How Could You?Hall of Shame-Kansas Adoptive Parent UPDATED
This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.
From Kansas, “the adoptive mother beat the girl with a white stick or cut-up curtain rod, one of the girl’s brothers told a school counselor. He also said their parents kept her in a locked room in the basement, made her drink hydrogen peroxide, punished her with hot showers and often fed her just bread for dinner.
At age 14, she weighed 66 pounds.
The girl “reported she is chained to the bed when the bed is clean and she forgets to take a bath because her parents do not want her to get the bed dirty. (She) said she sleeps on the concrete floor when this happens but parents make sure that (she) has enough room to lie down,” according to a petition filed in Sedgwick County District Court seeking an order of protection for her and three other children.
The girl said she had been hit on her arms, legs and back but never on the head. Her 10-year-old brother, though, reported she was beaten on the head every day with the curtain rod.
Police put the girl and her three adopted brothers in protective custody on March 28.
The parents denied the allegations and asked for a trial. In March, they told investigators with the state that the children were lying to get the parents in trouble and that the 10-year-old boy was upset that his computer had been taken away.
The parents, who adopted the girl 10 years ago when she was 4, were to have been her refuge from a biological mother whose neglect left her severely underweight and developmentally delayed.
But the report that prompted her removal from her home this spring was the ninth time in a little more than five years that someone had voiced concerns about her welfare to the Kansas Department for Children and Families.”
“The 14-year-old girl experienced neglect at an early age.Her biological mother once left her alone in a crib for 16 hours, according to a petition filed in 2001. Jo Shaver, a social services investigator, said she saw the girl eat old dried food off the carpet. She expressed concern about the cleanliness of the house, which had bugs and mice, and about the mother’s ability to provide a good home. The girl’s older sister already had been removed from the home.At 17 months, the girl was in the 5th percentile for height and weight. Shaver expressed concern that she was not yet walking.
A doctor examined the girl on March 15, 2001.
“I suspect her failure to thrive and developmental delay may be due to psychosocial factors,” the doctor reported.
The parents now accused of abusing the girl adopted her in 2004, records show.
The father told investigators that he and his wife had been foster parents for 16 years.
Theresa Freed, spokeswoman for the DCF, said the agency could not comment on a specific case because of privacy concerns. But she said the DCF and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment evaluate potential foster parents.
“We assess the physical environment and the prospective foster parents’ abilities to care for children,” she said in an e-mailed statement.
Foster parents must undergo background checks for child abuse and criminal history, Freed said. Training addresses how to parent children who experience the trauma of removal and allows the potential foster parent and trainer to assess whether the potential foster parent is capable of meeting the needs of foster children.
Potential foster parents also undergo a home assessment that examines parenting styles and their capacity to protect the child.
“If they meet all of the criteria and receive a license, they are eligible for placements,” Freed said.
Foster parents who adopt undergo this process, she said. The DCF then would sign the consent for adoption, and a judge would ultimately sign off on it.
“It is troubling to learn of any alleged child abuse or neglect,” Freed said in the statement. “It is our goal to prevent such tragedies and improve the child welfare system so that every child in foster care is placed with a loving family that will protect him/her from harm.”’
“The petition involving the girl notes eight other reports made to the state about her.• On Jan. 9, 2009, someone reported the girl came to school with a large scratch on her face and a bruise on her left cheek. “It was also reported that (the girl) was very thin, often asked for food at school and gets in trouble with her parents when they find out she asks for food,” the report says. The DCF found the allegations to be unsubstantiated and said no services were needed.
Freed said unsubstantiated means that after assessing a report of alleged child abuse or neglect, the DCF finds that the facts or circumstances do not provide “clear and convincing” evidence to meet the legal definition of abuse or neglect.
• On Jan. 27, 2009, someone alleged that the girl had sores on her mouth, tongue and lip so painful it hurt her to eat. After an assessment, the DCF determined the allegations were unsubstantiated and that services were not needed.
• On May 13, 2010, someone reported that the girl needed new glasses, that the parents had refused to provide them and that she “was made to sleep in the bathtub as punishment for wetting the bed.” Again, the DCF determined the allegations were unsubstantiated and services were not needed.
• On Nov. 5, 2010, someone reported that the girl was without proper care and that her parents were overwhelmed by her behavior. “The family refused services, and the case was closed,” the petition says.
• On Feb. 8, 2011, someone reported that during a dental exam at school, a dentist found evidence of blunt-force trauma to the girl’s jaw. The girl “reported she did not know how it occurred or who/what caused it,” according to the petition. The DCF determined the allegations were unsubstantiated, but the parents began receiving therapy services.
