Part
one of NCCPR’s news and commentary year in review for 2023
America’s massive child
welfare surveillance state was built on horror stories. Stories about children murdered or tortured
in their own homes stampeded us into building a massive system that destroys
children in the name of saving them. The system has torn apart millions of
families needlessly. It’s also so
overloaded the system that workers have no time to find the few children in
real danger.
A system that attempts
to make policy-by-horror-story makes all children less safe. That’s why we’ve long extended an offer to
the fearmongers in the child welfare establishment: a
mutual moratorium on using horror stories to "prove” anything.
We can do that because
we have actual evidence that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, family
preservation is not only more humane than foster care or massive surveillance, it’s also safer. But the fearmongers will
never give up their horror stories because horror stories are all they’ve got.
That’s why we’ve taken
to reminding people that the horror stories go in all directions. And when it comes to the high rate of abuse
in foster homes, group homes, and institutions, the horror stories are backed
up with study after study
showing the rates of abuse in those settings are appalling.
So now, just a few
examples from 2023:
GROUP
HOMES AND INSTITUTIONS
● It is horrific, it is
pervasive, and authorities repeatedly look the other way. That’s what
Louisville Public Media and the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting
found when they took a close look at abuse in that state’s residential
treatment centers in a story
including NCCPR’s perspective. As the story explains:
The system that promises to monitor these facilities
and protect children from abuse often devalues the child’s perspective of what
happened — communicating to them time and time again that they are
untrustworthy and unbelievable.
More than half the time
the child who disclosed the abuse was not even interviewed by those charged
with investigating the allegation. NCCPR’s op-ed
column in the Kentucky Lantern explains the
root cause of this massive failure. (Yes, it's what you think.)
● Earlier, the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting exposed the horrifying details about the abuse allegedly
inflicted on seven-year-old Ja’Ceon Terry by staff at the “residential
treatment center” where he died. It turns out, he wasn’t the only
young resident abused there. But the story doesn’t answer the most
important question, the one I addressed in 2022 in the Lexington
Herald-Leader: Why is
Kentucky institutionalizing seven-year-olds?
It’s
not just Kentucky where authorities look the other way when children they took
in the first place are abused.
● If you run a group
home or an institution in Arizona and you want to abuse the kids, you’ve pretty
much got a free pass, according to a state report. Check out the story from KPNX-TV and the story from the Arizona Capitol Times. That may help explain how a tragedy like this death in foster care could occur.
● And also this tragedy in Arizona:
Two teenagers run away from their group home. Two weeks later their
bodies are found in a nearby pond. The only “solution” the group
home industry can come up with is lamenting the fact that they can’t lock kids
in. In this blog post, I suggest a better idea.
● They also look
the other way in Tennessee WKRN-TV in Nashville reports that
The
homes sheltering some of Tennessee’s most at-risk children as they await foster
care placement comes with its own dangers and issues, according to logs of
calls made to Metro Nashville Police.
News 2
obtained the logs for more than 500 calls made to two neighboring Department of
Children’s Services (DCS) transitional homes in Davidson County between Jan. 1
and Oct. 27 of this year.
The
reports show multiple instances where police were called to the homes for
fights, criminal activity, theft, and reports of a person with a weapon.
● The state’s own
inspectors tried to blow the whistle.
But WTVF-TV in Nashville reports that:
Two
whistleblowers at the Tennessee Department of Children's Services said top
leaders within DCS ordered them to cover up dangerous conditions at homes where
abused and neglected children are staying.
A
former and current DCS employee told NewsChannel 5 Investigates that
Commissioner Margie Quin did not want written inspections of the homes because
she was concerned about reports falling into the hands of the media
● Here’s how they respond in
Indiana: A lawsuit accused a politically-connected “residential treatment
center” of being rife with sexual abuse. As the Indianapolis Star reports:
A
psychologist’s report prepared for the lawsuit said [the center] “showed
deliberate indifference” to the rampant sexual abuse of young boys, interfered
with the ability of residents and staff to report to DCS, and “emboldened
sexual predators.”
The center denied the charges and
the lawsuit was settled. But the center wasn’t done. They pushed
for a state law granting them immunity from future lawsuits. The Star reports
that
Under
the legislation, immunity would apply to most liability claims, including
wrongful death, negligence, malpractice, battery and infliction of emotional
distress. There are exclusions for criminal offenses, gross negligence and
willful or wanton misconduct, but those cases are rare and much more difficult
to prove.
As a result of the Star's revelations, the bill was withdrawn.
● But The Star and
ProPublica teamed up and found even more:
…It
was the third time since 2019 that police or child protective services formally
accused a female staffer at Pierceton Woods of sexual abuse or misconduct
involving male residents. In response, the state’s Department of
Child Services temporarily stopped referring children to Pierceton Woods, a
nonprofit residential facility which treats boys for substance use disorders
and sexually harmful behaviors.
