How Could You?Hall of Shame-Mexico-House of the Big Family Orphanage 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 Zamora, Mexico, “Mexican Police have rescued more than 450 children from an orphanage in Zamora in the state of Michoacan, where the kids were made made to suffer sexual abuse and forced to beg other than being kept in filth and squalor.
Having rescued 458 children and 138 adults from the House of the Big Family children’s home, the police have arrested nine employees of the orphanage, including the owner Rosa del Carmen Verduzco.
In one of the most heinous cases of child abuse in Mexico, hundreds of children at the House of the Big Family children’s home were kept in miserable conditions.
Speaking at a news conference attended by top federal investigators and Michoacan Governor Salvador Jara., Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said that the children were fed rotten food and made to sleep on the floor among rats, ticks and fleas and many of them were never allowed to leave the premises.
“I’m in utter dismay because we weren’t expecting the conditions we found at the group home,” Jara said.
The investigation began after five parents filed complaints last year with authorities because they weren’t allowed to see their children at the home, Jara said.
One of the parents was a woman who grew up and gave birth to two children at Great Family, which has been open for 40 years. She was allowed to leave when she was 31-years-old but Verduzco kept the two children, who had been registered under her name, said Tomas Ceron, head of the Criminal Research Agency at the Attorney General’s Office.”
Mexico orphanage children sexually abused, forced to beg[Zee News 7/16/14]
“Mexican police have rescued more than 450 children they believe were abused at a children’s home in Zamora in the western state of Michoacan.
They were allegedly subject to sexual abuse and forced to beg on the streets.
The owner, Rosa del Carmen Verduzco, and eight employees at the House of the Big Family have been arrested.
Correspondents say it is one of Mexico’s worst incidents of alleged child abuse at a children’s institution in many years.
The government said the building was home to 278 boys, 174 girls and six infants under the age of three.
Also rescued were 138 adults aged up to 40, the government said.
Reports say the residents were forced to live in terrible conditions.
“I’m in utter dismay because we weren’t expecting the conditions we found at the group home,” local governor Salvador Jara said.
The House of the Big Family has been operating for 40 years and was known locally as Mama Rosa’s Home.
The authorities began to investigate the home after parents complained that they were denied access to their children.
One woman, who grew up at the home herself, gave birth to two children who were registered in the name of Ms Verduzco.
When the mother left the home, aged 31, she was not allowed to take her children with her, investigators said.
Michoacan Governor Salvador Jara said the raid came after an official complaint was filed by the parents of five children who said they were being held at the home against their will.
Mr Jara said the complaint was filed more than a year ago. He did not say why the authorities had not acted sooner.
Local media had reported on allegations made against the home as far back as 2010.
An article in newspaper El Universal said six families had alleged that Ms Verduzco refused to hand over their children to them.
One mother told Universal reporters that she had taken her son to the home after a social worker had recommended it as a place for her child to get treatment for hyperactivity.
The mother, Martha Ines Lopez Ramirez, said she was only allowed to see her son once every four months and only ever in the presence of a “guard”.
Ms Lopez said that her son seemed to have been drugged and showed signs of having been beaten
She told El Universal that all parents had been made to hand over custody of the children to Ms Verduzco, and sign a written agreement not to retrieve the children before they turned 18.
El Universal quoted Ms Verduzco at the time as saying that most of the children came from “dysfunctional families”.
She told the reporters that the home was indeed “reluctant” to release children back to their families “unless the parents could demonstrate there had been an improvement in the family’s condition”.
A child welfare specialist consulted by the newspaper in 2010 said the allegations of mistreatment went back two decades but that Ms Verduzco was “politically well connected”.”
‘Abused children’ rescued in Mexico[BBC News 7/16/14]
REFORM Puzzle Piece
Update: “About 500 people marched through this western Mexico city Thursday in support of the embattled but highly regarded founder of a shelter raided amid allegations of sexual and physical abuse and filthy living conditions.
Shelter founder Rosa del Carmen Verduzco, known as “Mama Rosa,” had been taking in children for about 65 years and drew support from the government, philanthropists and intellectuals for her “Gran Familia” group home.
But after a police raid on the refuse-strewn group home Tuesday, residents of the shelter told authorities that some employees beat and raped residents, fed them rotting food or locked them in a tiny “punishment” room.
Verduzco remains hospitalized under police guard as she is treated for diabetes and blood pressure problems. Eight of her employees also were detained.
“Mama Rosa, we are with you!” read signs carried by the marchers, most of who wore white T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “I, too, am a child of Mama Rosa.”
“She was tough, because if she hadn’t been, she couldn’t have controlled us,” said Ricardo de Jesus Verduzco, 32, who lived at the home between the ages of 6 and 24. He now lives outside the shelter and works as a security guard.
