The child welfare establishment just got four billion messages: Your system is not safe

 

 Five years ago, like many other states, California passed a law to reopen the statute of limitations so survivors of child sexual abuse could sue those responsible. What lawmakers had in mind, of course, was institutions such as the Catholic Church, then mired in scandal over abuses by priests and institutional cover-up. 

As a result, to take one example, the Diocese of Los Angeles has had to pay $1.5 billion in settlements with survivors. 

What lawmakers didn’t realize was that, horrific as were the predations of priests, they were nothing compared to the horrors inflicted in foster care – especially group homes and institutions. 

As a result, to take one example: Los Angeles County is likely to agree soon to pay $4 billion – you read that right, four billion dollars – to survivors of abuse inflicted on them when they were in the custody of the Los Angeles County foster care system and/or juvenile justice system.  The money will be divided among 6,800 survivors – and those are just the ones who suffered sexual abuse. 

This $4 billion settlement is the latest illustration of the fact that the entire model of American child welfare was built on a false premise: that child removal equals child safety. Sure, it was said, being torn from everyone a child knows and loves might do emotional harm (in itself a dismissal of profound trauma) but at least they’ll be safe. 

So let's apply the rhetoric we’ve heard from the child welfare establishment decade after decade to these cases.  Some of the 6,800 were placed through the juvenile justice system (which, in itself is more likely if a child was placed in foster care first) but for those among the 6,800 placed through the child welfare system: 

● In every one of those cases, someone decided to tear their family apart in the name of “child safety.”

● In every one of those cases, someone decided they were putting “child safety” ahead of “family preservation.”

● In every one of those cases, someone decided they were acting in the name of “child protection.”

● In every one of those cases, someone decided they were defending “children’s rights.”

● In every one of those cases, someone decided they were putting those “children’s rights” ahead of “parents' rights.”

● In every one of those cases, someone decided to “err on the side of the child.” 

Take a good, long look at how that worked out.  Then take another good, long look the next time you hear that same rhetoric from the take-the-child-and-run crowd. 

Oh, but that crowd will say, those 6,800 cases were just aberrations. The scandals say otherwise.  Just in this decade scandals involving rampant abuse have made headlines in Arizona, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Utah, Oklahoma, Washington state, or Arkansas,  Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island – and I’m sure I’ve missed some. 

The data also say otherwise. Yes, the majority of family foster homes are not abusive – it’s not clear if you can say even that about institutions; and, of course, institutionalization is inherently abusive.  Study after study, using conservative methodology, finds abuse in one-quarter to one-third of family foster homes – and the record of group homes and institutions is even worse.  

Foster care apologists also will say these suits deal with abuse from long ago, and really, truly, we’ve all cleaned up our acts since then! But that’s not what the U.S. Senate Finance Committee found just last year. 

Of course, instead of learning the right lessons, some lawmakers are rushing to try to extend protection not to the children but to the agencies responsible for the abuse. In California, private agencies that oversee foster homes and run group homes and institutions sought, and almost got, near immunity from lawsuits. That failed, so now they’re trying for a bailout. New York agencies are doing the same. So are their counterparts in Illinois.

The Los Angeles settlement is far from the end of the story, even in California. 

On the very day the Los Angeles settlement was announced the second of two sets of lawsuits was filed by scores of people who say they survived horrible abuse at the Polinsky Children’s Center in San Diego. 

Said one of the lawyers bringing the suit: “Based on our investigation, the county of San Diego was apparently one of the largest employers of child molesters in the state of California."

That should come as no surprise. Predators go where the prey is. 

San Diego County hasn’t commented on the lawsuits themselves (though the county wants you to know it "remains committed to the safety of all children provided temporary respite at Polinsky Children’s Center.") If the county ever does comment on the lawsuits, I’ll bet officials will say something about how that was all in the past and everything is fixed now. But the allegations cover 1996 to 2023. 

Back in Los Angeles, according to the New York Times 

“On behalf of the county, I apologize wholeheartedly to everyone who was harmed by these reprehensible acts,” the county’s chief executive, Fesia Davenport, said in a statement on Friday. “The historic scope of this settlement makes clear that we are committed to helping the survivors recover and rebuild their lives — and to making and enforcing the systemic changes needed to keep young people safe.”

But in a county that tears apart children at one of the highest rates among America’s largest cities and their surrounding counties, the only systemic changes that will work are: 

● Stop taking away so many children needlessly, so you don’t have to rely on substandard foster homes.

● Shut down the group homes and institutions. 

Having spent decades turning their backs on abuse in systems for which they have ultimate responsibility, one can only hope that for governments in California and across the country, getting hit with a $4 billion two-by-four will be enough to get their attention.