. “We thought it would be fun to have a lot of children.”

Source http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/02/04/one-time-religious-publisher-foster-parent-charged-with-sex-abuse-of-two-girls/

Child care worker accused of raping boy - Texas

Blogger note:

Just because a daycare is registered somewhere or licensed by the state should not make you feel all that safe. We know a registered day care that has a 2ce convicted felon running it. How does that happen? The felony background check only goes back 5 years in the situation we are talking about. The felonies of this daycare provider ocurred in the 1970's and 1980's. We also know of state run daycare centers that have had many violations, some of which were harm inflicted on our family members while in their care. Foster children who go to the state licensed daycares are subjected to horrendous abuse and no one does anything about it. So be careful! Know your daycare provider and know them well.
----

By Ana Ley

Police arrested a child-care worker accused of repeatedly raping and threatening an 11-year-old boy.

Bradley Bendele, 32, was arrested Friday night and charged with continuous sexual abuse of a young child, a first-degree felony.

According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Bendele raped the boy while he cared for him.

Bendele runs a child-care business, authorities said, though it does not appear to be licensed through the state's Department of Family and Protective Services.

The boy told police Bendele threatened several times to kill him and his family if he reported the attacks, according to the affidavit.

Bendele remained at Bexar County Jail on Saturday afternoon in lieu of $100,000 bail.

Child Protective Services spokeswoman Mary Walker said the Child Care Licensing division of the state's Department of Family and Protective Services is investigating the suspect's business as a potential illegal operation.

“It's so important for folks to go online and check out day care facilities and make sure they're registered and licensed by the state,” Walker said. “It's important for parents to know who they are leaving their children with.”

Source http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Child-care-worker-accused-of-raping-boy-2671456.php

Colorado appeals court allows abused siblings to sue social workers

By Felisa Cardona

Three siblings severely abused in the home of their biological mother and later in foster care can pursue their lawsuit against Adams County social workers who allegedly failed to protect them and deceived their adoptive parents about the extent of their problems, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.

In the summer of 2002, the siblings — then ages 9, 6 and 3 — were adopted by a couple who only learned about the history of abuse on the eve of the adoption. The children were engaging in incestuous acts with each other, and one of them had to be removed from their home because she was suicidal.

The fallout of the abuse was so egregious that the adoptive parents installed alarms in the children's rooms to prevent them from abusing each other. The couple ended up divorcing, blaming the failure of the marriage on the stress caused by the children's emotional problems.

The names of the parents and siblings are being withheld by The Denver Post because the children are victims of sexual abuse and naming their adoptive parents would identify them.

The adoptive parents sued the Adams County Department of Social Services, asserting that social workers had a duty to fully disclose the background of the children. But the parents lost their case when a jury decided that the social workers were not "willful and wanton" in failing to inform them of the history of abuse.

Thursday's ruling allows lawyers for the children to proceed to trial with different claims — that the siblings' rights to be free from harm were violated by the workers entrusted to protect them.

"Evidence was presented at the first trial about the extraordinary challenges these children would face as a result of the defendants' conduct, and unfortunately it all seems to be coming to pass," said attorney Jordan Factor, who argued the case at the Colorado Court of Appeals.

Adams County argued that the social workers, Joan Forsmark, Cathy O'Donnell and Angela Lytle, were protected from the lawsuit by the state's governmental immunity law.

The court disagreed and concluded that Lytle, who as a division director of child welfare supervised O'Donnell and Forsmark, acted "recklessly."

"Lytle increased the children's vulnerability to the danger by not preparing the (adoptive parents) to deal with their extraordinary emotional needs, and by continuing to support the children's adoption as a sibling group, despite the revelations of incest, which distinguished them from the type of children the (adoptive parents) had indicated they were ready to adopt," the court's opinion reads. "This conduct put the children at substantial risk of serious, immediate, and proximate harm that was known to or suspected by Lytle at the time of the adoption. Such allegations show that Lytle acted recklessly in conscious disregard of that risk. And such conduct, when viewed in total, is conscience shocking."

Adams County Attorney Hal Warren declined to comment on the merits of the claims because the case is heading to trial.

Warren is reviewing the court's ruling to decide whether an appeal to the state Supreme Court is possible.

O'Donnell is still employed by the county. Forsmark has since retired. Lytle works for the Arapahoe County Department of Human Services.

