Sabrina Ray's parents can keep adoption payments even if they're convicted of abuse. Here's why:

LEE ROOD   | The Des Moines Register

Reader's Watchdog has found.

Federal statutes mandate that states terminate adoption subsidies when parents are no longer supporting the children they are supposed to help.

But neither the state of Iowa nor the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has systems in place to check on recipients of adoption subsidies for fraud or recoup payments when parents commit abuse.

Adoption subsidies may be one of the issues discussed when the state House and Senate Government Oversight Committee meets Monday to review the Department of Human Services' operation of Iowa's child welfare system.

Unlike federal programs such as Social Security or food stamps, those receiving adoption subsidies are not subject to verification processes or scrutiny, state officials confirmed.

That worries advocates for abused children, people who review children's placements and former foster and adoptive children interviewed by the Watchdog.

While foster kids are subject to monthly home visits and routine checkups, children adopted out of state care — especially those who are independently home-schooled — are not monitored again.

The repercussions at times have been tragic.

• Sabrina Ray died May 12, after the malnourished 16-year-old was allegedly drop-kicked down some stairs by her 21-year-old adoptive brother and abused by her adoptive parents, a niece and a grandmother. Two other adopted girls also were abused, court documents allege.
• Natalie Finn died Oct. 24 of starvation after her adoptive mother for months avoided authorities investigating abuse allegations. Her adoptive parents now face multiple felonies.
• Malayia Knapp ran away from her adoptive home in late 2015 after she said she was locked up in a basement and abused for years. Her adoptive mother was convicted of abuse.

All three of the teens and their adopted siblings were taken out of public school, ostensibly to be home-schooled.

“These kids are being taken out of schools and dying, and something has to be done," said Ashley Hoskins, a 29-year-old Des Moines woman who, with her three siblings, was taken from her birth parents because of parental drug abuse and placed in foster care.

"DHS needs more eyes," she said. "They can’t physically handle all the work. So we need to ask that if you do foster care, (the children) should have to stay in public schools.”

Parents need the help

Amy McCoy, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Human Services, says the vast majority of families who adopt in Iowa need subsidies because the children have so many extra needs.

Often, she said, at least one parent in the home cannot work.

State workers can put a stop to taxpayer-backed subsidies if they find that foster or adoptive parents are not supporting the children in their care.

But McCoy acknowledged the agency does not track when or even if that happens.

Typically in Iowa, subsidies end only when children age out of foster or adoptive homes, of if parents themselves decide to terminate their contract with the state, McCoy said.

“The vast majority of these families are using the subsidies to care for their families,” she said.

The state of Iowa puts no limits on the number of foster children parents can adopt. Instead, families are assessed on how well they can meet the needs of the children at the time, McCoy said.

Adoption subsidies are negotiated with the state and vary depending on a child’s age and special needs.

The amount is determined by an assessment of the child’s needs, but it does not exceed that provided for foster care. The adoptive family’s income is not considered when negotiating financial support.

Generally, parents receive more for older children with special needs, bringing in as much as $12,333 annually.

Adopting four older children with special needs can bring in close to $50,000 a year.

Money as a motivator?

Adoption subsidies have been at the center of readers’ questions since Watchdog has probed the abuse cases of Finn, Knapp and Ray.

Bridget Brass, a mother who works at a Catholic church in Des Moines, wrote to ask why parents who adopt from state care receive the financial assistance.

“We have two children (now adults), and I didn't get any subsidies for choosing to have kids,” she said.

Brass said she and her husband were stunned to learn recently that five adults in the Ray family were charged in the kidnapping, torture and abuse of Sabrina Ray and two other adopted, home-schooled girls.

“Maybe we need to go back to orphanages,” she said. “At least then foster kids could grow up with a paid staff and people they could actually trust.”

According to Sabrina’s birth father, Sabrina came to live with Marc and Misty Ray of Perry in 2011 and was adopted in 2013.

