Foster Parent Pleads Guilty In Child Porn Case

The Morning News ^ | 07/26/2007 | Ron Wood

[sweetliberty]

FAYETTEVILLE -- A Bella Vista man pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to having sexual contact with foster children in his care and filming the encounters.

Brian John Bergthold, 45, admitted to producing child pornography and transporting child pornography in Arkansas earlier this year and to producing child pornography in Oregon in 2000. The Oregon case was transferred to the Western District of Arkansas so they could all be handled at once....

Complete story

[sweetliberty]

The way that Arkansas has gotten around allowing openly homosexual "couples" to become foster parents is by adhering to the same standard that exists for heterosexual couples...unmarried, cohabitating couples cannot be foster parents. There is a big loophole though. Single individuals, male or female, CAN be foster parents and while single women most often get the small children, babies and teenage girls, single men get almost exclusively young boys. This means that if they're sex perps that haven't been caught and convicted, they can become foster parents and have easy access to children who are already very vulnerable. Hopefully this case will change the law somewhat. Arkansas does criminal background and central registry checks on all prospective foster parents, but until the latest legislative update, if an individual had lived in the state for more than 6 years, the FBI check was waived. That has changed so that now all prospective foster and adoptive parents have to have an FBI fingerprint check.

[theDentist]

With any luck, this bast**d will be mistakenly placed into the General Population of whatever prison he is assigned to...

[sweetliberty]

Isn't "diversity" wonderful?

Do one of you Arkansas FReepers have an updated ping list?

[nicmarlo]

This is sickening what the system is allowing to be done to innocent children. The following was posted at that website:

they WILL be in therapy for years for what DHHS put them through! More important FOSTER CARE is the number one place for a Child Predator to abuse children! Does anyone not see that! Stats show that even if children are being abused by their parents they are still better off in their own HOME! I think this pretty much speaks the truth!

[null and void]

Wonderful isn’t *quite* the word I would use...

[sweetliberty]

"even if children are being abused by their parents they are still better off in their own HOME!"

I used to think that until I saw some of the homes they come out of and some of the dramatic improvements in children after being removed. There are a lot of levels of abuse. When it comes to a parent whipping a kid's butt a bit too hard or too often, I don't think it is justified in most cases to remove the kid, but when you have a mom or dad who is strung out on drugs and doesn't take care of the kids or uses them to support their drug habits or who pimp out their 12 and 13 year daughters to pay the rent, those parents have no business with kids, unless and until they make some major changes in their lives and get their priorities in order, and in the case of of parents who use their kids sexually or allow others to, I'm not sure they should ever get them back.

Most foster parents that I've dealt with are good, decent and loving people who work hard with the kids they care for. Sadly, their are exceptions that slip through the cracks. How are you supposed to separate the occasional bad one if they've never been caught and criminally charged? The system is definitely not working the way it should. I can't speak for other states, but I know a lot of why it isn't working here, but what are the alternatives? For now, it's the best we've got.

[nicmarlo]

I also have worked with children who have been placed in foster homes, as the attorney I worked for was their guardian ad litem. Reading through the stories *some* of them had, were similar to what you pointed out as justifiable reasons to remove them from their families' homes. Pimping out children, or not feeding them, or allowing their home to become so infested with cockroaches that children must have them in their beds....this is inexcusable and children obviously cannot remain in such kinds of environments.

Unfortunately, many, many times children were removed for, imo, insignificant reasons, or at least, not reason enough to keep them away from their parents and force them, instead, into a foster placement.

How are you supposed to separate the occasional bad one if they've never been caught and criminally charged?

That is a problem, isn't it? You cannot know. But I also know that caseworkers are unfairly burdened with too many cases, and so children, and their well-being, are not monitored as they should or could be. This is not the caseworkers' faults...as you well know. The system is definitely NOT working right.

[Borax Queen]

With any luck, this bast**d will be mistakenly placed into the General Population of whatever prison he is assigned to...

Bump!