How Could You? Hall of Shame Case Review-Marcus Fiesel case/Lifeway Youth/Benchmark Family Services 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.

“A private foster care agency that was run out of Ohio after the 2006 death of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel has doubled its business elsewhere and continues to bring in millions for its founder while it racks up serious complaints about mishandling foster care cases.

In Texas, the agency was forced to defend its license last year after a foster child who required 24-hour supervision slipped out of the house and drowned in a pool while a foster parent wasn’t watching.

Indiana Department of Child Services placed the foster agency on probation for more than four months after an 18-month-old didn’t receive treatment for gangrene.

Georgia child protection officials fined the company seven times for violations.

Records reviewed by The Enquirer show that Lifeway for Youth now operates under a different name, but its headquarters remain at the same Springfield, Ohio-area offices as before.

Now known as Benchmark Family Services the reincarnated agency has expanded its operation in four other states, including Kentucky, where it has 14 offices, including one in Florence. Altogether, Benchmark has 35 branches in Texas, Georgia, Indiana and Kentucky.

The name change came shortly after Lifeway lost its license to place Ohio’s most troubled foster children in 2008.

Founder Mike Berner, who was the face of Lifeway in the aftermath of Marcus’ death, isn’t listed on the staff directory at Benchmark these days. However, he manages the business as chief executive officer of a spinoff company that makes more than $2 million a year to run Benchmark’s growing child placement agency, according to Benchmark’s tax filings.

That company, Admin Solutions, was created by Berner’s wife, Brenda, within days of Lifeway’s demise in Ohio in December 2008, records show. Admin Solutions shares offices with Benchmark’s national headquarters at the former Lifeway site on Quick Road in New Carlisle, near Springfield. Brenda Berner is listed as the chief financial officer of Benchmark’s Georgia operation.

Berner did not respond to three voice mails The Enquirer left on his phone at Benchmark asking for comment.

‘I am shocked that they have survived’

Benchmark’s business appears to be booming despite past troubles.

Tax filings show that Benchmark has grown from a company that received $15 million in federal funds in 2006 overseeing close to 900 foster children to a $35-million-a-year company with 35 offices responsible for at least 2,500 kids.[!!!]

Angela Sausser, who heads the Public Children Services Association of Ohio, is astounded by those numbers.

“I am shocked that they have survived and … have doubled in size,” Sausser said. “I am shocked by that. But, each state has its own rules and laws in terms of child welfare and foster parents and what the requirements are to license a home.”

In Marcus’ case, the Middletown boy died after his Lifeway foster parents, Liz and David Carroll Jr., bound him in blankets and strapping tape and left him in a sweltering closet for two days while they attended a family reunion in Kentucky. Days after Marcus died and his remains were burned in a chimney, Liz Carroll turned away a Lifeway caseworker who visited the home, claiming the child was sick. The caseworker left without pressing to see Marcus. The Carrolls were convicted of murder and sent to prison.

Ohio child welfare officials slammed Lifeway’s handling of Marcus’ placement with the Carrolls, saying Lifeway employees fudged training hours the Carrolls were supposed to receive and didn’t adequately check the Carrolls’ backgrounds before certifying them to become foster parents.

Despite a series of appeals from Lifeway, Ohio revoked the agency’s child placement license in 2008. Ohio represented the bulk of Lifeway’s business until Marcus’ death.

It is unclear whether Lifeway’s license came into question in Kentucky and Indiana. That information was not readily available in Kentucky, where officials said it would take weeks to gather. Indiana officials said they didn’t have any authority to take any action involving Lifeway regarding sanctions in another state.

Records in Texas, Georgia and Indiana provide a snapshot of problems that linger long after problems surfaced in the wake of Marcus’ death.

In Texas, where Benchmark is now responsible for 383 foster kids in 234 homes, child protection officials contacted Berner in early 2007, after hearing Ohio was in the process of revoking Lifeway’s license.

