The Audacity of Lies: Turning Abused Children into Gold

http://www.broowaha.com/articles/8097/the-audacity-of-lies-turning-abused-children-into-gold

Credit: Joshua Allen, Turning Abused Children into Gold, September 29, 2010

Treating abused children as commercial assets is offensive and objectionable. There must be another way.

 

“When the only thing you have ever worked with are words, how can you not lie?”
Politicians running for office such as Governor Brown and Los Angles DA Steven Cooley have found a legitimate “culture of corruption,” with the prosecution of the corrupt and pathetic leadership of the city of Bell. Handpicked city council members were paid close to 100 thousand dollars a year to work part time, and voted or acquiesced, to city managers and the police chief who paid themselves millions of dollars in salary and pension benefits over less than half a decade.

So what does this have to do with foster care?
As I noted previously, CEO’s of Foster Care Agencies have used the same model of corruption for years, putting friends and cronies on their board of directors who in exchange for- Lord knows what- vote huge and inappropriate salaries to administrators, CEO’s and whatever connected family and friends are allowed in on the spoils.
The latest Foster Agency to be snared in this culture of corruption is Teens Happy Homes which is run by CEO Beautina Robinson and administrator Dr. Nikki Milani.

Dr. Milani and family is expected to leave within the next 2 weeks as county audits continue a thorough investigation examining the inner workings of an agency that grew in just 2 or 3 years from caring for over 20 cases of abused and neglected children to over 200 children.

For those not familiar with the foster agency system in Los Angeles, this represents a great deal of money. Similar money to the corrupt takings from those involved with the city of Bell and, thus the comparison.

We are speaking about millions of dollars of tax dollars, and if you work it right, a lot of it can be yours!

A foster care agency with 200 cases of abused and neglected children may gross more than 5 million $5,000,000 annually with just a fraction of these monies actually making its way to foster parents for the care of abused and neglected children.

Five (5) or ten million dollars a year is a lot of money for a bent agency to divide up between friends and family members. The trick, for the more astute, is to ensure foster children remain properly cared for, just enough to allow the agency to stay under the county auditor’s radar while friends and family grow fat off the land. (Well actually, fat off of the abused children.)

Details about why Dr. Milani and friend have to leave are a bit hazy, but seem to have something to do with how she bought into Teens Happy Homes FFA contract, paying Beautina Robinson 10’s of thousands of dollars (contrary to county and state regulation if not law) to buy into the agency. This purchase of a large or even a controlling interest allowed Dr. Milani to install herself and cronies on the board of directors of Teens Happy Homes.

This controlling interest is very important since Agency Board Members vote and control salaries and hiring. Therefore Dr. Milani was able to control her own salary and personnel evaluations as well as the large salary of a family member who along with Dr. Milani is being forced to leave their positions at Teens Happy Homes.

One source quotes CEO Beautina Robinson as characterizing the payment by Dr. Milani as a “charitable donation,” rather than an outright payment for agency control. Of course, - everything is on the up and up!

Yes ladies and gentlemen, it is now official. According to Ms. Robinson, we must be stupid.
County auditors continue to comb through agency books daily and the investigation by no means ends with the departure of Dr. Milani and family.

Dr. Milani was last heard from as administrator for disgraced CEO Craig Woods of the now defunct agency United Care. United Care later shut down after the death of Viola Vanclief who died from being bashed on the head with a hammer and whose foster parent Kiana Barker is currently being charged with her murder.

Dr. Milani was an administrator for United Care for many years and it would appear she was in a strong position to understand the allegedly corrupt and unethical business practices she may have witnessed there. It is alleged for example, that United Care has yet to return over $200,000 dollars from the quarter million the county says is still owed them because of some type of fraud or misappropriation a few years back. Unfortunately this is not unusual in the foster agency system in Los Angeles.

