How Could You? Hall of Shame-Eric Cameron Francis-The Justin Harris Adoptive Kids’ Case and HB 1648 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 Bella Vista, Arkansas, Arkansas Times said, on “April 4, 2014, a 38-year-old resident of Bella Vista named Eric Cameron Francis was arrested by the Arkansas State Police for the rape of a 6-year-old girl in what the police said was his temporary care. Sexual crimes against children always attract a certain horrified attention, but this particular case earned additional scrutiny because Francis had recently worked as head teacher at a Christian preschool in West Fork owned by state Rep. Justin Harris (R-West Fork) and his wife, Marsha.

 

Harris, who said he was “devastated and sickened” by news of the abuse, told the Arkansas Times in April 2014 that Francis had been in his employ only about three months, from November 2013 to January 2014, before being fired for poor work attendance.

“He came with a pristine record,” Harris said at the time, noting that Francis was also a youth pastor at a church and had worked previously in early childhood education for the Bentonville School District and with a Head Start program. Harris added that he was confident nothing had happened to any of the children at Growing God’s Kingdom Preschool, because of strict security protocols (the classroom contains a continuously operating camera that generates a permanent record). Indeed, no further charges against Francis resulted from subsequent State Police interviews of families at the preschool, although investigators uncovered at least two other incidents of sexual abuse of children in the community outside of the school. In November, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison on a negotiated plea.

What Harris did not publicly disclose last spring, however, is how Francis came into contact with the 6-year-old victim. In prosecutor documents recently obtained by the Arkansas Times, state police investigators and multiple witnesses concur that the child was in fact the legally adopted daughter of Justin and Marsha Harris.

The Harrises had adopted the girl and her 3-year-old sister through the Arkansas Department of Human Services (DHS). The couple also has three biological sons who are older than the girls. Pictures of the girls appeared on Justin Harris’ social media accounts in early 2013 (the images have since been deleted), and Harris announced on Twitter and Facebook on March 6, 2013, that the couple had officially adopted the girls. Because DHS adoptions require an in-home trial period of at least six months prior to papers being signed, the girls likely entered the home no later than September 2012.

And then, something evidently went amiss in the household. For unknown reasons, about six months after the adoption was finalized, the Harrises sent the two girls to live with Eric Francis and his family in Bella Vista.

According to an Arkansas State Police investigative report prepared by Sgt. Kimberly A. Warren dated April 3, 2014, she contacted Crimes Against Children Division Supervisor Terri Ward who advised that “Mr. and Mrs. Harris placed the girls into the care of Eric Francis and his wife Stacy [sic] Francis in October 2013.” The report further states that “It was later reported to the Department of Human Services that Mr. and Mrs. Harris had left the children with another family and had basically abandoned them. This incident was reported to the child abuse hotline and the children were interviewed.”

After her husband’s arrest, Stacey Francis told a state police investigator that she and Eric “met [the girls] through friends of theirs, Justin and Marsha Harris, who were looking for a new adoption plan for themselves … Stacey Francis reported that she and Eric Francis brought [the girls] into their home with the hopes of being able to adopt them.” The Francises already had three older children — two girls and a boy — who were adopted internationally. Stacey Francis said the Harris girls stayed with her and Eric “until February or March of 2014.” That means the Harrises left the girls with Eric Francis and his wife even after firing him.

The sexual abuse of the 6-year-old girl came to light only because of a call placed to the state’s child maltreatment hotline on Friday, March 28, from an unidentified caller who said the Harrises “gave their adoptive children to a family” and “that family in turn gave the children to another family” and that they had “continued to accept adoption subsidy money even after giving the children away.” Investigators evidently determined that this third home was a safe place for the girls because they remain there today.

Arkansas’s child maltreatment hotline is operated by the Crimes Against Children Division (CACD), a semiautonomous arm of the State Police tasked with performing the sensitive and highly confidential work involved in cases of child abuse and neglect. When the CACD needs additional resources, however, it can also draw upon the assistance of the State Police’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID).

“On the afternoon of March 28, 2014, the CID was asked by the commander of the Crimes Against Children Division to assist in determining where two minor age children might be, who had been adopted,” said Bill Sadler, spokesman for the State Police. “By sometime late in the afternoon, CID had told CACD that the girls were accounted for — at the home of a family who appeared not to be the custodial parents of the girls.” By the morning of Monday, March 31, the prosecutor documents indicate, the girls were interviewed by a CACD agent. During this interview, the 6-year-old disclosed the abuse by Francis, which Francis later told police occurred sometime in January 2014, while his wife was out of state.