When authorities found Sabrina's body in the Rays' home, her adoptive parents were headed on a trip to Disney World with their two sons, Perry police chief Eric Vaughn said.

The Rays ran an in-home day care, Rays of Sunshine, which had been the subject of at least two complaints regarding the use of corporal punishment and malnutrition.

Officials at Iowa’s Department of Human Services repeatedly have declined this year to provide information about how much parents who have been accused of abuse have received in subsidies to care for the children.

McCoy said the information is confidential under Iowa Code 217.30.

“Some children and families may prefer that their neighbors, classmates, co-workers, etc., do not know the child is adopted,” she said.

Those subsidies were created as part of the 1980 Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act to encourage more foster parents receiving subsidies to adopt, so the children could have permanent homes.

Before that law, thousands more children languished in foster care because payments ended when the youths were adopted. The 1980 law provided for a subsidy that was similar to that paid foster parents.

Once an adoption is legally finalized, families who receive state adoptive subsidies have access to voluntary and free post-adoption support.

Adoptive parents say the subsidies are needed to help take care of children who often need counseling, medications and other help.

High-profile fraud case

But some parents have made headlines nationally for taking thousands of dollars while abusing the children in their care.

Judith Leekin was charged in Florida in 2007 for abuse and maltreatment of 11 children adopted in New York City.

Leekin allegedly denied the children access to food and toilets, handcuffed and restrained them for hours; trapped them in cribs; beat them with a belt, a nightstick and other objects; and repeatedly threatened them with a gun or with being beaten to death, according to a judge in the case.

Only three could read (at a third-grade level), and six were declared either “totally incapacitated” or “vulnerable adults” when the children were removed in 2007.

Because the children suffered from physical or mental disabilities, Leekin received increased adoption subsidies — a total of about $1.68 million from the state of New York.

After the abuse charges, Leekin was charged in federal court for fraudulently using the subsidies.

Eight of the children she adopted eventually sued the three private agencies who placed them with her, winning a $17.5 million judgment. The state of New York paid a $9.7 million settlement.

Iowa ended scrutiny 

Roughly 2,550 children are placed in foster care every year. Most are reunified with their families, but about 1,000 children are adopted annually.

The parents are recruited and trained by an organization called Iowa KidsNet, under a state contract with a private company called Four Oaks. That company subcontracts services with Lutheran Services in Iowa, Youth and Shelter Services, Family Resources Inc. and Quakerdale.

Payments to Four Oaks do not hinge on private workers’ recommendations for approval or denial after home studies.

But the contractor can receive performance payments for exceeding targets that include finding more families to foster, and possibly adopt, kids coming into care with special needs, such as sibling groups or those with difficult behaviors.

Iowa and other states in the past have required adoptive parents to complete annual or semiannual renewals of their adoption agreements to try to verify whether parents provide adequate care for the kids they adopt.

But no federal rule or statute requires renewals or recertifications for funding.

Iowa ended every-other-year reviews after a legislative committee found in 2004 that they weren't an effective method of determining a child’s true living situation, McCoy said.

Currently, “there is no provision in state or federal law to recoup payments prior to ending an adoption subsidy agreement,” McCoy said.

Oversight meeting Monday

A joint meeting of the state House and Senate Government Oversight Committee has been scheduled for Monday, June 5, to review Iowa's child welfare system.

Some lawmakers on the committee have said they want to investigate whether more should be done to assess whether adults are adopting children for the added income. 

After three more adults in the Ray family were charged last week in the death of 16-year-old Sabrina Ray of Perry, more Iowans have demanded that state leaders and the Department of Human Services scrutinize child abuse allegations more closely.

More than 1,100 people have signed a petition on Change.org started by a Perry parent concerned over other children's welfare.

Human Services chief Charles Parlmer, 78, announced his mid-June retirement on Wednesday. Some Democratic lawmakers had called for his resignation for months.