Milani was said to have come to Teens Happy Homes with the goal of doing things differently, but apparently this was not the case. Evidently, setting your own (and family members) salary can be quite seductive. One can only imagine the glowing descriptions present on her mandatory employee evaluations. Clearly worth the paper they were printed on.

At the beginning, Dr. Milani almost doubled the census case numbers (abused children) for Teens Happy Homes, and brought over (stole) many foster families from United Care. Several of these foster parents found it to be a profitable move in many ways, and many liked Milani personally and were only too happy to leave United Care.

The county frowns on this practice but has been unable to prevent it. Treating abused and neglected children as commercial assets is offensive and objectionable, but this is what has happened in this flawed system that is resistant to reform.

And it is resistant to reform because of the money. Isn’t it always about the money? That the county found out about this growing scheme is commendable. Keep up the good work.

Eventually however, DCFS is going to have to look in the mirror. Who will be commended then?

Children Committing Suicide in LA County DCFS Care

“… laws, according to state documents, encourage counties and their private contractors to earn money by placing and keeping children in foster care. The county receives $30,000 to $150,000 in state and federal revenues annually for each child placed.”

[While reading this, please keep in mind the age of the story. The statistics have not decreased in the past 9 years, but on the contrary have increased. Although the beginning doesn't give the full impact of the article, please do read on as you will find it increasingly interesting and somewhat enlightening. ]

December 28, 2003
Troy Anderson
Staff Writer

Children committing suicide at younger age

Los Angeles County’s child protective system is one of the most violent and dangerous in the nation, and its foster children are up to 10 times more likely to die from abuse or neglect than elsewhere in the country, a two-year investigation by the Daily News has found.

In 2001 in the United States, 1.5 percent of the 1,225 children whodied from abuse and neglect were in foster care, but in the county 14.3 percent of the 35 children who died of mistreatment that year were in foster care, government statistics show. The percentage in the county from 1991 to 2001 averaged 4.23 percent. The taxpayer-funded county and state systems are so overwhelmed with false allegations – four out of every five mistreatment reports are ruled unfounded or inconclusive – and filled with so many children who shouldn’t even be in the system, experts say, that social workers are failing in their basic mission to protect youngsters. Nationally, two out of three reports of mistreatment are false.

Since 1991, the county Coroner’s Office has referred more than 2,300 child deaths to the county’s child death review team – and more than 660 of those dead children were involved in the child protective system, including nearly 160 who were homicide victims.

In many of these deaths, county Children’s Services Inspector General Michael Watrobski made recommendations to the Department of Children and Family Services to conduct in-house investigations to determine if disciplinary action was warranted against those workers involved
in the cases.

Of 191 child deaths Watrobski investigated since 2001, he made a total of 63 recommendations to address systemic problems to improve the way the system works in an effort to reduce the number of child deaths.

Despite spending more than $36 million on foster care lawsuit settlements, judgments and legal expenses since 1990, DCFS disciplined less than a third of the social workers responsible for the lawsuits, most of which involved families who alleged social workers’ negligence contributed to the deaths and mistreatment of their children in foster care.

“That’s pathetic,” county Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said. “When you have a department that is responsible for the health and safety of children there is no excuse to have a dismal record of
accountability like this.”

Meanwhile, in the various facilities that make up the county’s foster care system, between 6 percent and 28 percent of the children are abused or neglected – figures comparable to the rate in New Jersey, which many experts have long called the state with the most dangerous child welfare system in the nation.

In the general population, only 1 percent of children suffer such mistreatment.

“When I stepped into this job, I said that too many kids are hurt in foster care,” said DCFS Director David Sanders, who started in March after the forced resignations of the previous four directors. “That is absolutely glaring and the fact this department has never been willing to say that is a huge problem.

“It is clear when you compare us to other systems, we have more kids being hurt in our care than in other systems. That is absolutely inexcusable. I can’t say that more strongly. If is a reflection of a
system that isn’t working.”