Although the hotline caller alleged that Justin and Marsha Harris had given away their adopted children, no criminal charges were brought against them, according to Sadler.

If some readers are startled to learn that it’s legal for adoptive parents to give their children to another family, they’re in good company. As the State Police investigation unfolded last spring, one person kept apprised of its progress was then-Gov. Mike Beebe. Matt DeCample, Beebe’s former spokesperson, said the governor was surprised as anyone to hear about the practice of “rehoming,” as it’s called in the adoption world. (DeCample said it was common practice for the State Police to alert the governor’s office whenever it discovered a state elected official had an ancillary connection to a criminal investigation.)

“As we were briefed on the State Police investigation into Mr. Francis and the circumstances around that case, none of us in the office, including the governor, had ever dealt with the rehousing of children who had been adopted through DHS,” DeCample recalled. “It’s not something that had ever come up before, and, frankly, we didn’t know that it was something that could happen, or why it would ever happen.

“The governor asked some of our legal folks to look at how that was legally possible in the state — or at least why there wasn’t anything preventing it from happening. And everything we got back said there was not anything definitive in Arkansas Code prohibiting such an activity.”

In February, the Arkansas Times asked Rep. Harris to comment on the case and explain what became of the girls he and his wife had adopted. He refused, and stated that theTimes was attempting to “smear” him. “It’s evil,” he said, becoming visibly upset.

When asked whether he rehomed his adoptive children with another family, he replied, “I’m not confirming that.” When asked about the statements made in the State Police report in the Francis case, Harris said he hadn’t read the file because of the disturbing descriptions of sexual abuse that they contain.

Harris then quoted Isaiah 54:17: “No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.”

“You don’t know what we’ve been through this past year. You have no idea what my family has been through,” he said emphatically. “I don’t care what the people of Arkansas think about me. I don’t care if I lose my position. I care what my wife thinks about me, and I care what my three sons think about me.”

Overcome with emotion, he then turned and walked away. Harris has not responded to repeated requests for further comment, even again this week when advised this story would be published.

DHS spokesperson Amy Webb said the agency cannot comment on any specific adoption. Almost all records relating to foster care, adoption or child maltreatment are closed to the public under state law. However, she said the agency was aware of nine instances of rehoming that have occurred in Arkansas in the past two years. In some cases, the adoptive parents gave the children to families they barely knew. Webb acknowledged that the real number could be higher, since rehoming is by definition something that takes place off the state’s radar. (DHS learned of the nine cases through the families themselves or by word of mouth.)

“Even a few cases are concerning to us because the families do not go through the vetting process before caring for the children,” she said. “If we hear of a situation in which there was rehoming, we will reach out to families. It’s not something we want to see happen.”

Rehoming is a national issue. In 2013, a Reuters investigative series titled “The Child Exchange” drew attention to Internet forums in which parents sought to give away unwanted adopted children to complete strangers. Kids adopted from overseas are especially at risk: Stories abound of overwhelmed American families struggling to deal with Russian and Eastern European orphans with mental health issues, extreme behavioral problems and sometimes destructive or violent tendencies.

Sometimes the families on the receiving end of such transactions turn out to be good parents seeking an easy alternative to the expense and bureaucracy of legal adoption; sometimes they turn out to be abusive or predatory. Reuters uncovered harrowing stories of kids passed between homes like unwanted puppies, of pedophiles effectively shopping for children online, of prospective parents whose backgrounds bristled with red flags but were never remotely vetted by any authority. In most states, with a simple power of attorney document, a child’s guardian can delegate temporary parental responsibility to another adult.

“We’ve got to protect these kids! It’s just nuts!” Joe Kroll, the executive director of the Minnesota-based North American Council on Adoptable Children, said. Last summer, he testified before the U.S. Senate on the need for a federal law to address rehoming.

“The bottom line is, two things,” Kroll told the Times. “One, there should never be a transfer of custody of a child from one family to another — who are strangers; we’re not talking about relatives here — without a court being involved. That’s just the absolute bottom line. The second thing is, it should not occur without background checks and some preparation for the family.”

