Posted on 02/26/2003 9:25:16 AM PST by NautiNurse
$525,000 SETTLEMENT--Agreement ends two-year battle
The Florida Department of Children & Families has agreed to pay a 10-year-old Broward boy $525,000 for the abuse he endured in foster care -- roughly $10,000 for each of the 50 times the boy was molested, his lawyer said.
The settlement, approved Tuesday by Broward Circuit Judge John A. Frusciante, ends a two-year battle between the boy, named John Jones in court papers, and the DCF, which took John into foster care at age 6.
Broward children's advocate Howard Talenfeld, an attorney, sued the department on John's behalf in July 2001, claiming he had been repeatedly brutalized by an older foster child at an unnamed foster home.
Settlement of the John Jones case is the second court victory in as many years for Talenfeld, who last year secured a $5 million settlement on behalf of six Broward County siblings who were starved, abused and molested in foster care.
The settlement with the six ''Roe'' children was the largest in the department's history.
This month, Tallahassee children's advocate Karen Gievers settled with the DCF for $558,000 on behalf of ''Elaine,'' a 14-year-old Miami girl who was repeatedly raped and psychologically tormented while in the department's care. Elaine will receive a lump sum of $225,000 when she turns 18. The rest will come in monthly installments until she is 30.
In John's case, the department agreed to set up a special needs trust for the boy, so that the settlement will not impede his ability to receive mental health care or medical attention through Medicaid, a state and federal program for the most needy. Frusciante, who oversees the boy's court case, agreed to the arrangement Tuesday.
''Unfortunately, [John] is one of the few children who has been abused in the department's care who has been able to recover money for his future needs,'' Talenfeld said. ``He is one of the very few.''
''I think the real tragedy is that so many of these children are physically and sexually abused in care, and the department never gives them the help they need,'' Talenfeld added.
Under an agreement with the youth, Talenfeld's firm will receive $175,000 from the settlement.
The agency was represented in court by a lawyer from the attorney general's office, and DCF officials are not familiar with the details, said Leslie Mann, a spokeswoman in Fort Lauderdale for the DCF.
''We have not seen the settlement, so we cannot comment on it at this time,'' Mann said.
John Jones' lawsuit described a late-1990s Florida child welfare ''system in crisis,'' with overcrowded foster homes, overworked and undertrained caseworkers, and woefully inadequate attention to the needs of children taken into custody.
''Pulled from their natural parents for protection, children placed in [Broward] shelter and foster care deteriorated and at times endured greater harm while in care than they did at their own homes,'' the lawsuit alleged.
The ''B Foster Home'' had been the subject of many complaints to the DCF when John Jones was taken from his grandmother by child protective investigators in May 1997 and placed with his four siblings in the home.
The children had been taken from their parents in August 1996.
Between 1992 and John's arrival at the home, the DCF had been told repeatedly that the ''B'' foster parents physically abused children in their care, were verbally abusive and hostile to the children and department employees, and failed to provide adequate medical care.
The foster father had been arrested for stalking a girlfriend.
Most troubling was a May 1996 report that four foster children in the home had been sexually abused by two of the foster parents' adopted sons. The four children were left in the home, and the foster mother was ''merely asked to keep the boys as separate as possible,'' the lawsuit states.
Also with John at the foster home in 1997 was a 13-year-old foster child ''who had a history of sexual abuse both as a victim and possibly as a perpetrator,'' the lawsuit says.
The 13-year-old later admitted ''to repeatedly sexually abusing John Jones,'' the lawsuit says.
Talenfeld said the boy had been subjected to 50 separate incidents of abuse.
He now suffers from post traumatic stress disorder and an ''explosive disorder,'' Talenfeld said.
33.33333% for the attorney and his firm in this case. I sure would like to know their take for the $5 million case last year.
It's a good thing they said that, or I would have thought the tax payers were footing the bill.
Gee, Mr. lawyer / politician, would you mind applying a liberal amount of Vaseline down here (bending over and pointing to buttocks) before you proceed?
Now, isn't that a sick perspective on the whole thing? Only from a lawyer.
Yep--that's how I figured the lawyer got $3500 for each time the boy was abused.
Up here in Portland, ME I work for one of those private agencies that deals with kids who have been severely abused. These kids go to separate private schools (because they have such bad behavior problems) and either live in therapeutic foster parent homes (for the fairly good ones) or else in residential treatment facilities (for the more screwed up ones--where I work!). The company I work for contracts with the Maine Dept. of Human Services to take care of these kids; state Medicaid pays most of the bills (or I should say us taxpayers!).
But something like that should never have happened--you know everything about these kids that you can know, from birth, and you should know which kid is likely to be a perpetrator of abuse toward other kids. The foster home should also be set up so that there is no possibility of the kids messing with each other: separate bedrooms, alarms on the doors, etc. More important, staff in these homes should be there so that the kids aren't left alone (too simple). It sounds like the kids may have been placed in the wrong type of residential facility and had the wrong level of supervision (both for the abuser and the abusee). Now, unfortunately, you have kids that are going to be screwed up for years--besides the cost to taxpayers, it will be hard for them to have happy lives (and then they may have kids themselves later on when they can hardly take care of themselves).
It is a fun place to work--convenient for my college schedule, the rest of the staff are other young adults so I have lots of new friends, the pay is....well, they would attract better staff if it was higher, but this is a non-profit! We have four kids where I work--three boys ages 12, 9, and 9 and one girl age 9--guess who needs the most supervision so he or she won't perpetrate anything on the other kids! There are always two staff members around 24 hours a day, and at least three staff during the day (sometimes four). This is also a transitional residence--these kids typically come straight from the hospital and eventually move into a less restrictive setting after they have been here a while. The kids are usually pretty good now (since they have been here a while), although last weekend I had to carry one up to his room because he refused to go to bed, and another one was getting ready to whack me with a dining-room chair (he's strong for a 9-year-old!).
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