Despite the staggering number of child deaths and mistreatment of thousands of children, Sanders said the department’s efforts have saved the lives of hundreds of children over the years. He also noted
that the vast majority of foster parents don’t mistreat children.

And child advocates say for the first time in the county’s history the DCFS director is taking unprecedented steps to reduce the number of deaths and percentage of foster children who are mistreated.

“In the past, the system has failed to protect children in its care,” said Andrew Bridge, managing director of child welfare reform programs at the private Broad Foundation. “The new leadership at the
department has been left with that legacy and is taking aggressive steps to fix it and protect children.”

DCFS statistics show the percentage of foster children abused and neglected averages about 6 percent, but in the foster homes supervised by private foster family agencies, an average of 10 percent of children are mistreated. However, the rates range up to 28 percent in some homes, Sanders said.

Statewide, the rate averages close to 1 percent.

In New Jersey, the foster care mistreatment rate ranges from 7 percent to 28 percent in different parts of the state, said Marcia Lowry, executive director of the New York City-based Children’s Rights advocacy organization.

Of 20 states surveyed in 1999, the percentage of children mistreated by foster parents averaged a half percent. The rate of abuse ranged from one-tenth of a percent in Arizona, Delaware and Wyoming to 1.6 percent in Illinois to 2.3 percent in Rhode Island, according to federal statistics.

Susan Lambiase, associate director of Children’s Rights, was surprised to learn of the percentage in Los Angeles County, calling it “absolutely horrendous.”

“(Los Angeles County is) a child welfare system in crisis because the children are getting pulled from their homes to keep them safe and the system cannot assure that they are being kept safe,” said Lambiase, whose organization has filed about 10 class-action lawsuits to place state child welfare systems under federal consent decrees and is considering what action it might take in Los Angeles County.

“It’s unacceptable,” she said. “This is a malfunctioning foster care system given that its role in society is to protect children from abuse and neglect.”

Critics say social workers are so busy filling out paperwork and investigating false reports that they are overlooking the warning signs of many children in the community in real danger and are not able to properly ensure the safety of children in foster care.

“When you overload your system with children who don’t need to be in foster care, workers have less time to find the children in real danger,” said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va.

The Daily News investigation found that up to half of the 75,000 children in the system and adoptive homes were needlessly placed in a system that is often more dangerous than their own homes because of financial incentives in state and federal laws. These laws, according to state documents, encourage counties and their private contractors to earn money by placing and keeping children in foster care. The county receives $30,000 to $150,000 in state and federal revenues annually for each child placed.

Some examples of settled cases involving the deaths of foster children include:

–Long Beach resident Jacquelyn Bishop, whose twins were taken away because she hadn’t gotten her son an immunization. Kameron Demery, 2, was later beaten to death by his foster mother.

The foster mother was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to prison. In 2000, the county settled a wrongful death case with Bishop for $200,000.

–Gardena resident Debra Reid was awarded a $1 million settlement last year for the death of her 9-year-old son Jonathan Reid, who had been in foster homes in El Monte and Pomona. He died of an asthma
attack in 1997 after social workers didn’t notify the foster mother of his severe asthma and diabetes conditions – a tragic irony, because the boy was placed in foster care after county social workers alleged Reid was neglecting her son by not providing appropriate medical care for his diabetes and asthma.

Reid’s other son, 10-year-old Debvin Mitchell, who received $100,000 as part of the settlement after he was wrongfully detained, said his foster parents were “brutal” to him during his one-and-a-half years in multiple foster homes.

“I thought that it was cruel and unusual for being beaten like that for no reason,” said Mitchell. “When I came home, I had bruises everywhere. I feel good to be back with my family where I don’t get beaten for silly things for no reason and most of all I’m glad to be back with my mom.”

Anthony Cavuoti, who has worked as a DCFS social worker for 14 years, said the department does a poor job of protecting children.

