There are several somewhat related pieces that feature "well respected" service-people who happen to love children, in a sexual way.  Surely the general population is not stupid enough to believe sexually abusive/exploiting pedophiles in foster-care/Adoptionland do not exist.  Often times these pillars of society are the most caring, honest, and trustworthy sociopaths one will ever have the pleasure of meeting and knowing.  That's how demented and sick and evil these characters can be!

This particular news-piece, however, is much more than a simple complaint made against a long-term foster-care provider.  This article reflects all that is still not being done about the known problems related to lax home-studies and the foster-care licensing process.  Readers are encouraged to refer to Let's Review...,  (a look at foster-care requirements), Let's Review (2), (a closer look at home-study reports) and last but not least, Choices and Decisions,  a closer look at the difference between the infant adoption process, the international adoption process, and adoption through foster-care, and the Federal requirements, assigned to American foster-care providers and state licensing requirements. 

Children put in-care are not safe.  They are not safe in foreign orphanages; they are not safe in foster-care systems. Add the fact that more and more adoption selections are based on foster care placements, you have a whole new mix of crazy and unfit messing with the lives of children.  And all of this is going unmonitored.  Why?  Because time is money, and whilst a foreign child can fetch $20-40k a head, there's tight budgets and very little spending when it comes to care given to local children in-need.  [This is the very reason I get furious each time I learn a private "not-for-profit" agency director/executive is receiving a 6-figure salary on an annual basis, but the shuffled foster kid forced to move from home to home is using garbage bags as luggage.]

Adoptable American children put in care are put at an even higher risk of abuse when these unmonitored foster parents are approved to adopt.  There is no excuse for the gaps and oversights seen in so many private and state foster/adoption agencies.  There is no excuse for poor staffing, if a single employee is making over 90k a year.  There is no reason to keep a lazy incompetent social worker on-board if his/her paid job responsibility includes, follow-up investigations/ monitoring with written report, and those cases are not being investigated and those reports are late and incomplete.  In terms of any care-system with health service, the rules and responsibility are pretty simple:  help others keep children in-care reasonably safe. [Do unto others as you would want others to and for you.]

There is no good reason for case monitoring to go undone!  There is no reason for staffing to be low when executive salaries are high. This combination of laziness and greed is putting the lives of children in terrible risk and danger, much like this same mentality is putting seniors in-care in coffins, after they endure months/years of neglect that lead to disfiguring contractures and bed sores that go to the bone.

What blows my mind is the Federal interest given to child-on-child abuse in foster care settings. THAT, local politicians and federal courts will worry about.... because of the law-suits.

The Florida Department of Children and Families has settled all claims with three children who were abused by other children living in their Nassau County foster home, attorneys announced this afternoon.

The settlements total $2.9 million and follow a groundbreaking ruling in December by a federal appeals court in Atlanta that upheld their right to sue on grounds that DCF was "deliberately indifferent" to the danger they were in.

"This decision represents a landmark win in the fight to protect all foster children from child-on-child sexual abuse in foster care," said attorney Brian Cabrey, who represented the victims. He said it was the first case nationally to recognize the rights of foster children to be protected from child-on-child abuse.

According to the lawsuit, the three pre-school-aged children were left unsupervised with two teenage foster kids known to be sexually aggressive and were repeatedly molested by the teens.

[From:  DCF settles federal abuse suit, 2009 ]

But what attention and incentive is protecting foster children from being abused by abusive foster/adoptive parents?

<crickets chirping>

Keep in mind, in 2003, it was actually reported, in writing,   “it is now a documented fact that no child is safe today in [the state’s] foster care.” Patterson, Special Unit of DYFS Is Called Failure, N.J. STAR LEDGER, May 23, 2003.  In fact, in 2005, a report written by Carolyn A. Kubitschek, states the following:

Our nation’s most vulnerable children deserve better. Having been removed from their homes and families—and often from their neighborhoods, friends, schools, and religious institutions—they are helpless and at the mercy of the agencies that are charged with providing substitute care. All too often, foster care agencies fail at their job. Government social workers also habitually fall short. Some children languish for years in abusive situations while the officials charged with protecting them either do not know what is going on or choose to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and write no evil in the case file.

