After 68 police reports, Ankeny couple who adopted 9 kids charged with abuse

LEE ROOD   | The Des Moines Register

An Ankeny couple who adopted nine children with disabilities from foster care has been charged with child endangerment for allegations of physical abuse.

John Elmer Bell, 55, and Joyce Marie Bell, 57, were booked into the Polk County Jail Thursday afternoon, on charges of felony child endangerment causing bodily injury. 

The arrests came hours after Ankeny police turned over 68 police reports in response to a Reader's Watchdog probe into years of reported child abuse in the Ankeny couple’s home.

Krystal Bell, the couple’s 21-year-old adopted daughter, questioned why the couple hadn’t been arrested after she provided authorities four expletive-laden videos depicting physical abuse of her adoptive brother.

Krystal Bell provided the videos to Watchdog.

One video turned over to Ankeny police shows John Bell and his 16-year-old mildly autistic son screaming and hitting each other in their living room earlier this month.

The teen wails in a high pitch as his father restrains his flailing hands, then repeatedly hits the boy with the back of a hand and a fist.

“I will hit you in the f---ing mouth,” Bell threatens, rocking back and forth on the couch, clutching a knee and crying.

“I’ll kill you!” the smaller boy screams back.

Bell had posted the videos over the past year on Facebook. Police were told about video depicting child abuse at least as far back as March 2016, Ankeny police reports show.

The Bells adopted children with disabilities who range now in age from 16 to 38, according to the couple’s 24-year-old adopted daughter, Makayla.

“Caller stated that she is being abused by her parents, and she will not go back home,” one March 2009 police report involving Makayla Bell said.

A domestic report from March notes: “This is the 9th trip since Oct. 6, 2016.”

Several people, including Krystal and Makayla, told Watchdog before the arrests that they had reported ongoing abuse to state workers while the Bells, who were former foster parents, collected thousands in subsidies over the years.

Allegations of physical abuse against Joyce Bell caused the children to be temporarily removed in 2010, but no criminal charges were filed.

Most of the children were returned to the couple’s three-bedroom home, the sisters said.

The videos of inside the Bells' home shot discreetly over the past year by 21-year-old Krystal prompted Iowa’s Department of Human Services to remove two remaining teenage brothers, both adopted, after a July 12 child abuse call, according to the sisters and police reports.

Those teens have been placed temporarily in a shelter, the sisters said.

John and Joyce Bell could not be reached for comment because they were being held in the Polk County Jail.

Iowa's troubling cases

The Bell case in some ways mirrors the recent child abuse cases that ended with the deaths of Iowa teens Natalie Finn and Sabrina Ray, who also were adopted out of foster care. Reports of abuse were made against both parents before the teens' deaths.

Tonya Gibson, birth mother of Krystal and two teenage boys who were adopted by the Bells, is outraged that state social workers and police took so long to intervene on behalf of so many disabled children.

“It takes a child to be severely harmed or killed before they do something, and they say I’m a bad parent?” she told Watchdog.

Gibson, 42, of Lockridge, said she visited and talked to her three birth children several times at the Bells’ home over the years.

She said she observed injuries to her now 16-year-old birth son and to Krystal, and made at least three reports to child-protective workers.

Ron Mullen, birth father of the boy shown being hit in the videos and another 17-year-old adopted by the Bells, told Watchdog that he and his fiancée also reported allegations of child abuse to state workers.

But both birth parents say they believe their attempts to get Human Services to take action were ignored because their parental rights were terminated years ago for past drug abuse. Both said they have been clean for years.

Iowa Department of Human Services officials said they cannot comment on the ongoing child abuse investigation.

But they do say they are spending more time reviewing abuse allegations, including abuse reports that were rejected in the past, when new abuse claims involving the same children are made.

Video is helpful in determining what happened within a family, Human Services spokesperson Amy McCoy said.

But the Bell case raises questions about how well Iowa authorities are working to protect disabled children — and why the state allowed one couple to adopt so many vulnerable kids.

At least one-third of children in foster care nationally have physical or mental disabilities. And those children are far more likely than other children to be physically abused, sexually assaulted and neglected, experts say.

A 2015 U.S. Department of Justice report shows that the rate of violence experienced by children with disabilities is more than triple the rate for kids ages 12 to 15 and double the rate for kids aged 16 to 19 without disabilities.