“It was our legal determination that the Texas and Ohio entities were separate,” said Patrick Crimmins, spokesman for Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

He said department officials asked for and received documentation from the company that Lifeway in Texas and Lifeway in Ohio had no legal ties. It was enough for Texas to allow Lifeway to continue operating, Crimmins said.

That information came in the form of a letter from Berner.

In it, Berner said Lifeway for Youth in Ohio and Lifeway for Youth in Kentucky were set up as two separate corporations with two separate boards of directors and different staffs, according to the letter obtained by The Enquirer.

The Texas operation fell under Lifeway for Youth in Kentucky and had no relationship to the Ohio program that was under investigation, said Berner, who was then executive director of Lifeway.

More recently, Benchmark came under fire in Texas in June 2013, after a child who required 24-hour supervision left his foster home unnoticed and drowned.

That incident triggered an order from Texas for Benchmark to take corrective action while state child protection officials kept a closer eye on the agency. Texas officials said there was a pattern of problems at Benchmark.

The Enquirer’s review of Texas’ online licensing records for Benchmark showed the agency was cited for 198 deficiencies during inspections or investigations in 2013 and 2014.

Deficiencies included failing to make required visits to foster homes on time; failing to report foster children’s injuries to the state; corporal punishment and other prohibited discipline used on foster kids; failing to screen foster homes properly; and providing late background checks on some foster parents.

Online records were not readily available in the three other states.

“The decision to pursue corrective action on Benchmark is based on a repetition and pattern of deficiencies in the area of supervision, medication, serious incident reporting, other prohibited discipline, children’s rights and emergency behavioral intervention,” a Texas licensing supervisor wrote to Benchmark officials in December, 2013.

“In addition to this pattern of deficiencies, there have been several serious deficiencies related to findings of abuse and neglect.”

The state required Benchmark to provide more training to foster parents and staff and to create safety plans for each home. A Benchmark administrator or state director was required to make unannounced visits to current foster homes and to hold monthly meetings with caseworkers to discuss each case.

Benchmark complied with all requirements and was taken off the corrective action plan in May, Crimmins said.

Indiana puts Benchmark on probation

Trouble surfaced in Indiana in 2009 when an 18-month-old in a Benchmark-licensed foster home was treated at a hospital with a severe case of gangrene.

“The child had no medical care for this condition before the emergency hospital visit. It was then determined the gangrene had reached the point of medical crisis,” the state’s letter to Benchmark said. “There have been significant issues regarding use of good judgment by your staff which resulted in them placing infants and toddlers in homes without cribs.”

State officials said that most of the problems stemmed from Benchmark’s operation in Lake County, causing the county child service department to freeze any further foster care placements through Benchmark.

The probationary period was lifted in mid-Febuary 2010, according to Indiana officials.

Georgia, where 268 children are placed in 163 Benchmark foster homes through six satellite offices, fined Benchmark seven times, for a total of $2,300, since 2009. All but one of the incidents were repeat violations, according to data provided to The Enquirer.

The violations included failing to ensure that selection of a home was based on a child’s needs; failing to adhere to discipline and restraint policies; failing to adequately supervise a foster child; and failing to follow the state agency’s policies and procedures. Details of the violations were not readily available.

Indiana Department of Child Services placed Benchmark on probation for about four months beginning Oct. 1, 2009, and suspended further placements, according to the department spokesman, James Wide.

 

How the Marcus Fiesel case unfolded

2006

The Marcus Fiesel case began the weekend of Aug. 4-6, when Marcus’ foster parents, Liz and David Carroll Jr., their children and girlfriend Amy Baker went to a family reunion in Williamstown, Ky. Authorities later accused the Carrolls of murder, saying they had left Marcus wrapped in blankets and bound with tape, hands behind his back, in a closet while they were gone. When they returned Aug. 6, authorities say, Marcus was dead.

Aug. 3: Marcus Fiesel’s social worker from Lifeway for Youth visits Liz and David Carroll Jr. and sees the Middletown boy for the last time.