“The nominal goal is to protect children, but the real goal is to make money,” he said. “A caseworker used to have 80 to 100 cases. Now we have 30, but we have to file five times as much paperwork. If the workers put kids before paperwork and administration, they are going to be forced out or harassed. With such a mentality, children are always in danger.”

In a historic step to address the problem at the root of the system’s failures, Juvenile Court Presiding Judge Michael Nash recently called for a historic reevaluation of half of the 30,000 cases of children
in foster homes to determine who could be safely returned to their families or relatives.

If properly done by providing the services families need, experts say this step combined with the DCFS request for a federal waiver to use $250 million of its $1.4 billion budget on services to help keep families together could ultimately reduce the number of children in foster care and social workers’ large caseloads, giving them more time to help protect children in truly dangerous situations.

“The court system itself should only be for those cases that reflect serious cases of abuse and neglect,” Nash said. “We have to have more of a talk first, shoot later mentality rather than a shoot first, talk later mentality. We can do a much better job.”

Sanders said more than 25 percent of those children will probably be able to return home. Concerned that two-thirds of his 6,500-employees are working behind desks, Sanders said he plans to move 1,000 staff promoted to office jobs by previous directors back to the streets as social workers, which will reduce caseloads and give workers more time to spend with families, a critical element to assure the safetyof children.

Keywords: LOS ANGELES COUNTY – FOSTER CARE – CHILD – DAILY NEWS -PROBE -VIOLENCE – DEATH – MURDER – US – STATISTIC – COMPARISON – REPORT - DEPT OF CHILDREN FAMILY SERVICES – DCFS – REACTION – ABUSE – ISSUE – LIST - SAFETY -CALIFORNIA – REFORM

Shock study: 12% of kids sexually abused in govt. custody

Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Friday, January 8th, 2010

Some 12 percent of minors held in government custody are sexually abused, and in some facilities the rate reaches a stunning one in three children, says a report released Thursday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

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The law did not prevent abuse - it allowed the law to abuse them. The children became permanently dependant on therapists, drugs, government, and the DCF. Their relationship with their parents was destroyed. Their marriage was wracked with distrust, bitterness, anger, and other emotions. Their heart and soul are damaged, maybe forever. The family is broken financially, emotionally, and spiritually.

http://www.massoutrage.com/ma/restraining-order-resources/restraining-orders-how-they-really-work/

CALIFORNIA DEPENDENCY COURTS NEED TO BE OPEN LEGISLATORS TOLD

Nearly 60,000 California children are supervised by a county dependency court. But who's supervising those courts? Children's advocates and officials say accountability and transparency would be improved in cases involving child abuse, neglect and foster care placements.

Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles), who introduced the bill, said that based on the comments at the hearing, he would probably introduce a bill proposing a pilot program for open court proceedings.

"Ultimately, I believe it's in the best interest of children to have a court where the public can see both strengths and deficiencies in the system," Feuer said after the hearing. He cited Minnesota's move to open dependency courts, where, he said, no additional harm to children or their families was shown.

Edwards said the presumption that dependency court proceedings are secret leads to a closed atmosphere that does a disservice to the court and the families involved.

------------------------------------------ COMMENTS -----------------------------------------------------
In our present state, children are being taken from loving parents at will. In one horrendous case, two teen-age children were given to Commissioners Alan Friedenthal and Steff Padilla to adopt. There is huge controversie surrounding Commissioner Friedenthal's decisions in Family Court. It is awfully suspect that he was able to adopt children against the parent's wishes.

If dependancy court records were open, we may find out if certain lawyers such as Kenneth Sherman garnered favor in family law by assisting Friedenthal and Padilla in the aquisition of the two children.
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As for Los Angeles DCFS caseworkers, the allegations are “100 percent true.”