That
lasted 11 days….
● In Utah, NBC News reports on how the state has shut down an
RTC. All it took was “the deaths of multiple children in its
care.” The director of the RTC says his institution has been treated
unfairly.
● When I first saw
that Mother Jones had
published an expose of the horrors of
a for-profit McTreatment chain’s residential treatment centers, I
thought: There’ve been so many exposes, what could possibly be new?
What could still shock?
In fact, by zeroing in
on foster youth, reporter Julia Lurie unearthed much that is new and even more
that is shocking. From referring to foster youth as “frequent
flyers” because they can be counted on to come back again and again, to admonitions
not no leave “days on the table” – meaning find ways to hold children
needlessly as long as possible to bring in payments that can reach more than
$900 per day per child -- to marketing techniques eerily similar to how drug
companies marketed Oxycontin, this story is a must-read.
The reason McTreatment
chains can get away with it was aptly summed up by someone who has worked to
expose their abuses for decades, Dr. Ronald Davidson: “These are kids, by and
large, who’ve been taken away from their parents,” he said, “so they have no
family to watch out for them.”
In addition to the
magazine story, there’s a podcast, produced in collaboration with Reveal:
● You know how the people who warehouse kids in
“residential treatment centers” always say we have to have such places because
it’s the only way to “treat” the most difficult young people. Well,
get this: WCBS-TV reports that with his agency’s
prized RTC mired in scandal over rampant abuse, the director says: It’s not our
fault, the kids they’re sending us are too difficult!
So in other words, we
need RTCs, but only for the easy kids? To top it off, this RTC part
of an agency run by Ron Richter, who once ran New York City’s family police
agency and loves to pal around with the most extreme advocates for tearing apart
families. Although Richter implies that the problems are new, this
facility has been the subject of exposes going back decades. But don’t worry. According to
the website for Richter’s agency, it’s “one of the oldest and most respected
residential treatment programs in the U.S.”
● Back in 2020 the Albany Times Union reported on how, after New York State reopened the right to
sue for child sexual abuse, officials were stunned by how often the accused
were not priests – but foster parents and staff at group homes and
institutions. Now, the Los Angeles Times reports, California is making the same discovery:
County officials predicted
that they may be forced to spend between $1.6 billion and $3 billion to resolve
roughly 3,000 claims of sexual abuse that allegedly took place in the county's
foster homes, children shelters, and probation camps and halls dating to the
1950s. ... Veteran sex abuse attorneys are calling for an outside
investigation, saying that not even they realized the full scope of the alleged
abuse taking place in county facilities.
Experts say the volume is
unlike anything they've heard of in local government. … “[I]f it's true,
it would be the most massive sex abuse scandal imaginable," said Stewart
Mollrich, an attorney with Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, one of the law firms
specializing in sex abuse claims that is suing the county.
● Check out the video of
residents of a “residential treatment center” in Oklahoma beating up a child –
while staff apparently do nothing. KFOR-TV reports that
when the mother contacted state family police agency officials they were very
concerned – about getting the video taken down. And see the follow-up story here.
● And,
speaking of horrors: The headline on this Sacramento Bee story
says it all: “Sacramento County to remove foster children from cells,
avoiding state fines.” But
the county is lying about why the children are there at all. It’s the usual
lie: The kids supposedly are too difficult, there’s supposedly no place else
for them, blah, blah blah. In fact, the places these children could
go are being taken by all those other children the county never should have
taken in the first place.
● From KXLY-TV, Spokane:
Washington
State has agreed to pay $16.95 million in a landmark child abuse
settlement.
Multiple
lawsuits were filed pertaining to 12 boys who were sexually and physically
abused at the J Bar D Boys Ranch north of Spokane, which is under the care of
the state. The group home is now "a shuttered facility in
lone."
The
boys were ages 10-15 when the abuse happened in the late 1970s to mid 1980s
after being removed to the state's custody. The boys were subjected to rampant
sexual and physical abuse by staff and older residents.
● From The Arkansas Advocate:
A
federal lawsuit filed Monday alleges repeated sexual and physical abuse of
children at The Lord’s Ranch, a residential treatment facility in Northeast
Arkansas that closed in 2016.
Lawyers
for the plaintiffs — eight former residents who were reportedly abused as boys
— said this is the first of several lawsuits they will file on behalf of the
more than 30 clients. …
● From CT News Junkie:
A
Connecticut legislative committee will host an informational hearing Wednesday
to review allegations of crime, abuse, and sex trafficking related to a
state-financed group home for girls in Harwinton.