Adopting a child through DHS is no small task for prospective parents. It typically involves six months’ worth of various background checks and training. “We do home visits, home studies, and it’s just a full and thorough vetting process,” Webb said.

If the parents pass muster, DHS will then place the children in the potential adoptive home for a period that lasts at least another six months. “It’s basically kind of a trial, to make sure it works for everybody. We like to make sure it’s the right fit for the kid, the right fit for the family, because we want it to last long term. And, of course, there’s also court supervision all along the way. … There’s a [DHS] caseworker for the family and the kid, and there’s an attorney ad litem who’s representing the kid.” Eventually, if everything goes smoothly, the adoption is finalized by a judge.

“It’s very thorough and extensive on the front end, and quite frankly we have some people complain,” Webb continued, “but the reason is that we want to make sure that these families provide stable, loving homes for these kids, and we’re going to take our time to do that.”

Once the adoption is complete, DHS and the courts step out of the picture almost completely in regard to oversight. In the eyes of the state, adopted parents should be treated essentially the same as biological parents. “We want these families to go out and live and be real families like anybody else,” she said. “We want those kids to have a sense of normalcy, and if they’re having to visit a DHS caseworker every week, that’s not normalcy.”

But in the case of some adopted families, there are two ways that the state does remain involved. The first is subsidies. One of the sad realities of adoption is that some types of children are more in demand than others, so the state incentivizes, for example, the adoption of kids with physical disabilities. Families tend to want babies, so parents receive a subsidy for children who are 9 years or older. Then there’s the racial dimension: Children of color who are 2 years or older come with a subsidy. DHS also subsidizes the adoption of sibling groups and kids with special emotional needs.

Because DHS can’t comment on any particular case, it’s impossible to know for certain whether the Harrises received a subsidy for their children, but it’s likely. The girls in question were adopted as siblings, and the prosecutor documents indicate at least one of the girls had significant behavioral problems stemming from past trauma. According to the CACD interview, the 6-year-old said she was sexually abused by someone in her biological family before entering the foster system.

(In that same interview, the girl also indicated she was unhappy in the Harris home. A CACD agent writes, “She said she had to stay in her room; she said she had her books, but then they took away her books and she had nothing in there, just her bed. When asked why she had to move away from Marsha’s house, [the girl] said ‘because I didn’t like it.’ “)

Webb said the pre-adoption training provided by DHS includes specialized instructions “on how to deal with children who have experienced trauma.” The agency wants families to know what they’re getting into when they adopt a child with a difficult past. “When that family is going through the adoption process, one of the things we do is make them fully aware of that kid’s history … the trauma they’ve experienced, any special needs they might have or special concerns,” she said.

The second way that DHS may become involved with a family post-adoption is if the parents are in need of help coping with a child’s behavior. “There can be situations where down the road, the families go, ‘This is not working,’ ” Webb said. “Maybe it’s a kid who’s had behavioral issues and they’ve tried everything they can think of to address it. Or maybe they have concerns about protecting other kids in the home, and they just feel like they can’t protect those kids from one of the adopted kids.”

In such cases, the family can ask DHS for a hand, Webb said. “We can intervene in a number of ways — do they need respite on the weekends? Does the kid really need some inpatient psych services, or additional therapy?

“If none of that works, then they can come to us and say, ‘We have exhausted all of our available resources. Please, help us. We cannot take care of this child.’ And we will take that child back into custody if the family has exhausted all available resources, and we will do that without any repercussions for the family.” (What exactly constitutes “exhausting all available resources” would be a question for a judge to answer, Webb said.)

It is quite rare for an adoption to be dissolved after a family obtains full custody of a child. DHS facilitated 4,055 adoptions in the state between July 1, 2006, and June 30, 2013. Among those, only 67 children were returned to foster care — that is, 1.65 percent of the total. Those figures are consistent with national estimates. A 2012 fact sheet published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says that “studies consistently report that only a small percentage of completed adoptions dissolve — probably between 1 and 5 percent.”

The document also notes a variety of risk factors that increase the likelihood of a failed adoption, ranging from the age of the child to unrealistic expectations on the part of adoptive parents to inadequate parental preparation on the part of the agency. Perhaps the single biggest predictor is past trauma: “Children who had experienced sexual or emotional abuse had the highest rates of disruption.”

