NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending July 24, 2024

● A case in Upstate New York illustrates the horrifying double standards of family police agencies (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies) when it comes to abuse in foster care.  It’s a tragic illustration of why independent studies find vastly more such abuse than reported in official figures. 

News 12 Westchester/Hudson Valley reports that in this case, children were taken because of the mother’s health and living conditions – which sure sounds like poverty confused with neglect.  Relatives were turned down in favor of a stranger.  One dedicated caseworker saw that the foster stranger was allegedly abusing the children and reported it repeatedly.  So, she says, the family police agency fired her.  I could tell you how this story ends, but you probably already know.  And see also this story from the Mid Hudson News.

● Bad as the rate of abuse is in family foster homes, it’s even worse in group homes and institutions. This week’s expose, as reported by the Associated Press, concerns shelters run by a nonprofit – repeat: nonprofit – housing unaccompanied migrant children.  But by now it should be clear: Whenever you institutionalize any population of children who have no families able to fight for them This. Will. Happen. 

● And that is true all over the world.  The Associated Press also has an in-depth story on a bombshell report from a Royal Commission inquiry in New Zealand.  According to the story: 

Of 650,000 children and vulnerable adults in state, foster, and church care between 1950 and 2019 — in a country that today has a population of just 5 million — nearly a third endured physical, sexual, verbal or psychological abuse. Many more were exploited or neglected, the report said. The figures were likely higher, though precise numbers would never be known because complaints were disregarded and records were lost or destroyed. ...

Children were removed arbitrarily and unfairly from their families, the report said, and the majority of New Zealand’s criminal gang members and prisoners are believed to have spent time in care. 

As in Australia and Canada, Indigenous children were targeted for placement in harsher facilities and subject to worse abuse. The majority of children in care were Māori, despite the group comprising less than 20% of New Zealand’s population during the period examined.

 And if you think America is different – well that’s what they thought in New Zealand, too:

“New Zealanders just don’t think this thing would happen, that abuse on this scale would ever happen in New Zealand,” the prime minister said. “We always thought that we were exceptional and different, and the reality is we’re not.”

● Ever notice how often the same so-called “child abuse pediatricians” come up in case after case where they allegedly got the diagnosis wrong?  It’s happened again.  Last week, I linked to this New York Times Magazine story in which even the district attorney’s office that won the conviction now believes child abuse pediatrician Suzanne Starling got it wrong.  Now, Dr. Sarling is back, in this story from WXIA-TV in Atlanta.  WXIA also has a story about first steps other states are taking to try to balance the scales of justice in these cases. 

● The good news: The Frontier reports that the Oklahoma Supreme Court has ruled that it is not illegal for women who have been legally prescribed medical marijuana to smoke it while pregnant.  The bad news: The judges urged the legislature to amend the law to make it illegal.  

● We all know, by now, about the odious practice of family police agencies swiping money that rightfully belongs to foster youth.  But what about when adoptive parents do it?  The Imprint reports on New York legislation that could curb that practice. 

● The New Hampshire Bulletin reports that the state is taking a step toward giving foster children back their own money.  But the state family police agency seems to be stalling. 

In other examples of how The Horror Stories Go in All Directions: 

● The Enterprise in Patrick County, Va., reports that the family policing system in that small county is failing so horrendously that “It would be impossible for children to have not been hurt” in foster care – according to the county’s juvenile court judge. 

● Fox13 Seattle reports that

The State of Washington has agreed to pay $15 million to three sisters who were sexually abused for years at a foster home in Centralia, according to attorneys representing them.  The three women allege the abuse spanned between 1990 and 2000, starting at ages four, five, and six, and lasted until they were teenagers. Two teenage sons of the foster parents are accused of carrying out the abuse. 

● The Post-Tribune in Gary, Ind., reports that 

The Liberty Township woman charged with reckless homicide in the death of her foster son after, according to court documents, she laid on him until he stopped breathing, has been released from Porter County Jail and is scheduled for a July 31 court date. 

Jennifer Lee Wilson, 48, of the 200 block of Falcon Way, is charged in the death of Dakota Levi Stevens, 10, who was placed with her as a foster child on April 5. … Wilson weighed 340 pounds and Dakota weighed 91 pounds, according to charging documents. … 

● And WTVF-TV Nashville reports that 

Law enforcement officials are investigating why a group of teenagers have repeatedly run away from the same foster home on Haskins Chapel Road in Bedford County.  During the past two years, at least four Hispanic teenage girls have disappeared from this location.