Aug. 4: Liz and David Carroll Jr. leave their Union Township, Clermont County, home to attend a family reunion in Williamstown, Ky. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters later says they left Marcus restrained in a closet in their home while they were gone.

Aug. 6: The Carrolls return home. David Carroll Jr. takes the child’s body to Brown County and burned it.

Aug. 10: Marcus’ Lifeway social worker arrives at the Carroll home, but is told he is sick. The social worker leaves without pressing to see the child.

Aug. 15: A Hamilton County dispatcher receives a 911 call reporting a woman unconscious in Juilfs Park in Anderson Township, with three small children nearby. Liz Carroll tells EMTs her foster child, Marcus, is missing. A missing-child alert goes out in Anderson Township, and hundreds of volunteers show up for the search, which continues around the clock.

Aug. 23: Clermont, Hamilton, Butler and Warren counties halt placements through Lifeway and remove some clients from Lifeway-trained foster parents.

Aug. 28: Liz Carroll and Amy Baker, a live-in girlfriend, go before a Hamilton County grand jury. Liz and David Carroll Jr. are each indicted on one count of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of child endangering. David Carroll Jr. also faces one charge of abuse of a corpse. They are arrested and jailed. Investigators search in Brown County for the boy’s remains.

Sept. 1: The state orders all counties to check on the safety of foster children who were placed through Lifeway For Youth.

Sept. 6: Prosecutors in Clermont County file murder charges against the Carrolls, but say they won’t seek the death penalty because the couple, who were receiving $1,000 a month from Butler County to care for Marcus, didn’t intend to kill the boy.

Sept. 7: Hamilton County Coroner O’dell Owens says authorities recovered just 18 frail bones from the chimney where Marcus’ body was burned.

Nov. 27: State regulators slam Lifeway For Youth for its placement of Marcus with the Carrolls and call for stricter licensing requirements, better monitoring of foster children and increased state oversight of private agencies. The state later announces it will not renew Lifeway’s license.

2007

Jan. 17: The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services notifies Lifeway For Youth that it intends to revoke its license to operate as a foster-care placement agency. That move would leave the care of more than 400 Ohio foster children in question.

The state alleged that Lifeway:

– Recommended foster parents for state certification before completing a home study to determine of the home was save, who lived there and whether there was even a bed for a child.

– In 14 cases, upgraded foster parents to take in children with more serious needs without receiving the proper training or having the required two years of experience.

– The Carrolls’ training sessions were cut short and the couple didn’t meet the state training requirements. Lifeway failed to conduct currecnt criminal background checks, and in some cases, FBI checks for people who had not lived in Ohio for five years.

– Lifeway hired people without the proper social work licenses and failed to investigate complaints that foster parents had broken state rules.

Feb. 21: A Clermont County jury finds Liz Carroll guilty of murder, involuntary manslaughter, kidnapping, felonious assault and three charges of child endangering. She is later sentenced to 54 years to life in prison.

Feb. 27: David Carroll Jr. pleads guilty and receives 16 years to life in prison.

March: Ohio says it will revoke Lifeway’s license because it found 147 violations in Lifeway foster care cases, 27 of them in Marcus’ case.

April 10: Lifeway sues the state for $1 million, saying the state spread lies that cost it business and that its license revocation was purely political.

May 15: Then-Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann sues Lifeway, asking for a court order to stop future placements and to have all of Lifeway’s foster families transferred to other child care agencies. A Franklin County judge rejects the request.

Sept. 19: A state hearing examiner throws out two-thirds of the state violations against Lifeway but recommended to revoke the private foster care company’s Ohio license.

2008

Dec. 12: A Franklin County judge, after appeals from Lifeway, decides once and for all to strip the company of its certificate to operate foster care in Ohio.

Dec. 18: Brenda Berner, Lifeway founder Michael Berner’s wife, files with the Ohio Secretary of State to create a company called Admin Solutions. It will manage the Berner’s remaining foster care agencies in other states.

