Abuse reports started in 1994

Abuse reports started in 1994

A woman says she reported instances of cruel treatment of children by a foster parent couple, but officials didn't stop it.

By WAYNE WASHINGTON
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 12, 2000

TAMPA -- Behind a high metal fence in a rural outpost of Hillsborough County, criminal investigators say, the Plant City mobile home of Marjorie and Charles Moss was a living hell for children.

It was a hell, two women who later cared for some of those children said Thursday, that the Department of Children and Families had been told about for six years.

"This isn't something that fell through the cracks because they didn't know," said Rhoda Burrill, a former foster parent to a child who spent time in the Moss home.

Burrill and Gay Courter, a child welfare advocate in Citrus County who adopted a girl who lived in the Moss home, said children told them of perverse punishments: having hot sauce placed on their tongues, being forced to squat under a table or counter for long periods, and being made to wear "bed wetter" signs.

Marjorie Moss, 53, remained in jail Thursday in lieu of $635,000 bail on a total of 34 charges of felony child abuse and neglect. Her 73-year-old husband is free on bond after being charged with six counts of felony child neglect.

He did nothing, an arrest report said, as his wife maliciously punched the children, pulled them into a bathroom and held them under hot water, deprived them of food, threatened them with a gun, denied medical care and beat them with a wooden paddle.

Charles Moss would not come to the phone Thursday, but a man who answered and described himself as Moss' nephew said the abuse allegations are not true.

Children and Families spokesman Tom Jones said eight adopted children and three foster children were living in the Moss home in 1996 when the department learned that the Mosses were using corporal punishment, which the department prohibits.

The three foster children were removed and the couple was barred from accepting more. But the eight adopted children were left at the Moss home because it is not illegal to use corporal punishment to discipline adopted children.

Since 1996, Jones said, the department has investigated seven complaints of adopted children receiving abuse at the Moss home. He said serious allegations over the years could not be proven because the children recanted abuse claims they had previously made.

"The problem is in proving it," he said. "If you don't have credible evidence, you can't go forward."

The allegations come at a time when Children and Families is at a crossroads.

With calls to child abuse hot lines on the increase, the department is implementing a "fast-track" system to allow some potential foster parents to start work before a nationwide background check has been completed.

Children and Families is trying to shorten the time it takes for people to become foster parents as a way to provide more homes for the 1,300 foster children in Hillsborough County. That's 200 more children than the county has the capacity to handle, forcing the department to violate state law prohibiting foster homes from having more than five children.

Courter said the department simply would not believe what it was being told about the Mosses.

"This family was well thought of by the department," Courter said. "They didn't believe the children. My daughter is very angry that no one listened to her."

Burrill said she and her husband, Ken, a minister at the First Seventh-day Adventist Church in Carrollwood, told the department in 1994 about the horror stories told by the children who came to them from the Moss home.

They took their foster son and his sister, whom Courter later adopted, to a psychologist who said he believed their claims of abuse.

But instead of removing the children from the home, the department told the Mosses to change their discipline tactics, Burrill said. And their foster son, removed from the Burrill home because of behavior problems, was sent back to the Mosses, Burrill said.

"He was terrified," she said. "We told them this, but they said this was the best home in the county. One counselor told my husband that she would stake her job on the placement."

Jones could not be reached late Thursday to respond to charges that the department was slow to act.

He said Thursday morning that the Mosses weren't "necessarily a bad foster family."

"Mrs. Moss actually was involved in helping train other foster parents," Jones said.

On Thursday, six of the Mosses' adopted children were in state custody, another had been returned to the biological mother, and another housed in a juvenile detention facility.