• On May 26, 2011, someone reported that the girl “was without proper care and control. It was reported that (she) has missed school, is treated unfairly by parents and would be isolated for the summer,” the petition says. The parents continued services through the Wichita Child Guidance Center.
• On April 19, 2012, someone reported that the girl “has red marks on her face and was sleep-deprived. It was also reported that (she) is a bed wetter and that parents are keeping her awake late into the night and it is affecting her school work,” the petition said. The DCF determined the allegations were unsubstantiated. The family refused services, and the case was closed.
• On Oct. 30, 2012, someone reported that the mother hit the girl with a baseball bat. The DCF determined the allegations were unsubstantiated and services were not needed.”
“Windowless roomWhen police and McNeal, the social worker, went to the girl’s house to investigate, the mother would not let them in at first, saying that her husband was sick and on oxygen and that she was not feeling well either, court documents say.
Investigators went to the girl’s room, which had no windows and a concrete floor, court documents say. The mother told them that it used to be a storage room.
McNeal saw a small box for an alarm system on the top left corner of the bedroom door, the petition says.
She also noted seeing a 5-gallon bucket in the room. The mother said the family was remodeling and had been using the bucket for mud for dry walling.
“We need to get out of here,” the mother said several times, the petition says.
On March 28, court documents say, McNeal interviewed the children’s adoptive paternal grandmother by phone, and she said the younger boys were with her. She would not say where she was and refused to take the children to the Wichita Children’s Home.
Two hours later, McNeal received a call from a police officer saying the parents had pulled the boys from school and he was unable to put the children in protective custody. The police officer also reported that the father had told him the children’s adoptive paternal grandfather would take the children to Missouri.
“You’re not getting the others,” the father told McNeal, according to court documents.
Eventually, the state was able to put all four children in custody, a prosecutor said.
The mother told McNeal that “she would like to have (the girl) removed because she causes trouble and has caused the family nothing but problems,” court documents say.
“Even (a) girls home refused to take care of (her),” the father said in court documents.
In April, the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office arrested the father and booked him into jail, records show, on suspicion of criminal damage to property. He was accused of kicking the window out of the frame on one of the back-seat doors of a sheriff’s car.
Sheriff’s Lt. David Mattingly said deputies assisting detectives were serving a search warrant at the family’s residence at the time.
During the May 16 court hearing, the parents’ lawyer told the judge they would like to see the boys.
“The boys must think they’ve been abandoned,” Cleary said.
The Saint Francis Community Services social worker said law enforcement and the doctor who diagnosed the girl as a victim of torture recommended the parents have no contact with any of the children.
“There was severe neglect,” the social worker said. “She diagnosed her with child torture. She doesn’t feel these parents would be appropriate with any children.””
In Need of Care: The girl in the basement
[The Wichita Eagle 6/3/14 by Deb Gruver]
REFORM Puzzle Piece
Update: “A judge granted a 60-day continuance Friday for parents accused of beating their adopted daughter, keeping her in a windowless room in the basement and chaining her at times to a bed.
Sedgwick County District Judge Patrick Walters set a child-in-need-of-care trial, also called an adjudication hearing, for Oct, 20, 21 and 22. The trial had been scheduled for Aug. 4 and 5. He also set a pre-trial conference for 8:30 a.m. Oct. 3.
Police put the girl and three adopted siblings into protective custody March 28, and prosecutors filed a child-in-need-of-care petition on behalf of the children April 1. The Eagle has been following the case since then as part of its “In Need of Care” series examining child abuse and neglect in the county.
The parents have denied allegations that, a social worker said during one court hearing, led a doctor to diagnose the girl as a victim of child torture. The 14-year-old girl weighed 66 pounds when police removed her from the home. The parents adopted the girl 10 years ago when she was 4. Her biological mother was deemed unfit because of neglect, once leaving her in a crib for 16 hours, according to court documents.
Prosecutors filed criminal charges against the adoptive parents June 9. Prosecutors accuse the adoptive parents of beating the girl with a foam hard-core bat and a broken curtain rod “whereby great bodily harm, disfigurement or death” could have been inflicted, among other charges.
The father faces three counts of child abuse, two counts of aggravated battery, one count of aggravated endangerment of a child, one count of criminal restraint and one count of criminal damage to property. The mother faces the same charges with the exception of criminal damage to property. The father is accused of kicking the window out of the frame on one of the back-seat doors of a sheriff’s car while investigators were executing a search warrant at his home in April.
The Eagle is not naming the parents because doing so would identify the girl and her siblings.
Michael Cleary, a lawyer who is representing the parents in the child-in-need-of-care case, asked Friday about when he and Philip White, who is representing the parents in the criminal case, would be able to interview the children. A no-contact order is in place in the criminal case that prohibits the parents from seeing or speaking to the children.