The decision Thursday comes a month after a federal judge ruled that social workers in Denver were not immune from a lawsuit in the case of 7-year-old Chandler Grafner, who was starved to death by his foster parents.

In that case, the judge noted the neglect of Chandler by social services was also "conscious-shocking" and that a complaint of child abuse made by a teacher's aide a month before his death was not thoroughly investigated by Denver Human Services.

Factor, one of the siblings' lawyers in the Adams County case, said he hopes the rulings will have an impact on the quality of care for children.

"Each circumstance is a little different, and this adds to the mix of circumstances in which the courts consistently say that children in the custody of the state of Colorado have a right to be kept safe from harm," he said. "It is a case that has an opportunity to do real justice."

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_19685387

Lawsuit involving foster child, DSS workers settled - SD

by Scott Waltman

A lawsuit alleging that officials should have known they were placing a girl in a potentially unsafe Aberdeen foster home has been settled without a trial.

Terms of the agreement cannot be disclosed, according to court paperwork.

The case was filed by a woman appointed to represent the girl against Northeastern Mental Health, two state Department of Social Services workers, the foster parents and another foster child. Documents concerning the settlement were sealed to protect the victim, according to case paperwork.

The Department of Social Services' Child Protection Services was responsible for care of the girl when Northeast Mental Health placed her with the Steve and Stephanie Schuman family of Aberdeen in December 2007, according to the lawsuit. The girl stayed with the foster family until March 2008 and turned 9 during that time.

A 17-year-old male "with a propensity to sexually act out" — one of the defendants — had previously been placed in the foster home. The lawsuit claims that the older boy sexually abused the girl during the time they lived in the same home. The defendants should have known the boy was a threat to the girl and failed to properly address the issue, according to the lawsuit.

Department of Social Services employees Amy Reyes and Laura Woolverton, who worked on the girl's case, were listed as defendants.

Agreements settle the case with the Schumans, Northeastern Mental Health, Reyes and Woolverton. The other foster child is not mentioned in the settlement.

Previously, a $25,000 proposed settlement from Northeast Mental Health and the Schumans had been rejected.

Source http://www.aberdeennews.com/news/aan-lawsuit-involving-foster-child-dss-workers-settled-20111110,0,7424685.story

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."

Police: Youth Home Worker Admits To Sex Abuse

By Jay Ditzer/WLKY.com

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A Louisville man is facing multiple sex abuse charges after police said he told them he abused a juvenile foster child in his care.

According to arrest records, 55-year-old Lyle C. Kenobbie turned himself in to Metro Police around 10 p.m. Monday.

Police said Kenobbie admitted he sodomized and fondled a child in his custody.

Kenobbie told police he is suicidal, according to arrest records.

Kenobbie is employed by Boys Haven of Louisville, according to arrest records.

He is charged with four counts of third-degree sodomy and two counts of first-degree sexual abuse.

On Tuesday afternoon, Boys and Girls Haven CEO Jeff Hadley released a statement regarding Kenobbie's arrest:

"We are saddened by the allegations against Mr. Kenobbie, and we accepted his resignation last night.

"For more than 60 years, Boys and Girls Haven has been deeply committed to protecting thousands of vulnerable children. We absolutely do not tolerate any behavior, alleged or substantiated, that compromises that trust.

"Mr. Kenobbie had been a long-time employee, serving as a food services supervisor. Three months ago, he became a foster parent for our agency after completing a battery of background checks.

"Our thoughts and concerns are with the young person involved. We will continue to work cooperatively with state child-welfare officials and law-enforcement personnel in this matter."

Source: http://www.wlky.com/news-archives/28881260/detail.html

Lafayette Man Sentenced In Infant Son's Death

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) - A Lafayette man accused of killing his infant son by shaking and throwing him has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Twenty-1-year-old Joaquin Campos had pleaded guilty in May to felony child abuse resulting in the death of 10-week-old Lyon Campos in October.

Boulder District Judge Gwyneth Whalen said at his sentencing hearing Thursday that it was a significant understatement to say Campos was ill-prepared to take care of an infant. The Daily Camera reports (http://bit.ly/pmsRRo) Campos was born to a mentally ill 17-year-old girl, was placed into foster care at age 2, and suffered physical and sexual abuse with foster families. The newspaper reports he dropped out of high school and qualified for Social Security disability due to his mental impairments before Lyon was born.

Source Article http://www.noco5.com/story/15254071/lafayette-man-sentenced-in-infant-sons-death