Webb said DHS sees dissolution as a last resort, but adoptive parents are made aware that it’s a possibility. “Families who adopted from us would know that if they were having troubles, we want them to contact us. … It’s clear that they know there are options.”

This is one of the most puzzling aspects of the Harris case: Why didn’t Justin and Marsha Harris ask DHS to take the children back into custody? With international adoptions, parents often have nowhere to turn after the adoption is complete — thus, for example, the infamous 2010 incident in which a Tennessee woman placed her 7-year-old Russian adopted son on a plane back to Moscow with a letter in hand declaring she was terminating custody of the child. Most rehoming takes place in the context of adoptions performed through private agencies; unlike those parents, families who adopt through DHS have an official emergency exit.

“That makes no sense whatsoever,” Kroll said when the facts of the Harris case were described. “I really haven’t heard a lot of those kinds of situations. … Usually, if you adopt a kid from the state with special needs, what you’re going to do is go back to the state. You have somewhere to go back to. If you work with some private adoption agency overseas, once the child comes to you, they’re done with you. They’re not going to give you any support. But with a state agency, you should be getting support.

“I hope they stopped getting the state subsidy when they transferred those kids.”

This, too, is a question that can’t be answered by DHS in specific terms. However, in August 2014, the agency began requiring those families receiving subsidies to sign off on this statement: “I (we) will not under any circumstances re-home my adopted child/children.”

 

The definition of abandonment

 

Child maltreatment investigators sit at the intersection of social services and state criminal law. Although the State Police operate the child abuse hotline, it’s DHS that maintains the central registry archiving the findings of the CACD investigation that follows any allegation of child maltreatment. Reports made to the hotline are determined to be either true or unsubstantiated, and this data is an essential part of background checks used for employment, professional licensing and other purposes. If one works with children, one’s name is checked against the central registry as a matter of course.

Although rehoming a child may not be a criminal offense, it could still potentially constitute a civil offense with serious consequences: child abandonment. The original call to the hotline that triggered the investigation is specifically noted as an “abandonment” referral. So what became of that claim?

“We’re in a situation where I can’t confirm or deny if we were involved in a case or not,” Webb said. “What I can tell you is that in order for an allegation to be determined true, it would have to meet the letter of the law as the law defines it. … If it were an allegation of abandonment, it would have to fit within the abandonment law in order for us to find that true.”

Arkansas Code 12-18-103 states the definition of “abandonment” as follows: “[T]he failure of a parent to provide reasonable support and to maintain regular contact with a child through statement or contact when the failure is accompanied by an intention on the part of the parent to permit the condition to continue for an indefinite period in the future or the failure of a parent to support or maintain regular contact with a child without just cause; or an articulated intent to forego parental responsibility.”

“Essentially, in layman’s term, abandonment would be providing no care or support for the children,” Webb said. If a mother sends a child to Moscow with a note announcing her intent to terminate custody, that’s clearly abandonment. However, what if a family gives their adopted children to someone else yet continues to pay for some or all of their care?

“Financial support is support,” Webb replied. “There is some case law and precedent on that.” In a later email, she said that none of the nine recent cases of rehoming known to the state resulted in a true finding of abandonment.

As mentioned previously, only 67 out of over 4,000 DHS adoptions from 2006 to 2013 resulted in a child being returned to the foster system. That number includes both parents attempting to terminate their adoption, and other situations: illness, abuse or neglect and so on. Of those 67 cases, 11 were considered “abandonment.”

So why did the Harrises rehome their children rather than attempt to dissolve their adoption through DHS? For one thing, it appears rehoming brings little risk of either civil or criminal penalty; it can be performed quickly and quietly. Meanwhile, recall that DHS will take a child back into its custody with no repercussions for the adoptive parent if and only if they have “exhausted all resources” to the satisfaction of a judge. To dissolve an adoption through DHS can take some time, Webb acknowledged, because “we want to try to work with the family to make it work.”

Perhaps, in a tragic miscalculation, the Harrises felt the girls would be better off living with a family known to them rather than being returned to the foster system. Marsha Harris, according to social media posts from Justin Harris, was ill around this time — did that factor in? And Justin Harris has had a prickly relationship with DHS in the past.

