Truthfully, there are conflicting stories in this case of whether Garold Ray and Sherry L. McMillian, both 42, are the foster parents or adoptive parents of the 14 and 15 year-old children in this case, a call to the Owassa Police Department still left this question unanswered.
What isn’t in dispute is the treatment of these children.
http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/crime/fssa-employed-mom-facing-neglect-charges
Updated: Tuesday, 17 Nov 2009, 11:55 AM EST
Published : Tuesday, 17 Nov 2009, 11:52 AM EST
Editor: Hyacinth Williams
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – 24-Hour News 8 has just learned the mother whose 11-month-old child was found wandering the streets this weekend was a temp worker at Family and Social Services Administration.
Tuesday House, 38 worked in the family resources division and was hired on November 1.
On Monday, House was arrested and faces a preliminary charge of child neglect.
This after her child was found wandering near the corner of 21st and Harding streets at around 8:30 p.m. Saturday.
“She said that when she left the house, the person that she was having take care of the child was outside of the house smoking a cigarette. She left and when she left she went out and was at some friends drinking alcohol and smoking crack,” said Detective Julie Dutrieux of the Indianapolis Metro Police Department.
Detective Dutrieux said House returned home around 10:30 p.m. Saturday when she noticed no one was home, she went back out to party more with friends.
House told police she didn’t realize her child was in protective custody until police came knocking at her door.
This isn’t the first time House has been investigated by Child Protective Services. Several years ago, House lost custody of another child.
Heartbreaking news today, Fayetteville Police spokeswoman, Theresa Chance told the Associated Press that searchers have found the body of missing 5-year-old Shaniya Nicole Davis off a road southeast of Sandford in the central part of North Carolina.
Shaniya disappeared 6 days a ago from her home in Fayetteville, North Carolina. An extensive search has been conducted for Shaniya since shortly after her disappearance was reported by her mother.
To read the entire story visit the link above.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_wa_abuse_settlement.html?source=mypi
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
OLYMPIA, Wash. — The Department of Social and Health Services and the Washington Department of Corrections are paying $1.5 million together to settle a child abuse claim.
DSHS spokesman Steve Williams says the two departments decided to settle the claim to spare the family and the girl from having to relive the trauma.
Attorneys for the girl released information about the settlement on Friday.
The now 14-year-old girl was emotionally, physically and sexually abused while in her grandparents’ home in Okanagon County despite warnings to Child Protective Services. The girl’s grandfather had twice been convicted on child-molestation charges and his parole officer told CPS he might pose a danger to the child but she remained in the home.
According to the claim filed against the state, the girl was sexually abused by her grandfather and physically abused by her grandmother. The attorneys say she is now living with her mother in Pierce County and is doing well.
http://www.koco.com/news/21586699/detail.html
TULSA, Okla. –
A child welfare expert said five foster children in the custody of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services were scalded in bath water, sexually molested, beaten with tree switches and belts and hit in the mouth – a pattern of abuse the expert called “outrageous and immoral.”
The 121-page report by independent consultant Peg McCartt Hess was filed Wednesday afternoon in Tulsa federal court as part of a 2008 class-action lawsuit that accuses DHS of mistreating its foster children.
For her report, Hess reviewed case files for five of the nine children named as plaintiffs in the suit against Oklahoma by Children’s Rights, a New York-based child advocacy group.
In the report, two different child welfare experts reviewed a case involving several children in DHS custody and said DHS is inadequate in responding to abuse in a home, that children in DHS care are likely at risk of physical and mental abuse, that social workers have only superficial relationships with children, and that children are at risk of being placed with abusive and neglectful caregivers.
Hess said the abuse and neglect the children suffered while in DHS custody was “wholly preventable.”
The claim is a starkly different story than George Johnson of the DHS said in an interview with Eyewitness News 5 one year ago.
“Any time anything happens to a child in foster care, there’s an immediate investigation,” he said in the November 2008 interview. “That’s the best we can do to work hard every single day.”
At the time, he also said that it wasn’t true that children in DHS care are in danger of being placed with abusive or neglectful caregivers.
“Whether they’re in foster homes or their own relatives’ care, children will die,” he said in 2008. “Accidents will happen, period.”
DHS declined to comment on the new reports until workers have had a chance to review them.
TULSA — Treatment of children in Oklahoma’s child welfare system has been “incomprehensible, unimaginable, outrageous and immoral,” a child welfare expert stated Wednesday in a report filed in Tulsa federal court.
http://www.register-herald.com/statenews/local_story_306120858.html
The Associated Press
By Tom Breen
Associated Press Writer
CHARLESTON — For the second time this year, a state Supreme Court justice has blasted the Department of Health and Human Resources by suggesting the agency has systemwide problems that need rapid correction.
In a concurring opinion filed this week, Justice Margaret Workman accused the DHHR of failing to properly protect children caught between the foster care system and an abusive home.
“The intent is to issue a clarion call to the DHHR to provide child protective services with more resources and more direction in protecting children,” Workman wrote.
Workman’s opinion comes roughly two months after Chief Justice Brent Benjamin rebuked DHHR in a different case. He wrote that the agency seems to have systemic problems preventing it from meeting its duties.
The two opinions, along with other concerns, have led some frustrated lawmakers to discuss whether splitting the agency up would make the bureaus and departments that comprise it more efficient.