Prosecutor Sandra Lessor said she would get in touch with the children’s therapists but said she didn’t think lawyers should interview the children unless the judge in the criminal case gave his OK.
Cleary made the argument that if talking about the alleged abuse was too hurtful for the children, they also shouldn’t talk to prosecutors.
The parents are scheduled to be in court Aug. 12 for a preliminary hearing in the criminal case.
In Need of Care: Trial for parents accused of beating adopted daughter continued to October[The Wichita Eagle 7/18/14 by Deb Gruver]
Update 2: “A Wichita couple who were foster parents to and then later adopted a girl diagnosed by a physician as a victim of child torture pleaded guilty Wednesday to beating and abusing the girl for as many as five years.
If the court, as expected, determines the parents have little to no prior criminal history, each faces a maximum prison term of 68 months on multiple criminal counts – just over a year of incarceration for every year of abuse they admitted subjecting their daughter to.
Probation is also an option when the couple is sentenced Oct. 7, because neither has a substantial criminal history and because Kansas sentencing guidelines allow it.
Sedgwick County Assistant District Attorney Angela Wilson told District Judge Patrick Walters in court Wednesday she plans to ask that the heftier punishment be imposed.
An attorney for the parents, Michael Cleary, told Walters that he thinks the court “will want” to give the parents probation.
If Walters imposes probation, Wilson said, she will ask that neither parent has contact with their adopted daughter nor be allowed to have a caretaking role with any minor child.
The couple adopted the girl when she was 4. Neglect from her biological mother, which included once leaving her in a crib for 16 hours, left the girl severely underweight and developmentally delayed.
She and her three siblings remain in foster care pending the outcome of their child-in-need-of-care case.
Authorities pulled the girl out of her adoptive parents’ home when she was 14 amid allegations of abuse and neglect that included beatings, locking her in the basement and forcing her to drink hydrogen peroxide. At that time, she weighed 66 pounds. She’s 15 now.
The Eagle started following the case, in which the victim became known as “the girl in the basement,” in April 2014 as part of its “In Need of Care” series, which looked at child abuse and neglect in the community.
Sedgwick County District Court Judge Tim Henderson gave The Eagle special access to child-in-need-of-care petitions early last year with the understanding that The Eagle would not identify any of the children involved in such proceedings.
The Eagle has not named the parents, because doing so would identify the child and her three adoptive siblings, all of whom were placed in police protective custody in March 2014.
Even though the parents were criminally charged with the girl’s abuse and it is a separate case, The Eagle is not naming them in a continued effort to protect the children’s privacy.
Prosecutors filed criminal charges against the couple in June 2014 after The Eagle published its first story about the girl and her home life.
The child-in-need-of-care petition filed on behalf of the girl and her siblings says the parents chained her to a bed at times in a windowless basement room rigged with a door alarm. It also says the parents punished her with hot showers, gave her a bucket to use as a toilet and often fed her only bread for dinner.
The criminal case accuses the parents of abusing her from the time she was 9, including beating her with a hard-core foam bat on at least one occasion in October 2012 and with a broken curtain rod in March 2014. According to The Eagle’s reporting in the child-in-need-of-care case, another child in the home told social workers the parents beat his sister regularly.
The Kansas Department for Children and Families received at least 17 reports about her welfare in the five years prior to that.
The parents initially denied the allegations, saying the children had lied and that one boy was upset over a computer that had been taken away.
But on Wednesday, the mother changed her not-guilty plea to guilty and admitted to three counts of child abuse, two counts of aggravated battery, one count of aggravated endangerment of a child and one count of criminal restraint. Six of the offenses are felonies; the other is a misdemeanor.
In a separate hearing, the father followed suit, admitting to the same charges and to a misdemeanor count of criminal damage to property for breaking the window of a Sedgwick County sheriff’s patrol car.
He also pleaded guilty in a second criminal case to violating a protective order and witness intimidation, both misdemeanors. Prosecutors filed those accusations in June after the father contacted one of his adult daughters, asking her to recant or change her testimony in the child abuse case, according to court documents.
At the beginning of the father’s hearing, sheriff’s deputies escorted him into court from the Sedgwick County Jail, where he has been held since Walters revoked his bond June 26 over the witness intimidation case.
After receiving the father’s plea in both cases, Walters reinstated his bond and ordered he be released from jail, noting that one purpose of revoking the bond was to protect the witnesses in the criminal case.
Wilson, the prosecutor, opposed the father’s release.
“Your honor … (the father) primarily follows the rules,” said Cleary, his attorney. “As a 20-year military veteran, he’s done that most of his life.
