Florida Foster Care Victim’s Adoptive Parents Testify Against Bill to Cap Damages

REFORM Talk previously covered the foster care damage-capping bills moving through the Florida legislature here.

The Florida Senate heard testimony on Wednesday March 30, 2011. They received an earful from foster-to-adopt parents Debbie and Jorge Garcia-Bengochea who learned that their 3 children had been abused in a prior foster home only after the adoption was finalized.

“When we adopted our children, we weren’t aware that they had been sexually abused,” Debbie Garcia-Bengochea told the Senate Committee on Health Regulation. “We weren’t aware that they had been duct-taped to keep them quiet, that they had been tortured, that they had been required to hold each other down while the foster father – who is now serving life without parole – performed sexual acts on them.

“But we were left with all of the damage.”

The damage included the boys’ molesting other children, attacking their adoptive mother and killing the family’s pets.”

“They adopted Brian, Matthew and James in 1998, when the brothers were 6, 5 and 3. The couple already had an 11-year-old adoptive son and had told DCF they couldn’t adopt more children if they had major problems or were acting out sexually.

What they didn’t know – and DCF didn’t tell them – was that the brothers already had a history of abusing each other and other children.

As they grew older and stronger, the boys became aggressive, were expelled from school, had to be separated from other children and broke Debbie’s jaw. The two eldest landed in the juvenile justice system. The Garcia-Bengocheas – Debbie a school principal and Jorge a youth minister – gave up their jobs to stay home and cope with their sons’ continuing offenses.

Finally they learned that the brothers suffered from reactive attachment disorder, in which children who are poorly parented at an early age evince symptoms like those the Garcia-Bengocheas were seeing. Intensive therapy was highly recommended. The couple approached attorney Lance Block, who helped them get Medicaid coverage for the boys’ treatment and win a $10 million claims bill in the 2009 legislative session.”

“Supporters of the measure point out that no CBC existed in the Boynton Beach area at the time the brothers were adopted. They also say the damage caps don’t apply in the worst cases and that claims bills like the Garcia-Bengocheas’ are always an option.

But in the current economic climate, claims bills are problematic. It took years for Marissa Amora, who at 2 was returned by child welfare workers to an abusive home and beaten nearly to death, to win a settlement from DCF for the lifetime of medical care she requires. Then in 2009, the Legislature cut her claim due to the state’s budget crisis

Former DCF Secretary George Sheldon said, “that DCF settled about 74 cases” while he was there.

Damage Caps For Foster Agencies Fought by Family
[WCTV 3/31/11]

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