Workman’s opinion backed the court’s unanimous affirmation of a 2008 decision by Mineral County Circuit Court Judge Philip Jordan. Jordan ordered that children who had been living in an Eastern Panhandle home should not be returned to the woman who ordered them to call her “Mom,” although she was not related to them by blood.
The woman, her son and seven children moved from Maryland to West Virginia in 2001. Over the next six years, the living arrangement was the subject of 11 referrals to DHHR concerning abuse and neglect.
In the Supreme Court’s anonymous, or “per curiam,” decision, the justices wrote that the DHHR substantiated claims of everything from physical abuse to a home with cockroaches falling from the ceiling and farm animals sharing living space with people.
The woman, named in the case only as Rosemary C., eventually lost custody of the children in 2007. A year later, though, after she had completed an improvement plan, DHHR recommended that four of the children be returned to her custody.
Jordan disagreed, and Rosemary C. appealed. By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, DHHR had changed its position and recommended the children not be returned to her.
“It is outrageous that seven children were left in despicable circumstances by the DHHR for more than six years and even then, that the DHHR still sought to place those children back in an unsafe environment,” Workman wrote.
She further wrote that the incident raises concern that it’s only “the tip of the iceberg,” which raises the question “whether we must begin to re-examine child protective services in a more systemic manner.”
DHHR spokesman John Law said the agency wants to further review the justices’ ruling before commenting.
Lawmakers who have read it, though, say it matches their frustration with the agency in matters ranging from foster care to the conditions at the state’s two psychiatric hospitals in Huntington and Weston.
“This is similar to what we saw at Bateman Hospital,” said Delegate Don Perdue, referring to the crowded conditions at the Huntington hospital. “It seems that DHHR has no ability to move quickly to intervene in negative situations like this.”
The Wayne County Democrat, who is chairman of the House Health and Human Resources Committee, said he wants legislation in the next session of the Legislature to address what he calls depleted resources at the agency, starting with hiring more people.
“DHHR needs to ramp up its work force, and it needs to recognize it has really severe problems in terms of being able to do what it needs to do,” he said.
Gov. Joe Manchin said that DHHR has made significant progress in several areas, but that he understands more work needs to be done. Manchin said he’s especially concerned if the agency is failing in its duty to protect children.
“Children are our number one priority and if there’s something wrong, then we need to fix it,” he said. “If that means additional training, more efficiencies, whatever it may be, then let’s look at the ideas on how we can make it better.”
Perdue and some of his colleagues have discussed splitting the agency up, which he said might make it easier to focus on the many tasks it currently has.
Prior to the administration of Gov. Gaston Caperton, many of the functions now handled by DHHR were located in separate parts of state government. Caperton sought the merger of those agencies to make them more streamlined and efficient.
“From what we’ve seen since, it hasn’t really achieved that goal,” Perdue said.
Manchin stopped short of endorsing that idea, although he said he wants to discuss it further with Perdue.
Perdue’s House colleague, Delegate Barbara Hatfield, has been crafting legislation she plans to introduce in the 2010 legislative session to address situations like the one described in the Supreme Court ruling.
“The system is broken,” the Kanawha County Democrat said. “Everyone knows it, but no one is doing anything about it.”
Hatfield’s legislation would create pilot programs offering specialized training and guidance to foster parents, and provide for better tracking of children in the system.
She also wants to see improved training for caseworkers and a boost in their pay to make the agency more competitive with the private sector.
“We have dedicated, good people doing their best,” she said, “but the strain on them is tremendous and there just aren’t enough of them.”
BRAD SHANNON; The Olympian
The state Department of Social and Health Services is paying $525,001 to settle a public-records lawsuit brought by former foster children abused by their state-licensed foster parents.
Lawyers David Moody and Marty McLean had sued to obtain state records in connection with a claim for $45 million in damages that they filed, alleging the state was liable for harm to the girls, two of whom are now adults. Their ex-foster father Enrique Fabregas was convicted two years ago of sex charges related to abuse of the children, according to The Seattle Times.
“Seeking answers as to why DSHS licensed a career criminal to be a foster parent and continually ignored numerous warnings of abuse, these young women each made a formal request for their public records,” Moody’s law firm stated in a news release Thursday. “DSHS illegally refused to provide a complete response.”
DSHS spokesman Steve Williams said the dispute was over 203 records that were disclosed late. He said the agency turned over more than 5,300 records that included more than 10,000 pages of information and that a court found the disclosures were complete by July 1, 2008.
But a King County judge ruled in June and October that the agency violated the Public Records Act, and a trial was scheduled to decide penalties, according to Moody’s office.
Williams acknowledged that the agency committed errors but could not say what the mistakes were or who made them.
“DSHS did not intentionally withhold any records,” he said. Quoting from agency talking points, he said: “Mistakes were made due to technical errors, confusion created in part by the staggered way in which the requester presented authorizations allowing release of his clients’ confidential information, and some delays in finding a few of the thousands of requested records.’’
DSHS is changing how it handles public-records requests. It plans to train staff members in records retention and management and is developing tools to aid in the search for and production of electronic records, Williams said. The agency also plans to have a centralized public-records staff, but it has not decided whether to have central offices for each division in the 18,700-employee agency or one for the entire agency.
The agency will pay its penalty out of operating funds, giving $175,000 each to Estera Tamas and Ruth Tamas and $175,001 to guardians for a disabled child named Monica, the settlement agreement says.
