A Snapshot of a Iowa’s Broken CPS System

This is the story of Loriann Morgan, single mother to Elliot, and the Iowa Department of Human Services. In this case, there was deception involving rulings for visitation and the whereabouts of the child while in foster care and bias towards adopting the child to a preferred foster couple over the return of the child, who has pervasive developmental disorder, to a mother who struggles to stabilize her life. This mother has no arrest record and neglect was the reason that the child was initially removed. In fact, most cases of child removal are from neglect and not abuse.

There is a dangerous carrot dangled by the federal government to the state in that the state gets federal dollars for kids adopted from foster care, but not for return back to the original family.

This is what happens in the current system where social services also play the role of doctor, cop, judge, and jury. There is no question that this woman needed services and assistance, but deception in state social services by allegedly lying on the witness stand of a parental rights termination case is not in the best interest of the child.

The ombudsman is still investigating social services role in this case.

Loriann had a rough life before Elliot. Her father was murdered while in a Joliet, Illinois prison. She was raped at age fourteen by her mom’s boyfriend. In 1984, she married at age seventeen and by 1999 had ended her third marriage. She became a meth user and underwent rehab. In her early thirties, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer and told she would never bear children. In 2005, she found out she had breast cancer, a disease that two close family members had.

During chemotherapy for the breast cancer, she became pregnant with Elliot. Loriann worked three jobs throughout her pregnancy — two bartending, one as a waitress. She developed preeclampsia (high blood pressure).

“[A]lmost as soon as Loriann drove her new baby home from the hospital, she started driving back.

She first noticed Elliot’s runny nose when he was a little over a week old. They were back seeing a doctor after a month, and again two weeks after that.

Two hours away in Sterling, Ill., her mother was succumbing to breast cancer. Loriann had to quit her jobs to care for her. In August, she died. Before Loriann could catch her breath, two more deaths hit close to home: a niece and Loriann’s first father-in-law, a man she had loved like a father.

During that time, Loriann also nursed Elliot through one ear and sinus infection after another, racking up dozens of doctor visits and prescriptions.

She worried incessantly when her boy refused to eat or had crying fits. Growing up with two drug-addled parents, she had no idea what was normal.

She knew only that Elliot was the only family she had left.

Doctors worried that something might be developmentally wrong with Elliot. In fall 2008, they had asked to test him for Fragile X syndrome, a genetic disorder causing retardation.

They also discovered the 2-year-old needed surgery. A fungus had grown in his digestive system because he had taken so many antibiotics.”

2008

“By the end of 2008, Loriann was buckling from exhaustion and stress. A girlfriend suggested she return to her old hometown of Sterling, so Loriann could relax and the friend could watch Elliot.

A longtime partier, Loriann thought the meth she tried one weekend was a harmless crutch. But it was followed by regular weekend use, and eventually small-time dealing.

2009

By the time police knocked on her door, Loriann had a problem.

“We’re going to have to take Elliot.”

The social worker’s words that spring day in 2009 pierced Loriann like tiny bullets.

She had told herself her son’s upbringing would be different than her own rocky childhood. Seeing the police officer and child-protective worker standing on her doorstep, she realized she had failed.

Lisa Foley, a state child-protective worker, had obtained a warrant to test Loriann’s hair for meth use after the townhouse search revealed nothing. The test had come back positive, as Loriann knew it would.”

“As the social workers drove away, she told herself: This stops now.”

Iowa DHS

“The next morning, Loriann sat in her small kitchen and wrote a letter to strangers…In the three-page letter, Loriann told Elliot’s new foster parents what to do if her son was irritated, if he wouldn’t eat or sleep. She described how she was recently told to mix Miralax with orange juice or chocolate milk when he got constipated; how he had a cough and a runny nose and needed to see a doctor.

Finally, she wrote as if to warn them: “Elliot was diagnosed with autism and borderline mental retardation. He can be very aggressive.”

Deceptive “Independent Physician” and the Visitation Change That Followed

“It was September 2009. Over the previous five months, the public and private social workers hired to work with the family had shifted their concern away from Loriann’s progress in drug treatment and toward her 3-year-old’s health.

Elliot, they learned, had been in and out of the doctor’s office dozens of times before he was placed in foster care, mostly with problems related to sinus ear infections. By age 2½, he had had two sets of tubes placed in his ears, had his adenoids and tonsils removed and had surgery in Minnesota for a stomach infection

Carrie Habel, the case manager for the Iowa Department of Human Services, wrote in reports that she believed Loriann was “hypervigilant” when it came to Elliot’s health, taking him to the doctor if he had a slight fever or rash.