Like many shelter residents, Verduzco took or was formally given Mama Rosa’s surname, Verduzco. “She gave me an opportunity to study, she gave me tools to survive in life,” said Verduzco. He told of trips to movies, the beach and restaurants, saying they were always supervised.
A very different view of the founder could be seen outside the group home, where a garbage truck finished hauling away an estimated 20 tons of trash from what Mexican authorities said was an insect-infested compound that had housed around 600 adults and children, often against their will. Some relatives said Mama Rosa had refused to release their loved ones unless they paid thousands of dollars.
Shelter residents were still being kept at the home while officials look for places to transfer them. Federal authorities said they were ensuring that the residents were being fed properly, and youngsters were also being checked by doctors.
Police and soldiers standing guard outside let small groups of relatives in for brief visits. For some families, it was their first time inside in months.
Maria Valdivia Vasquez, 65, waited to be allowed in for a brief visit with her 17-year-old grandson, Jose Antonio Martinez. She said his mother sent him to the home a decade ago because of behavioral problems. Relatives were allowed to visit him only twice a year, and shelter employees had recently been sitting in on the visits, apparently to monitor residents’ comments, she said.
Valdivia Vasquez said that when she decided to ask that the boy be released to her, Verduzco demanded 70,000 pesos ($5,400) for his release.
She recalled that Jose Antonio often barely spoke in front of the shelter employees, but that once he said “he wanted his mother to suffer the same thing he was suffering there.”
Raquel Briones Gallegos, a 44-year-old housewife, said she tried to get her 20-year-old son, Luis Oropeza Briones, out of the shelter in April.
“They ran me out of the house and said insulting things,” Briones Gallegos said. He would call her on the phone in recent months saying that “he wanted to leave, to please get him out of there,” she said.
In total, the police raid on Tuesday freed six babies, 154 girls, 278 boys, 50 women and 109 men from the filthy shelter, federal officials said. Prosecutors said there were also 10 people who were so severely malnourished their ages couldn’t be determined, for a total of 607. The National Human Rights Commission put the total number of rescued at 596, apparently counting one fewer adult and none of the 10 people of undetermined age.
Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said some of the home’s employees apparently tried to protect the children.
“There are statements that truly hurt, that make you angry,” he said. “But there are others that save your faith in humanity, about those who truly converted themselves into protectors of the children.”
Authorities have said the shelter had been highly regarded and the government sometimes gave money or even entrusted children to the shelter. It was often visited by politicians, and local media published photographs of the owner with former President Vicente Fox, former Michoacan Gov. Leonel Godoy and other officials.
Murillo Karam said the home was subject to government oversight, but the “institution’s prestige may have made the inspections less intense.””
Some defend founder of Mexican shelter[Omaha.com 7/17/14]
“This week, Mexican military soldiers and federal police raided La Gran Familia, (The Great Family), a group home serving poor children, most of them abandoned or homeless. When police arrived, they found 458 children living in vermin-infested conditions. The children had allegedly been victims of routinely physical and sexual abuse and starvation. Nine adults are under arrest, including the founder and director of The Great Family, Rosa Del Carmen Verduzco, known as “Mama Rosa.
““She would hit us, and feed us food with worms,” one of the boys said on Telemundo’s camera, talking of the rotten food they had to eat. Twenty tons of trash have been removed from the home, according to Mexican authorities.”
Inside Mexico’s ‘House of Horrors’[Bayou Buzz 7/19/14]
“The owner of a group home raided last week amid charges of abuse and other mistreatment of children living there has been released from custody without charge, an official in the federal Attorney General’s Office said Sunday.
The official said there was not enough evidence to warrant charges and added that the 79-year-old owner, Rosa Verduzco, is too old to be put in jail.
But the official also said the investigation was continuing. The official agreed to reveal the information only if not quoted by name because he wasn’t authorized to speak with journalists about the case.
Two of the shelter’s employees also have been released, but six others are being held in prison after witnesses accused them of beatings, sexual abuse and deprivation of liberty, officials say.
Verduzco, popularly known as Mama Rosa, was hospitalized after Tuesday’s raid in Zamora, the city in the western state of Michoacan where she has run the group home for more than 60 years, offering shelter to orphans, drug addicts and young people with social or criminal problems.
A niece, Monserrat Marin Verduzco, told The Associated Press that police officers guarding the home owner left the hospital late Saturday. She said her aunt had been kept from speaking with other people until the police left.
“People applauded the federal police when they left the hospital, and she is happy to be back in touch with her people,” the niece said.
Police raided the home after an investigation set off by complaints last year from parents who said they weren’t allowed to visit their children at the home. After the raid, authorities said that they found children living in trash-strewn rooms with filthy toiles and that some residents had recounted tales of horrific treatment, including rapes and beatings.