2009

March/April: Lifeway assumes Benchmark Family Services’ name with national headquarters at the former site of Lifeway in New Carlisle, Ohio.”

8 years after Marcus, foster agency faces trouble again[Cincinnati 12/27/14 by Sheila McLaughlin]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update:“Ten years later, his name and photo – the smiling face of a 3-year-old angel – still pull at our hearts.

That’s because Marcus Fiesel became every person’s child or brother in August of 2006. Hundreds of us searched for him when we believed he was lost. The whole community wept for him when we found out he had died, and everybody was horrified — disgusted, dumbfounded — when we learned the gruesome details.

A 3-year-old with autism had been killed at the hands of his foster parents.

Bound and wrapped and locked in a steaming hot closet for more than two days — without food or water — while his foster family went to a family reunion.

His body was taken to a remote area, doused with gasoline and burned in a chimney. What wouldn’t burn, was tossed into the Ohio River.

“It was a horrible thing they did to this baby,” Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters remembers today. “They could hear him screaming in the closet when they left.”

We first heard of Marcus when his foster mother, Liz Carroll, called police on Aug. 15, 2006, and reported him missing. She said he had disappeared on an afternoon outing to Juilfs Park in Anderson Township, not far from their Clermont County home. She claimed she had taken Marcus and three other kids and that she had passed out due to low blood pressure.

When she woke up, Marcus was gone, she said.

A week later, she was in tears when she held a news conference in the park and pleaded in front of TV cameras for someone to find “my son.” She said she thought somebody had taken him.

Anxious volunteers searched the park and surrounding neighborhood for several days and nights.

“The whole town was turned upside down looking for this little kid,” Deters recalls.

Nobody but Liz Carroll, her husband David and their live-in lover, Amy Baker, knew Marcus had been dead for two weeks.

They drove off to the reunion in Williamstown, Kentucky, on Friday, Aug. 4. The Carrolls took their own child and their dog, but they stuffed Marcus in the closet. The temperature inside reached 105 to 115 degrees, Deters says.

“Marcus was wrapped in a blanket, wrapped in tape, with his arms behind him,” Deters said. “And this was not the first time that happened.”

When the Carrolls came back that Sunday, they found Marcus dead.

David Carroll knew of a remote spot in Brown County where there was a chimney, so he and Baker took Marcus’ body there to burn it.

They burned him over and over again.

At her news conference and in interviews with police, Liz Carroll swore that they never hurt Marcus, but Deters said he suspected otherwise. Police couldn’t find anyone to corroborate her story.

“We suspected her from the very start — that she knew what happened to this kid,” he said.

Even after David Carroll failed a lie detector test, Liz kept to her story.

“Like my husband said, he doesn’t believe that was accurate … He knows he didn’t do anything … I didn’t do anything,” Liz Carroll insisted at her news conference.

“I mean, we are missing our son.”

However, Baker turned on the Carrolls and their story unraveled, Deters says.

Liz Carroll admitted her guilt to a grand jury.

On Aug. 28, Deters made the stunning announcement that Liz and David Carroll had killed the 3-year-old boy they were paid to care for, had sworn to care for and had called their son.

When officials went to the chimney, the coroner found barely a handful of bone fragments and hairs.

The Clermont County prosecutor charged the Carrolls with murder and offered them a plea deal: 15 years to life. Liz Carroll rolled the dice and went to trial.

She got 54 years.

It didn’t take the jury long to convict her. The prosecutor had her own grand jury testimony to hold against her — and a cup.

In his closing argument, assistant prosecutor Woody Breyer held up the familiar photo of Marcus.

“That was Marcus Fiesel,” Breyer said.

Then he held up the cup.

“What’s left of Marcus Fiesel would fit in this cup. And who did it? She did it. And you know, they say you wouldn’t treat a dog like that. You know what? She wouldn’t. She took the dog with her.

“She took the dog with her.”

David Carroll took the plea deal. They’re both still in prison.

Marcus left a legacy in the people who took steps so no foster child would go through what he did.