“We believe, your honor, that once we present information at sentencing, the court will want to allow that sentence to be served on probation,” Cleary said.
If the judge decides the couple deserves prison time in the abuse case when they are sentenced in October, neither will serve more than the five years and eight months behind bars. A provision in the state’s sentencing law caps the potential penalty a defendant can receive at twice the maximum sentence allowed for his or her most-severe offense.
Certain crimes, like first-degree and capital murder and the host of child sex offenses known as Jessica’s Law crimes, don’t count toward the cap.
A defendant’s prior criminal history plays a large role in how lengthy a sentence he or she ultimately receives, Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said in an interview after Wednesday’s hearings.”
Once, she told authorities, she knew parents must disciple their children.
But on Tuesday morning before a packed courtroom gallery, she told the mother and father who took her in – the couple who were to be her refuge from a birth mother who abused and neglected her – that they were wrong for inflicting such punishments.
They were wrong, she said, for forcing her to drink hydrogen peroxide and her own bodily fluids, and to eat dog food.
They were wrong for chaining her to a bed in a windowless basement room with a bucket for a toilet. For attacking her with a hard-core foam bat and a broken curtain rod.
For stealing her childhood.
“I am so angry and so hurt by what … (my parents) did to me. It was beyond horrible,” the girl said, her voice steady at the court hearing where her parents would be ordered to serve the maximum 5 years, 8 months in prison for inflicting years of physical, emotional and mental abuse. “Two people who took me in as a foster child and then adopted me, they were supposed to protect me and give me a good life. But the opposite happened.
“I will never understand why I was their main target. Why they hated me so much, called me names, put me down, beat and hurt me so much. At times I thought they were going to kill me.”
The teen at the center of the abuse case became known as “The Girl in the Basement” afterThe Eagle began reporting last year on the child-in-need-of-care case that placed her and her three siblings in foster homes.
The girl is not being identified to protect her identity. She was 14 years old when authorities placed her in police protective custody in March 2014.
The mother and father were criminally charged with multiple counts of child abuse, aggravated battery and other criminal charges about a week after The Eagle published its first story about the girl as part of its In Need of Care series last June.
Initially, the parents denied the abuse. But in July, the mother and father pleaded guilty as charged: Three counts of child abuse, two counts of aggravated battery, one count of aggravated endangerment of a child, one count of criminal restraint.
Although some of the couple’s proceedings had been held jointly, on Tuesday they received separate sentencing hearings at the request of the father’s defense attorney, Charles O’Hara. He acknowledged that the father was culpable for the abuse because he knew it was happening and refused to stop it, but said the mother was responsible for actually inflicting it.
Four relatives of the father allowed to speak on his behalf Tuesday characterized him as a good father and war veteran who loved his children; they said they saw no signs of abuse. They and O’Hara asked the judge to grant the father probation.
The mother’s attorney, Ryan Gering, told the judge that she was a woman who had made mistakes that would be better addressed through community-based treatment programs instead of prison. The mother is “willing to do what it requires to make sure that these things will never happen again,” he said, also asking for probation for his client.
But Sedgwick County Assistant District Attorney Angela Wilson said there was no program that could fix what went wrong with the parents. She called the abuse “unconscionable” and the worst she has seen in her 20-year career.
The couple “created a prison for this young lady – for this child – that the child felt that she could never escape. … So judge we’re asking you to impose the maximum sentence in this case,” she said.
“And we submit to you that it’s not enough.”
Sedgwick County District Court Judge Patrick Walters ordered each to serve 68 months prison – just more than one year for every year of abuse they admitted to subjecting their adoptive daughter to.
“I keep coming back to the duration and severity of abuse for the victim who spoke here today,” Walters said. “… What she said is true: No human being should have to ever endure that type of abuse. It’s just not humane. And to make matters worse, it was done by the individuals that were supposed to protect her.”
This abuse case came to the fore after another child in the girl’s home, an 11-year-old boy, disclosed the abuse to a school counselor. A doctor later diagnosed her as a victim of child torture.
On Tuesday morning in court, the mother and father both made tearful pleas for leniency before their sentences were imposed.
The girl, in court, said she will likely forgive her adoptive parents one day for the abuse. But, she said, she will not forget.
“I have a life now. And that life is overstuffed with joy, love, peace, fun and most importantly, God,” she said.
“I was the girl in the basement. I was a victim with no way out. And facing potential death. But no more.
“I’m not the girl in the basement. Now, I am a victor. A survivor.””
Parents in ‘Girl in the Basement’ case sentenced to 68 months in prison
[The Wichita Eagle 11/10/15 by Amy Renee Leiker]
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