Some townspeople and former residents quickly came to her defense as did members of Mexico’s political and intellectual elites who praised her for helping so many people over the years.
“It was a great job that she did in Zamora and now, clearly, she is being persecuted,” Elena Poniatowska, one of Mexico’s most prominent writers, told Milenio Television. “What should be done, really, is that the government should take better care of people.”
The police raid found six babies, 154 girls, 278 boys, 50 women and 109 men, federal officials said. Prosecutors said 10 people were so severely malnourished they couldn’t determine their ages.
Authorities began moving children from the home to other facilities Friday night, but more than 300 were still awaiting relocation.”
Owner of raided Mexico shelter freed, no charges[The Grand Island Independent 7/20/14 by Associated Press]
“The owner of a group home raided last week amid abuse and filthy conditions defended her “tough love” approach, but acknowledged that things got out of control.
Seventy-nine-year-old Rosa Verduzco spoke with the Univision television network in an interview, excerpts of which were published Wednesday.
“My strength was failing and there were things I couldn’t keep an eye on,” said Verduzco, who was detained but later released because prosecutors said she showed signs of senility.
She appeared lucid and largely unrepentant in the interview.
The “Gran Familia” group home she founded was raided by police on July 15 and about 600 children and adults were rescued from the filthy, trash-strewn compound.
Some residents alleged they had been sexually abused by a male shelter employee, but Verduzco did not comment on those allegations in the interview.
While she apparently was not implicated by any of the residents in the sex abuse, many did complain she hit them.
Verduzco proudly acknowledged that, saying she hit children because it was part of disciplining them and showing affection for them.
“You’ve heard the expression, ‘if you don’t hit someone, you don’t love them?'” Verduzco asked the interviewer. “Correcting them (residents) did not mean harming them.”
But she denied there was a punishment cell at the shelter in the western state of Michoacan, saying the small, barred room was an infirmary used to hold sick residents so they wouldn’t walk around.
The shelter housed children with behavioral problems or from broken homes; many stayed on after reaching adulthood. Most were taken to the shelter by their parents or child welfare agencies.
A frequent complaint against Verduzco, who started taking in children about 65 years ago, was that she demanded money from parents who sought to remove their children from the shelter.
Verduzco said in the interview that parents had agreed to pay the shelter part of the cost of housing their children, a charge of as little as $1.50 per day, but that few did.
But the money may have been the least of her concerns; Verduzco confirmed that when parents showed up, she just did not want to give up the kids, who she considered her children.
“I’m not giving them up … because that’s my child,” Verduzco said. “She who rears a child is more of a mother than she who gives birth.”
However, Verduzco did acknowledge making some mistakes, like keeping rotting food around, much of which she said was intended for pigs kept in an adjoining lot.
“Our error was not throwing things out,” she said.
Six employees of the shelter have been charged with kidnapping for allegedly refusing to release residents leave, and with human trafficking for purportedly forcing them to beg for money. The six also face organized crime charges.
Prosecutors say sexual abuse charges may be brought against some of the six, especially three men who have been accused by residents of sexually abusing them.”
Owner of Mexican shelter defends tough love[Charlotte Observer 7/23/14 by Associated Press]
Update 2: “A Mexican judge has ordered six employees of a group home raided amid charges of abuse and filthy conditions to stand trial, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.
The five men and one woman have been charged with kidnapping for allegedly refusing to release residents and with human trafficking for purportedly forcing them to beg for money. The six also face organised crime charges, the attorney-general’s office said in a statement.
The office has also ordered the property that housed the Great Family group home to be seized, it said.
Federal prosecutors said this week that they wouldn’t charge the home’s owner and founder, Rosa Verduzco, known as “Mama Rosa”, with any wrongdoing because she is not mentally fit.
The shelter was raided by police on July 15 and officers found about 600 children and adults living at the filthy, trash-strewn compound.
Residents of the shelter told authorities that some employees beat and raped residents, fed them rotting food or locked them in a tiny “punishment” room.
In an interview with Univision television network this week, Verduzco, 79, denied that there was a punishment cell or that rotten food was served at the shelter in Zamora, in the western state of Michoacan. She said a small, barred room was an infirmary used to hold sick residents so they wouldn’t walk around.
Verduzco, once revered for her work in taking in orphan children for almost 65 years, told the television network that in recent years the shelter started housing children with behavioural problems or from broken homes and many stayed on after reaching adulthood. Most were taken to the shelter by their parents or child welfare agencies.”
Mexican shelter workers face trial[IOL 7/25/14]
Update 3: “The founder of the shelter in the western Mexican state of Michoacan where authorities found some 500 children living in squalid conditions on Monday “categorically” denied sexual abusing the kids there.
“It’s completely false that I engaged in sexual relations with any of those who were in La Gran Familia. I never did it,” Rosa del Carmen Verduzco, 81, said in a paid ad placed in several leading Mexican newspapers.