● KPIX-TV reports that the mayor of the town where Alameda County
warehouses foster youth in a parking-place “shelter” is suing the
county. You’ll never guess why:
The
center is supposed to act as a sort of safe house for children but in recent
months, the mayor claims it has become a hotbed for serious criminal activity
including sex trafficking. ...
Rebecca
Edwards -- the co-founder of Braid Mission, an organization that supports and
mentors foster youth -- says incidents like what the mayor is describing are
sadly all too common.
"You
know people who are pimps and drug dealers, who are recruiting for gangs, know
exactly where to find these youth who are vulnerable and who are desperate for
somewhere to belong," explained Edwards.
In other words,
predators go where the prey is. Which raises the obvious question: Why
are you using a place like this in the first place?
Unfortunately, the
lawsuit does not raise this question.
● You know how shelters
and other institutions go out of their way to make their buildings and grounds
look nice, to try to fool people into thinking good things are going on
inside? WFLA-TV has a story about a place that
isn’t even bothering to try.
● There are horrifying details
about the sexual assault of two young teenagers in Texas foster
care. One is 16, the other 13. But as The Imprint reports for the 13-year-old
[t]he
October assault was not the first she had survived. After running away from a
foster care placement two years ago, the court monitors found, she was abducted
from a gas station, drugged and sexually assaulted by two men.
● There are a few
reporters across the country who seem to specialize in exposing problems their
journalism may well have worsened. In Texas, no reporter has been
more fanatical about ignoring wrongful removal and promoting the myth that any effort to oppose the needless removal of
children is some kind of vast right-wing conspiracy than Robert T. Garrett of
the Dallas Morning News. So when you read this Garrett story about predators who go where the prey is – the
makeshift placements where children are warehoused because of an artificial
“shortage” of foster homes – think about how they got there in the first
place.
● Here’s another example:
It’s a tossup which news organization in Washington State has been worse about
ignoring wrongful removal, sucking up to foster parents and generally
encouraging a take-the-child-and-run mentality: The Seattle Times or
Investigate West.
Now, Investigate
West has a big expose (essentially like all the other big exposes
you’ve read) about a hideous troubled teen industry institution in
Idaho. But even now, the story blames the problem on a “shortage” of
foster homes – an artificial “shortage” worsened by news stories encouraging
the overloading of the the system with children who don’t need to be there.
● If you run group homes and institutions, the one group you don’t want
anyone to talk to is youth who actually were forced to live in
them. Because this is what they’ll tell you.
● Here’s
a case in point from USA Today.
● And finally, from WRAL-TV:
State
and Smithfield police are investigating a report from a 7-year-old girl who
says she was sexually assaulted inside the Johnston County Department of Social
Services building by a 17-year-old boy.
FAMILY
FOSTER AND ADOPTIVE HOMES
Arabella McCormack and her
sisters were taken from their mother because they witnessed domestic
violence. They were placed with foster parents who adopted
them. That’s where Arabella died. As KNSD-TV reports:
Prosecutors say she was
severely malnourished, weighing just 48 pounds at the time. They also say her
body was covered in bruises and doctors found 15 still-healing bone
fractures.
Arabella’s mother is suing – and
still fighting for the return of Arabella’s sisters, who remain in foster
care.
Arabella’s sisters also are suing. CBS8 San Diego reports that
The lawsuit states that when deputies arrived at the
home, Arabella weighed 40 pounds, her bones protruding from her small frame,
her teeth yellow and calcified, and her body blanketed with bruises, scars, and
cuts and riddled with broken bones. The two young sisters, whose identities
will remain anonymous, were not in much better condition than their sister,
says the lawsuit.
KNSD-TV exposed the numerous warning signs that were ignored before Arabella was,
in effect, adopted to death. (And remember, the adoption helped San
Diego County collect the bounties paid by the federal government for finalized
adoptions of foster children under the so-called Adoption and
Safe Families Act.)
● In Hawaii, Honolulu Civil Beat reports,
The
estate of a 6-year-old Waimanalo girl who died from alleged abuse in perhaps
the most notorious child welfare cases in recent Hawaii history is suing her
adoptive parents and the state for gross negligence.
The
civil lawsuit claims both the Department of Human Services and Catholic
Charities Hawaii — a nonprofit that periodically reviews foster homes — failed
to investigate and intervene in child abuse allegations that caused Isabella
Kalua’s wrongful death.
Her
adoptive parents, Isaac and Lehua Kalua, have been charged with murder. They
are alleged to have kept Isabella in a dog cage to keep her from seeking food
at night because they didn’t feed her enough and covering her mouth with duct
tape.