“I’ve witnessed DI-CSW Christina Lin (Torrance office) lie and withhold exculpatory evidence. I've seen her supervisor Minda Light cover up for her. I’ve witnessed Debra Ramirez manipulate people. It’s absolutely true that they are untrustworthy,” former DCFS employee Pendolphi said. “They intimidate and threaten parents. I’ve witnessed that first hand and I quit because I could not be the part of the corrupt system that destroys families.”

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This bill should be passed, it will solve much of the incompetence and dysfunction in the DCFS and court system. By allowing transparency in the children’s court system, due process and the rights of families can be restored without risking the lives of children. As it stands now, DCFS/Children’s court can take your children at their discretion without any accountability.

They do not follow any constitutional guidelines when investigating or handling cases and their agenda can be imposed on anyone, innocent or guilty of any crime. This amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in some cases, for accused parents and especially for the children that wind up being abused/further abused while in the system.

It makes DCFS and children's court accountable for their decisions and for their cases. What we have now is not working, we have empowered sometimes untrained immoral civilians with enforcement/investigation of criminal statutes and have given them powers that they are not equipped for and are not accountable for. If they are not held accountable, then the children’s court system, referees and judges cannot be held accountable either and it’s one giant corrupt and screwed up system.

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“Opening dependency courtsmay yield the biggest bang-for-the-buck of any child protection measure. Any solution to our current child safety crisis lies in expanding, not curtailing civil rights.

“In other words, those worthy of scrutiny could no longer hide behind confidentiality; and those who suffer false accusations silently could defend themselves with the public record.

SEN. NANCY SCHAEFER EXPOSES EVIL CPS

US Senator Nancy Schaefer was murdered several years after coming out against CPS, describing them as "Protected Empire Built on Taking Children and Separating Families"...Great, MUST SEE Video!

FEDERAL APPELS COURT FINDS DCFS TACTIC UNCONSTITUTIONAL

City: Sacramento, CA

As families gather for the holidays, a recent ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals offers hope to hundreds of thousands of parents haunted by the nightmare of unproven child abuse allegations.

For years, attorneys with Pacific Justice Institute have warned parents that, once CPS decides to investigate them for child abuse - sometimes based on anonymous tips from neighbors or vindictive ex-spouses - their names can end up on California's Child Abuse Central Index (CACI). Parents are listed on the CACI even when CPS eventually deems the charges "inconclusive" and closes its files. The CACI listing shows up on background checks for years to come and prevents parents from obtaining jobs or state licenses.

In Humphries v. County of Los Angeles, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sharply criticized the ease with which people are listed on the CACI and the obstacles which prevent their names from being removed. The court was also troubled by a study indicating that as many as half of the more than 800,000 individuals listed on the CACI "may have a legitimate basis for expungement." Calling the list "the reverse of the presumption of innocence in our criminal justice system," the court ordered the state to enact greater procedural safeguards.

PJI President Brad Dacus commented, "It is gratifying that the Ninth Circuit has acknowledged what we have been saying for years-that treating parents as criminals when they are never convicted of a crime is unjust. We call on the legislature to finally fix this broken system in a way that honors basic constitutional rights."

Karen Milam, who directs PJI's Southern California office, stated, "Every year, PJI is inundated with hundreds of calls from desperate parents who do not understand how they could be labeled as child abusers based solely on unproven suspicions. This ruling is an important step toward keeping CPS honest."

GEORGIA v. RANDOLPH

Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103(2006)is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that police without a search warrant could not constitutionally search a house in which one resident consents to the search while another resident objects The court distinguished the case from the "co-occupant consent rule" announced in United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164 (1974), which permitted one resident to consent in the co-occupant's absence. The case proved yet another battle in the ongoing contest between proponents of the "Originalist" and the "Living Constitution" philosophies on the Court (and within American jurisprudence).

Know Your Rights - You Do Not Have to Consent to a Search!

Police officers know the restrictions, and know that they are not allowed to search without probable cause. To get around this requirement, they will often ask for your consent. If a police officer asks for permission to search your car, your home, or your person - you generally have the right to say NO.