Loriann also appeared to exaggerate his medical issues and medicate him too much, Habel wrote.
Jennifer Hoyer, a private counselor who evaluated Loriann, wrote in her reports that “overly aggressive medical attention” would make clinical sense, given the first-time mother’s personality profile.

Loriann, she said, was an anxious, fearful and obsessive person who had suffered much at the hands of others…

Loriann knew on the day of the doctor appointment that September that Dr. Oral, a University of Iowa pediatrician, also was an expert in child abuse, routinely hired by Iowa’s Department of Human Services. She had looked up the doctor on the Internet.

So much for an unbiased medical evaluation, Loriann thought.”
The Visitation Decision

“The boy’s four-hour visit with his mother was not yet over when the social workers pulled up in front of the two-story apartment.

Habel, the state social worker, and Allison Hammond, a private social worker hired for the case, approached, saying they needed to cut the visit short.

Dr. Oral, they said, had decided Elliot could be in danger if left alone with Loriann.

You’ve got to be kidding me, Loriann said to herself. What’s going on?

The doctor had questioned Loriann about Elliot’s medical history earlier in the day, peppering her with questions about her background and mother’s death. Afterward, Elliot had been examined briefly by one of the doctor’s assistants.

Diagnosis: Mom may cause son’s illnesses”

The report Dr. Oral wrote a month later about Elliot was devastating to Loriann.

It turned out Habel and Hammond told the doctor they suspected Loriann was one of those rare mothers who would feign, exaggerate or induce her child’s illnesses for attention and sympathy. Loriann, the social workers said, could have Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy.

The workers noted that Elliot’s pediatrician, Dr. James Hubbard, had said he had no concerns about Elliot’s health.

But Dr. Oral reviewed Elliot’s medical history. Her report stated Habel and Hammond “may be” right.

She recommended the social workers end unsupervised visits immediately. Loriann, she wrote, “should not have any further opportunity to fabricate or induce medical symptoms on this child.”

The Foster Care Home Deception

“After Elliot was placed in foster care in April, Loriann had been allowed to visit her son at at his foster home on a farm in a rural area near Luxemburg. And, like most foster care cases in Iowa, she was allowed regular communication with his foster mother.

But in October, Habel and Hammond told Loriann that Elliot had been moved to a new foster home in Dyersville, a city about 30 minutes from her home near Dubuque.

The new couple, the state and private social workers said, didn’t want Loriann to visit their home.

They also preferred to keep their identities and address confidential.

Loriann’s twice-weekly visits with Elliot were now supervised because of Dr. Oral’s findings, but Loriann still would try to ask her son about the new foster mother she knew only as Heidi. Elliot would stare at her blankly. Sometimes, he just ignored her.

It grated on Loriann that she knew so little about her son’s foster parents.

But one thing she did learn bothered her: They wanted to adopt her son.

To Loriann, the secrecy didn’t make sense.

Something else didn’t add up, either.

Like why her boy smelled.

Every time Elliot was dropped off from his foster home for a visit with his mother, he carried with him the distinctive odor of manure.”

Parental Rights Termination Hearing

The first person called to the witness stand that tense morning on Aug. 4, 2010, was Jennifer Hoyer, the therapist who had worked with Loriann Morgan and her son, Elliot, for more than a year while he was in foster care.

“Loriann’s progress has varied,” Hoyer told Judge Thomas Straka in the Dubuque County courtroom. “There have been times over the course of the last 14 months that Loriann would appear to be doing very, very well, working very hard … then at times the progress would appear to wane.”

By that summer, the social workers, counselors and attorneys involved in Elliot Morgan’s foster care case had run out of time.

In the months leading up to the court battle, social workers had noted changes in Elliot that bothered them.

He threw fits and pulled his hair. He showed aggression toward others at school and at his foster home.

Loriann had done things that bothered them, too. In late 2009, she took her broken- down van to get fixed by a male friend in Illinois. Social workers suspected he was a boyfriend of some sort. Loriann admitted he smoked crack cocaine.

A hair stat test taken afterward suggested Loriann had more than indirect exposure to another person smoking the drug, but a urine test came back negative for cocaine use.

And there were small things that served as red flags in the eyes of the social workers: Loriann took naps with Elliot with the TV on. She talked on the phone while her 3-year-old played video games. They thought she sometimes tried to feed the boy too much.”

Loriann “showed flashes of depression, post-traumatic stress and obsessive-compulsive behavior. Her moods, Hoyer and others believed, seemed to turn — from friendly and bright to resentful and angry — based on the amount of stress in her life…Hoyer, who had worked with the mother and son almost a year and a half, testified that she feared Elliot would suffer emotional neglect if left in Loriann’s care.