● In Massachusetts four
former foster and adopted children reached a $7 million settlement in a suit
they filed against the Massachusetts family police agency. WFXT-TV reports that:
The lawsuit, filed in Middlesex Superior Court, says
the children were locked in dog crates, forced to perform sex acts, submerged
in ice paths to the point of drowning and threatened with death while under the
care of the [foster parents]. The plaintiffs also allege that DCF, then known
as the Department of Social Services, ignored 14 reports of abuse and was
“deliberately indifferent to the ongoing abuse.”
NBC10 Boston also
has a story about the case, and The Boston Globe reports, not all of the former foster children lived to
see the settlement:
The plaintiff who died, Kristine Blouin, was placed in
the Blouin home when she was just 2 weeks old; for the rest of her life,
memories from there tormented her, a woman who acted as her surrogate mother
has said. Kristine Blouin overdosed in 2022, and left behind two children who
[Attorney Erica] Brody said would benefit from the settlement amount.
● Also
in Massachusetts – a state that has long torn apart families at a rate far
above the national average, there’s this reminder, from NBC10 that the horror stories still
are going in all directions.
● From the Associated Press:
Iowa will pay $10 million to the siblings of an adopted
16-year-old girl who weighed just 56 pounds (25 kilograms) when she died of
starvation in a home where an attorney for the siblings says the children were
forced to fight each other for food.
● From the Oregon Capital Chronicle:
A boy
is suing the Oregon Department of Human Services for alleged abuse and neglect
in a home where he lived with his sister for a year along with other
children.
The
federal lawsuit, filed in September in U.S. District Court in Portland,
provides the account of the then-5-year-old boy who entered into a foster home
in 2016 with his 9-year-old sister in Lane County. … The foster
father, Joe Raygosa, was sentenced in 2018 to 94 years in prison for sexually
abusing the girl.
● Also from the Oregon Capital Chronicle:
A woman who spent 16 years of her childhood in the
state’s foster care system is suing the Oregon Department of Human Services,
alleging the agency placed her in foster homes where she suffered abuse and
failed to protect her when they knew.
And, it seems, Oregon
continues to cover up what happened:
In this case, some of the details are murky because –
as the lawsuit points out – the state agency would not give her complete
records about her time in the state system and instead blacked out information
about the foster parents and homes.
●In Arizona, Courthouse News Service reports, Trever Frodsham is suing because
He
says his foster father sexually abused him from age 2 to age 14, when David
Frodsham was arrested in 2016. He’s currently serving a 17-year prison sentence
for leading a sex abuse ring, forcing multiple children he fostered to perform
sex acts on both him and his friends, sometimes in the presence of his wife,
Barbara. … The state allowed the couple to retain custody of their foster
children and later adopt them despite nearly 20 complaints of misconduct.
But the state says it is immune
because the caseworkers who kept placing children in that home over and over
and over and failing to notice the abuse there over and over and over were
sincerely acting in what they felt was, yes, “the best interests of the
child.”
Oh, and by the way, each time the
Frodshams adopted a foster child, it helped the State of Arizona collect
bounties of $4,000 to $10,000 per child under the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act. When things like this happen, states are not
required to give any of that money back.
● From WFLA-TV in Tampa:
Within
days of Chance Witherington’s first breath, he was taken from his mom by the
Department of Children and Families and placed in foster care in Polk
County. Two months later he was dead.
● Also in Tampa, WFTS-TV reports, there’s still another
lawsuit alleging
horrific abuse in foster care – abuse allegedly ignored by the state family
policing agency. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen, in Florida neither is unusual.
● From WTVM-TV in
Columbus, Georgia
An east Alabama couple is heading to prison
for abusing their foster child. 32-year-old Elizabeth McDowell and
32-year-old John McDowell were convicted in October of aggravated child
abuse. Russell County District Attorney Rick Chancey says both were
sentenced to life in prison this morning.
● From the Detroit
News:
Attorney
General Dana Nessel charged two Lansing area couples Monday with 36 criminal
child abuse charges, months after other similar charges against the foster and
adoption families were dismissed.
The
DeWitt couples are being charged in relation to eight of the 30 children who
have been in their charge since 2007. Nessel alleged the couples' collected
more than $1 million tax free through the adoption subsidy program.
● While Kansas lawmakers were busy
attacking the safest form of foster care, kinship foster care, this is how foster care with strangers
has been going in recent cases.
Please keep all this in
mind when family police agencies claim there is very little abuse in foster
care. Not just these examples of cover-up, but numerous independent
studies say otherwise. Perhaps that’s why that bastion of the family policing establishment,
Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, appears to want to downplay the
problem. They’re undertaking a “study” of the issue that’s almost
certain to grossly underestimate the true rate of abuse. I have a blog post about it.
Please also keep in mind that when
the fearmongers say that anything that curbs the vast power of the family
police will endanger children – the examples above all are from the system we
have now; this is the system they say we need to keep in order
to keep children “safe.”
In part two: Our look back at family preservation journalism and commentary in 2023