In 2009, the Ohio Supreme Court adopted Rule 48, which provides a guardian ad litem for each foster kid. That person is the liaison between the court and the foster care system and is supposed to assist a court in its determination of a child’s best interest.

Ohio also revoked the license of Lifeway for Youth’s license, the foster care agency that placed Marcus with the Carrolls.

And Ohio Job and Family Services says it has increased mandatory training for caseworkers and put greater emphasis on placing foster kids in permanent, adoptive homes.

Marcus would be 13 today. We so wish he were.”

Marcus Fiesel: Foster parents’ gruesome murder of 3-year-old broke our hearts in 2006 [WCPO 8/1/16 by Tanya O’Rourke]

Update 2:“A man convicted of murdering his foster son in 2006 had a preliminary parole hearing Thursday — the beginning of a process that could take months.

David Carroll was sentenced in March 2007 to 15 years to life following the death of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel, a Middletown boy who had autism and lived with Carroll, his wife and a roommate in Clermont County. His prison term is set to expire this September.

Carroll and his wife, Liz, reported the toddler missing from Juilfs Park in Anderson Twp. in August 2006. Thousands of people helped search for the boy.

But the Carrolls’ tale of fiction fell apart two weeks later when they were indicted by a Hamilton County grand jury. What actually happened, based on police investigation and trial testimony, is the Carrolls and their children and foster children, live-in girlfriend Amy Baker, and the family dog went to a family reunion in Kentucky for three days in August. Before they left, they bound Marcus in a blanket with duct tape and stuck him in a play pen inside an upstairs closet.

When they returned and found the child dead, the couple and Baker burned Fiesel’s body and threw his remains in the Ohio River. A jury convicted Liz Carroll of murder, involuntary manslaughter, kidnapping, felonious assault and endangering children. She will not be eligible for parole until 2060, but her husband, who took a plea deal, is eligible this year.

Baker’s charges were dismissed due to her cooperation in the investigation and testimony the led to the convictions of the Carrolls. Baker, who now goes by Amy Ramsey, was sentenced to two years in prison in July 2010 in Clermont County after selling prescription pills to a police informant that March.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said the details of Fiesel’s death are not enough to keep Carroll from walking out of prison. Instead, he said the community’s opinion is more powerful.

“I know folks in this community that looked for him that are still upset about the murder of little Marcus,” Deters said. “And hopefully, the public will respond in such a massive effort to stop this from happening because that’s what the parole board listens to.”

Deters said his office has received hundreds of letters from the public, forwarding them to the parole board. He said the board will review Carroll’s prison records and then he and Clermont County Prosecutor Mark Tekulve will get word about the next hearing.

“I don’t want people in the public to think, oh, you know, there’s no way David Carroll gets out of jail,” Deters said. “Well, they’re wrong. There is a very, there is a very clear path to him getting out of jail — and the only thing that’s gonna stop it is public outrage.”

Anyone who wants to submit a written statement concerning this hearing can send it to the Ohio Parole Board, Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, 4545 Fisher Road, Suite D, Columbus, OH 43228. Include the offender’s name and number on any correspondence.

David Joseph Carroll’s inmate number is No. A546573. ”

Foster parent convicted of murder in death of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel has 1st parole hearing
[Dayton Daily 7/29/2022 by Taylor Weiter and Jasmine Styles]

Update 3:“The man convicted in 2007 of murdering his 3-year-old foster child has been denied parole.

WXIX reports David Caroll was eligible for parole this year, but a parole board decided against his release.

Sixteen years ago, David and Liz Carroll were foster parents to Marcus Fiesel, a child living with autism.

According to authorities, the Carrolls wrapped Marcus in a blanket, put tape around him and left him in a closet where temperatures reached over 100 degrees in August 2006. The boy was without food or water.”

Parole denied for David Carroll, convicted of murdering 3-year-old foster chil
[Fox 8 9/3/22 by Jared Goffinet and Jordan Gartner]