Placing foster children in abusive homes is appalling. Failing to protect them, so that the abuse continues, is inexcusable. It is also unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that people who are in government custody have a constitutional right to safe conditions during confinement and protection from injuries inflicted by others. The Court has extended its ruling to prisoners, suspects in jail awaiting trial, and involuntarily hospitalized mental patients. The Court has not yet decided whether foster children have the same right to protection as prisoners, criminal suspects, and mental patients. However, nine federal judicial circuits have ruled that foster children, who are innocent of any wrongdoing, are at least entitled to the same constitutional protections, in terms of safe conditions of confinement, as convicted felons. See Doe v. N.Y. City Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 649 F.2d 134 (2d Cir. 1981); Nicini v. Morra, 212 F.3d 798 (3d Cir. 2000); Hernandez v. Texas Dep’t of Protective & Regulatory Servs., 380 F.3d 872 (5th Cir. 2004); Meador v. Cabinet for Human Res., 902 F.2d 474 (6th Cir. 1990); K.H. by Murphy v. Morgan, 914 F.2d 846 (7th Cir. 1990); Norfleet v. Ark. Dep’t of Human Servs., 989 F.2d 289 (8th Cir. 1993); Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889 (9th Cir. 2003); Yvonne L. v. N.M. Dep’t of Human Servs., 959 F.2d 883 (10th Cir. 1992); Taylor v. Ledbetter, 818 F.2d 791 (11th Cir. 1987). When foster care agencies fail to provide those protections, they may be held liable.

The constitutional rulings have provided some redress for abused foster children. They may sue under 42 U.S.C. section 1983 to obtain compensation from the agencies that have wronged them. Importantly, the Constitution, as the supreme law of the land, trumps all state statutes and case law that might give full or partial sovereign immunity to government agencies or employees, or that might impose procedural prerequisites on children asserting claims against state or local governments. However, the law falls far short of providing a remedy for comprehensive damages for all abused foster children. Numerous hurdles remain for an abused foster child.

First, in states that provide foster care directly through a statewide program, the government agencies themselves are immune from suit in federal court under the Eleventh Amendment. (Where foster care is provided by counties or other local governments—as in New York, California, and some other states—the Eleventh Amendment does not prohibit lawsuits.) In all states, agency employees and officials may still be sued, however.

Second, in all lawsuits under 42 U.S.C. section 1983, the standard of liability is much higher than the negligence standard of tort law. Foster care agencies, officials, and employees will not be held to account unless their behavior exhibits “deliberate indifference” to a risk of harm to the foster children. Doe v. N.Y. City Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 649 F.2d 134. This heightened standard of liability has been exploited by careless foster care agencies to avoid legal consequences of their careless mistakes.

A third problem for abused foster children seeking legal recourse is the issue of proximate cause. As in tort law, defendants are responsible for the consequences of only those injuries that they cause. Foster care agencies and staff do not normally abuse foster children directly. The abuse is usually inflicted by foster parents and family members, or other foster children in the household. The courts have held that foster care agencies will be liable for abuse inflicted by foster parents when the agencies’ behavior was a “substantial factor” leading to the abuse. Id. If the chain of causation is found to be too attenuated, however, the agency will escape liability.

Finally, 42 U.S.C. section 1983 contains its own defense. All defendants can potentially claim the defense of qualified immunity and avoid paying damages if their actions or omissions violated a law that was not clearly established at the time, or if their actions or omissions were objectively reasonable, as determined by the judge (not the jury). While agencies themselves cannot claim qualified immunity, their employees can, and the employees have avoided compensating abused foster children by using that defense. See Camp v. Gregory, 67 F.3d 1286 (7th Cir. 1995).

[From:  Holding Foster Care Agencies Responsible for Abuse and Neglect ]

Soooo.....  if foster care is still so bad, (as bad, if not worse than foreign orphanage-living), and foster parents are allowed to adopt (FP's are often given preferential treatment in the adoption-pool), and employess of agencies can claim immunity in a lawsuit (and avoid compensating abused victims) how are the best interests of a child put in-care being served when foster/adoption agencies are not monitoring candidates and children better and licensing requirements are not as strict and demanding as they should be?

In the above news-report, the accused admits adoption was an option he had considered for himself. 

Larson told the police he wished to adopt the children and repeatedly said he would not hurt children, according to the document. But in February 2006, the 17-year-old, then age 12, told his new foster mother that Larson did inappropriate things to him and also said Larson kissed one of the boy's friends, a different document said. He and the friend later repeated the allegations to social workers. The allegations were investigated, but no case was brought against Larson.

Because of the pending investigation, PATH Minnesota closed Larson's foster care license in May 2006. His attorney said a letter she received from the agency stated the license was closed at Larson's request. The letter, signed by a PATH Minnesota regional director, also said "Joe has been a kind and caring foster parent and has given good service to PATH." Larson served on the agency's board and was a member of the education committee.

These are the situations where I wish I could be dictator for a day.  Just one day.

I'd send people like Mr. Larson, (or adoption heroes like William Fox, or Kodzo Dobosu or any found here ) to a local state facility, with a special shirt made just for him.  On the back, it would read, "I am accused of hurting foster children put in my care", or if the case fits, "I had sex with my foster/adopted child". 

I'd require said social service providor to stay at the local state facility, of my choosing, for one hour.  That's all he'd have to do... visit a few strangers for just one hour.  Before his arrival, I'd tell the guards to take a nice one hour lunch break.  Then I'd let the inmates get their hour of play.  I bet the caged boys would sleep well that night.