Liz Cox, who heads Prevent Child Abuse Iowa, said one recent study at a pediatric hospital found 32 percent of children with disabilities there were victims of physical abuse and 68 percent were victims of sexual abuse.

“Some offenders specifically seek victims with disabilities because they are perceived to be more vulnerable and unable to report,” Cox said.

Red flags: Dozens of police calls

Makayla Bell, 24, said she was removed permanently from the Bell home at age 17 after she accused Joyce Bell of kicking her in the face repeatedly during an argument.

Joyce Bell was not charged in the incident.

Now a new mother living outside Bloomfield, Makayla Bell said her adoptive parents presented well when social workers and police responded to their home.

As a result, she, Krystal and others who reported abuse had a difficult time getting them to investigate deeper.

Makayla Bell said abuse in the Bell home was so bad that she tried to run away more than once.

But she said she returned out of concern for a birth brother in the home and other siblings who had a range of diagnoses from bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses to mental retardation to cerebral palsy.

While foster kids are subject to monthly home visits and routine checkups, children adopted out of state care are not monitored again unless social workers decide to investigate abuse allegations.

Makayla said the Bells started physically abusing her about a year after she was adopted.

“I used to pray when I was little that I could go to a family that would actually love me, that would actually care about me,” she said.

In second grade, Makayla Bell said, she told a school counselor that her father had hit her with a baseball bat.

She said that was the last time she reported abuse at school because Joyce Bell threatened that all the children would be separated and they would never see each other again.

Twice during her middle school years, Makayla Bell said, she attempted suicide, and police reports show authorities were called.

Makayla was placed in a shelter and removed permanently after photos were taken of her facial injuries sustained during an altercation with Joyce. No charges were filed, according to court records.

Several of the other children eventually wound up in group homes after that. One got kicked out, another moved in with friends, Makayla Bell said.

Krystal Bell, now living in a residential center in Clarinda, said Ankeny police requested the videos and interviewed her about the abuse allegations in mid-July.

The young woman, who has some mental illness, said she and her siblings experienced abuse since they were babies.

“You name it, I told them everything,” Bell said.

She said she also previously reported to police that John Bell was payee for her Social Security disability and, after she moved out of the Bell home, he was keeping money she needed to live on.

Evidence: Both parents abusive

In another video Krystal Bell took while visiting her adoptive parents, Joyce Bell screams profanities at Krystal’s 16-year-old brother.

The video shows the teen perched on the floor in the living room, throwing things at his shirtless father.

“You were going to break my arm!” the boy screams at his father.

“That was to keep you from hitting me!” John Bell yells, as he sits several feet away.

The teen threatens to kill John Bell.

“Shoot me then! Put me out of my f---ing misery,” the father screams.

The fight deteriorates to the point that, over the next several minutes, Joyce Bell hits the teen on the head repeatedly and braces her forearm against his neck, forcing him up against kitchen cabinets as they yell at each other.

Watchdog is not publishing the videos online out of privacy concern for the 16-year-old.

But Ronald Mullen of Omaha saw them on Krystal Bell’s Facebook page and said they hit him particularly hard. Sixteen years ago, when the 43-year-old machinist was in his mid-20s, Mullen lost parental rights to both his baby boys.

The state took them after he was sent to prison for drunken driving while on probation for willful injury, he said.

During the 17 years Mullen lived in Des Moines, he said he was an avid drug user and alcoholic.

The boys, now 16 and 17, were placed in the care of the Bells in 2001. Mullen thought the placement was good because their half-sister Krystal was already living there.

Three years ago, Krystal Bell found Mullen on Facebook, and asked if he was her father.

He told Krystal no, but he stayed in touch with her to learn about his boys and support her.

Mullen and his fiancée called Iowa’s Department of Human Services after Krystal began posting the videos last year.

“How is this possible that DHS keeps being notified and nothing’s being done?” he asked. “The videos break my heart. I can’t believe that someone can be that mean to a child.”

Adoption subsidies

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

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

But numerous readers have expressed concern that some parents are motivated to adopt more children for the income they receive in subsidies.

The state puts no limits on the number of children foster parents may adopt. Instead, they are negotiated and depend on a child’s age and special needs. The adoptive family’s income is not considered when negotiating financial support.

The amount does not exceed that provided for foster care. But it can bring in as much as $12,333 annually per child. Adopting nine children with special needs could amount to more than $110,000 annually.

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.

Roughly 2,550 children are placed in foster care every year. Most are reunited 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 semi-annual 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.