Foster parents seek records to help their negligence case

Officials withheld child's violent history

Associated Press

RALEIGH -- A couple allowed to sue Wake County social workers for negligence over a foster child's past now is asking an appeals court for access to confidential records about him.

The couple, whose daughter was molested by the foster child in their care, believes the records will help their case that Wake County officials should have told them about his history of sexual abuse and violence.

A Superior Court judge denied access to those records earlier this year, citing state law that says a juvenile's records are confidential and can't be released unless the child is a party to the lawsuit.

"Clearly, what the defendants knew of this child's history and when they knew it are critical questions in this case, and cannot be answered without access to this information," Elizabeth Kuniholm, the couple's lawyer, wrote in a brief filed this month with the appeals court.

Under state law, a juvenile's records are open to the child, his parent, guardian and custodian and can be examined by any party with a judge's order.

The county's lawyers, Michael Ferrell and Corinne Russell, argue that the law forbids the release of these records and that foster parents don't qualify as parents as defined under the law.

Kuniholm argues that the law wasn't intended to protect county agencies, which had a duty to provide such information to foster parents in the first place.

The couple is suing six Wake County social workers and the county's mental health and social services departments.

The couple, a Methodist minister and his wife, had a 2-year-old girl but decided to become foster parents and were trained and licensed in 1993.

A social worker persuaded them to take a 12-year-old boy, according to the brief.

Two months later the parents discovered that the boy had molested their daughter. He was subsequently convicted of a sex crime for that assault, according to the lawsuit.

The couple learned that he had witnessed his sisters being sexually abused, the lawsuit said. But the couple says social workers withheld information that the child was a victim of sexual abuse, had been caught in bed with two girls at a group home and threatened a house parent with a knife, according to the brief.

The couple sued, claiming the social workers and their agencies should have disclosed the sex abuse in the boy's past.

The county argues that the couple let the child be left alone and unsupervised with their daughter. The county also denies knowing the child would possibly commit a sexual assault.

A judge had dismissed the lawsuit, citing cases where courts have held public employees can't be sued for negligence. But the appeals panel ruled there were legitimate questions about whether an exception to that rule applies in this case.

"Under state law, a juvenile's records are open to the child, his parent, guardian and custodian and can be examined by any party with a judge's order."