“Loriann loves her son very, very much,” the counselor told Judge Straka. “She desperately does not want to lose him, and I believe that she’s been working absolutely as hard as she can to do everything she can to get him back.”

“But over the — what you’ve observed over the last 14 months — you still don’t have optimism that it will last?” Becker asked.

“No, I don’t,” Hoyer said.

Loriann’s Lawyer

“Blaskovich fumed as she sat next to Loriann in the courtroom.

The lawyer thought of the types of parents who typically faced judges in hearings to terminate parental rights: clients who couldn’t stop using drugs, who were violent, who couldn’t stay out of prison.

Her client, Loriann, had been described by nearly everyone involved in the case as highly motivated until social workers went to a doctor hired by the state with accusations of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy.

“Loriann had set up all of her own services and appointments. She had attended outpatient drug treatment faithfully, gotten a job and seldom missed a chance to be with her son.

Loriann had managed all this, even though she had sometimes had to sell plasma to make ends meet.

The lawyer finally dented the case against Loriann when Hoyer acknowledged that the independent medical examination the social worker had recommended to address medical concerns about Elliot never happened.

Loriann was never told the real reason she and Elliot were called to the doctor’s office.

Blaskovich knew Dr. Oral was often hired by DHS to assess child abuse. The social workers obviously wanted to know whether Loriann was overmedicating her son or feigning his illnesses for sympathy or attention, signs of Munchausen’s.

“Would you say that’s an unbiased referral?” Blaskovich asked Hoyer.

“I know there’s a bias there, yeah,” Hoyer answered.

Hoyer’s testimony was followed by similar comments from Allison Hammond, a private social worker who had supervised Loriann’s visits with her 3-year-old; Michelle Parsons, a recent college grad who had organized services for the family; and Carrie Habel, the DHS social worker who oversaw the foster care case.

None testified that they had ever seen Loriann mistreat Elliot.

None witnessed Loriann abusing or neglecting Elliot.

Instead they told the judge how Loriann was once witnessed “disciplining Elliot a little bit too harshly” after a tantrum.

Who is the Foster Carer?

“Habel seemed resolute in her belief that Elliot should be taken permanently from Loriann and adopted by more stable parents.

But she stumbled mentioning the name of Elliot’s foster mother.

“I had instructed Sheri — I’m sorry, not Sheri. I had instructed her, Heidi, to ask Elliot to give her a hug and a kiss,” the social worker testified.

Loriann’s Counselor

Brad Cavanaugh, a master’s-level counselor at Crossroads Counseling Center in Dubuque, had treated Loriann for anxiety and panicky feelings that mirrored symptoms of post-traumatic stress.”

“He told the judge, her attitude toward drugs, her aggressiveness, her finances had all improved.

“My opinion is that she is actually on the road toward maintaining this healthy lifestyle that she is building right now, much more than she is on the road towards going back,” he told Judge Straka.”

DHS Lies

“All Loriann had talked about since the hearing was how it seemed many of the social workers were bent on having Elliot adopted.

Then the mother had remembered something that sent her lawyer scrambling: Elliot had described to Loriann seeing the birth of a calf one day at his foster home.

How did he see that, they both wondered, if he was living with a couple in a house in the city of Dyersville?

Blaskovich turned left onto a gravel road heading toward Luxemburg, toward Elliot’s first foster home on a farm.

She spotted a white sport utility vehicle coming the opposite way. Sitting in the back seat was Elliot.

Blaskovich locked eyes with Parsons, the private social worker driving the SUV.

That’s why Elliot always smells like manure, she thought.

That’s why Elliot stares at Loriann blankly when she asks about Heidi, the Dyersville woman who was supposed to have been his foster mother.

The lawyer kept driving.

On the right side of the road, a herd of black-and-white dairy cows roamed next to two large silos and several outbuildings. A sign out front said the farm belonged to Brian and Sheri Gaul, Elliot’s first foster parents.

“Blaskovich stepped onto porch and knocked on the door.

“Remember me?” she asked Sheri Gaul. “I’m Loriann Morgan’s lawyer.”

Blaskovich’s heart raced.

That’s why Habel corrected herself during her testimony, saying Elliot’s foster mother was named Sheri, then Heidi.

In the coming days, Blaskovich would take steps to prove in court what Loriann suspected: Social workers had misled Loriann about her son’s foster home since October 2009 — more than 10 months.
Loriann was led to believe Elliot was living with a woman named Heidi.

But he was actually living with the Gauls, who wanted to adopt him.