“Therefore, I … categorically, completely and absolutely deny what is claimed in the anonymous statement that is circulating with the pseudonym ‘Claudia,’ as well as everything that could appear, because I never engaged in such conduct with anyone,” the text of the ad concludes.
Federal and state authorities raided La Gran Familia last month after receiving more than 50 complaints regarding the precarious situation in which the people – some 500 minors and about 100 adults – there were living.
Authorities arrested nine people, including Verduzco, and prosecutors have charged six of them with racketeering, kidnapping and human trafficking, among other offenses.
The director of La Gran Familia, known as “Mama Rosa,” managed to avoid prosecution due to her advanced age.
Two days ago, a woman calling herself Claudia who claimed to have escaped from La Gran Familia told Excelsior Television that Mama Rosa forced some of the children at the center to perform oral sex with her in exchange for clothing and food.
Since its founding 40 years ago, the center had housed more than 7,000 children who had lived on the street or who were delivered to the institution by their own parents.
Mama Rosa received donations for the center from a slew of prominent politicians, including three past presidents.
In an interview granted two weeks ago to U.S. television network Univision, Verduzco said that her age hindered her from taking note of the abuse and mistreatment at the center.
“If I, through omission of care, hurt the children not only do I regret it but it pains me. And I say to them: Forgive me,” she said.”
Director of Mexican youth shelter denies sexual abuse[LaPrensa 8/6/14]
Update 4: “Rosa del Carmen Verduzco, who as head of the controversial “La Gran Familia” (The big family) foster home took care of thousands of children for four decades in Zamora, Michoacan state, passed away Sunday due to brain hemorrhage.
Verduzco, who was better known as “Mama Rosa” or “La Jefa” (The Boss) started to take care of children in 1947, when she was only 13 years old. Years later, when the shelter was legally constituted as a civil association in 1973, she was named as the head of the Gran Familia home.
For decades, governments and associations, including ex-preisdents Vicent Fox and Felipe Calderon, donated money to the association and recognized her work, until a controversy broke out.
In 2014, authorities found a series of irregularities in La Gran Familia, in which about 500 children were living in “inhumane conditions,” including child mistreatment, isolation, exploitation, overcrowding and sexual abuse cases, and shut it down.
While the shelter was still open, thousands of children came in and out, some of them thankful of Mama Rosa and others escaping from what they called “a nightmare.”
Many supported Mama Rosa because she gave shelter to children that wouldn’t have it otherwise. Some of them were even able to get educated there, as the organization hired teachers to give the children basic education and now enjoy a prosperous adult life, but others did testify against her and her collaborators.
Reports say that some children were forced to beg for money in the streets and were poorly fed, besides having to sleep on the floor since there were not enough beds for everybody. Those who violated the rules were punished and put in “Pinocchio’s room,” something that Mama Rosa denied.
In some of the interviews she gave after the shelter was searched, Verduzco said she was “tough” because that’s the way life made her. “I’m not only regretful if I failed in taking care of the children, I’m in pain. I ask them for forgiveness,” she said.
She revealed that in recent years her strength wasn’t enough to take care of all of them, given her old age, and that she couldn’t keep an eye on everything, in reference to the sexual abuse allegations her and some of her collaborators faced.
Authorities got a search warrant after a couple failed to recover their children from the shelter, even though they weren’t underage anymore, and found out about the conditions almost 500 children were allegedly living in.
One of the teachers working there revealed that she wasn’t aware of the living conditions of the shelter, due to strict policies for employees, and that she didn’t understand why Mama Rosa kept some of them even after they were 18 years old.
It’s more a mother the one who rears than the one who gives birth,” said Verduzco after admitting she held some of the children even after they were over age.
Jesus Murillo Karam, who at the time was Mexico’s Attorney General, said that Verduzco showed “symptoms of senility.”
A total of 278 male minors, 174 female minors, 6 babies and 138 adults, between 18 and 40 years old, were rescued from the shelter. Some of them were put back in contact with family members, but others ended up in state-run foster homes.
Mama Rosa was arrested for kidnapping, human trafficking and organized crime along with eight employees and assistants. Her charges were soon dropped due to her advanced age.
She was 84 years old and died in Mexico City of “natural causes” after a recent fall she recently had, aggraviated by her diabetes. She will be incinerated in the capital city but her ashes will be buried in a private ceremony in Zamora, to which every member of La Gran Familia was invited.
“Let’s recognize her extraordinary achievements and reconcile with the mistakes she committed. The testimony of her life and work has left a mark in the history of Zamora and the region,” reads the invitation to the funeral services.”
Mama Rosa, Head of Mexico Controversial Foster Home, Dies at 84
[Tele Sur TV 6/4/18]
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