Loriann Re-gains Custody

“Loriann’s attorney sought to reopen Elliot’s case. An assistant Dubuque County attorney resisted, and none of the social workers or other lawyers involved agreed that Loriann had been deceived.

But once a new judge, Monica Ackley, heard what had transpired during an almost two-year legal battle, she decided Loriann deserved another chance.

The single mother’s visitations with Elliot — first supervised, then unsupervised — were restored.

In April [2011], Judge Ackley sent Elliot home to his mother for good.”

Ombudsman

“Loriann’s attorney has made allegations of wrongdoing to Iowa’s Office of Citizens’ Aide/Ombudsman and the Supreme Court’s attorney discipline board.

Since The Des Moines Register and the ombudsman have looked into the case over the past year, Iowa’s Department of Human Services has said it will change rules that allow social workers to conceal the whereabouts of foster children.

But Loriann says she is still angry about how she was treated in the child welfare system, and she believes there should be consequences for those who deceive birth parents.

When Elliot was removed from Loriann’s home at age 2, he was developmentally delayed and barely able to express himself.

Those delays have a name — pervasive developmental disorder — though some of the symptoms are no longer as pervasive as the name would imply.

Elliot, now 5, no longer needs one-on-one assistance in school with speech. Although he is sweet, bright and engaging, he also continues to have behavioral problems.

Some involved in the case blamed Loriann for Elliot’s behavior; she believes the acting out is mostly the result of his foster care experience.

Professionals who have examined Elliot say it would be difficult to assess how much of his behavior problems are due to his disorder and how much are due to the traumatic experiences that marked most of his early life.”

Ethical Issues

“Michael Sorci, who heads the Youth Law Center in Des Moines, said social workers and lawyers do not have to tell a birth parent where a child is in foster care if danger is perceived. But court rules prohibit them from intentionally misleading parents about a child’s whereabouts.

Attorneys also have an ethical obligation under their professional code to correct inaccuracies in official court records. Prejudicing a case with inaccurate information amounts to misconduct for both lawyers and judges, Sorci said.

In addition, Department of Human Services workers are required to maintain relationships based on “openness, honesty and mutual trust,” according to the state agency’s handbook. They are also “expected to conduct themselves in a manner that creates and maintains respect for DHS, their co-workers and the individuals served.”

But court transcripts show case manager Carrie Habel changed the name of Elliot’s foster mother on the witness stand, keeping deceptions about Elliot’s foster care whereabouts alive at Loriann’s termination-of-parental-rights hearing in August 2010.

Blaskovich and Loriann wanted the ombudsman and ethics board to look into the conduct of social workers and lawyers paid by the state that almost led to Loriann losing her only child.

They say those workers — Allison Hammond, a private social worker who supervised Loriann’s visits with her 3-year-old; Michelle Parsons, another private worker who organized services for the family; and Habel, the state social worker who oversaw the foster care case — tainted the case so Elliot could be adopted by a couple they preferred.

A proposed new rule would require state workers to document evidence that a foster child or foster parents would face a direct or indirect threat of harm if the foster parents’ location were disclosed. Workers would be required to review this portion of the plan at least every six months, according to DHS spokesman Roger Munns. But the proposed rule change does not address consequences for deceiving a birth parent, and Munns would not comment on that aspect because of confidentiality laws.”

Scapegoat Foster Mother #2

“Heidi Wall, the woman social workers contended was Elliot’s foster mother for 10 months, has since signed a sworn affidavit for the court saying Elliot was in her care for only four days. After the fourth day, Wall said, the boy’s original foster parents, Brian and Sheri Gaul, called and said they wanted Elliot back.

Wall said she was told Elliot’s mother had been diagnosed with Munchausen syndrome by proxy and that she was a dangerous person.

She said she has learned from the ombudsman’s office that Habel reported to her supervisors the two had talked several times when Elliot was in her home briefly. Habel reported that Elliot was not transitioning well into her home.

“That wasn’t true,” she said. “He wasn’t even in my house long enough for me to have an opinion.”

A state investigator for the ombudsman’s office later compared Habel’s reports of calls to Wall with the Dyersville woman’s phone records, and no matches were found, Wall said.

“I’m quite angry to have been brought in and used as a scapegoat like this,” she said.”

Sources: Des Moines Register 5-Part October Series
Part 1
[Des Moines Register 10/1/11 by Lee Rood]

Part 2
[Des Moines Register 10/2/11 by Lee Rood]

Part 3
[Des Moines Register 10/3/11 by Lee Rood]

Part 4
[Des Moines Register 10/4/11 by Lee Rood]

Part 5
[Des Moines Register 10/5/11 by Lee Rood]

REFORM Puzzle Piece