In late 2011, he tangled with the agency over overtly Christian practices at Growing God’s Kingdom, which receives public funding under the Arkansas Better Chance program. At the request of an organization promoting separation of church and state, a DHS inspector investigated whether the preschool was using taxpayer money to teach a Christian curriculum; she found regularly scheduled Bible study in most classrooms, scripture posted on the walls and children singing “Jesus Loves Me.” Around the same time, Harris tweeted that Webb was “giving out false info to the press.”

It must also be noted that Harris, as a legislator, has direct influence over the DHS budget. He serves on the Joint Budget Committee, which oversees all appropriations for state agencies. He also serves on the influential House Education Committee and is the vice-chair of the House Committee on Aging, Children and Youth.

Other questions remain. Who originally called the hotline, and how did he or she know about the issue? Why were the children moved to a third family sometime in February or March — that is, before the call to the hotline was made — and was this a choice made by the Harrises? Did the Harrises give all or part of any state subsidy that they may have continued to receive to the Francises or to the third family?

None of the people who know the answers to these questions are forthcoming. Stacey Francis divorced her husband in August 2014; she has changed her name and moved out of state. When contacted by the Times, she declined a request for an interview, as did another witness cited in the prosecutor file who was familiar with the Francis family.

When this reporter recently attempted to interview Eric Francis at the Benton County Jail, he said he had no interest in talking about the past. “Everyone made mistakes before this all blew up, and I obviously made the biggest mistake,” Francis said. He said he originally met the Harrises through Stacey, who attended high school with Marsha Harris: “My ex knew them better than I did.” Francis also confirmed that DHS was not officially informed when the Harrises transferred the girls to his home in Bella Vista in October 2013.

“I’ve got to move on with my life,” he said through the reinforced glass, clad in stripes. “I’m sorry, but that’s all I’m going to say.”

Perhaps no function of state government is more potentially fraught, subjective and morally complex than the child welfare system. The patchy safety net woven by DHS workers and CACD investigators is stretched across an impossibly wide chasm, between the statutory obligations of state bureaucracy and the most intimate and idiosyncratic of human relationships: those of parents and their children. There are sincere dilemmas contained in balancing our collective moral responsibility toward protecting children with the privacy of families to raise their kids — adopted and otherwise — with minimal intrusion.

Yet rehoming is an example of a genuine flaw in the system. In May 2014, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a memorandum to state social service agencies (including DHS) that cited the Reuters investigation.

“Parents have a legal responsibility to protect and care for their children,” the memo said. “Delegating responsibility for a child to an unfit and unsafe individual through a power of attorney does not insulate parents from state laws regarding imminent risk of serious harm. … We encourage states to review their laws that govern these areas to ensure that the issues that arise through the practice of rehoming are adequately addressed.”

Four states — Wisconsin, Colorado, Florida and Louisiana — have passed laws regarding rehoming. The laws in Wisconsin, Colorado and Florida focus on criminalizing the advertisement of adoptable children, although Wisconsin also requires any family that wishes to transfer custody to a non-relative for more than a year to get court approval. The Louisiana law is the toughest — it requires court approval for transfer of custody to a non-relative for any length of time.

In Arkansas, DHS has taken a first step by adding new language on an adoption form that would allow the agency to stop subsidy payments in cases of rehoming. Marilyn Counts, the state adoption manager for the Division of Child and Family Services within DHS, is spearheading Arkansas’s attempts to address the problem. She joined a national workgroup on rehoming in May 2014 and was recently elected to the executive committee of the National Association of State Adoption Managers.

“Even if there is just one [rehoming case] that’s a problem; it’s atrocious,” Counts said. She told the Times that the agency was also considering proposing legislation. “We’re at a point where we’re studying and looking at the issue, but not at a point where we make a recommendation,” she said.

This is a story about how adoption can go wrong. The most fundamental problem facing children in the foster system, however, is not that adoptive parents sometimes do the wrong thing. It’s that the kids desperately need good homes. The adoption and foster system depends on the willingness of the right adults to make a lifetime commitment to a child. It’s easy to find fault with the actions of the Harrises from a safe remove; it’s not so easy to be the right parent.

We can only hope the third family, the one that eventually ended up with the two girls, is the right place for them. After the events of last spring, DHS presumably vetted the home, because the sisters continue to live there with the evident knowledge of the agency. TheTimes was able to identify and contact the adoptive parents, who declined to be interviewed for this story. The mother did, however, offer one comment.

“I don’t like that they took this path to get here, but they are home now, and they are loved and cherished. This is God’s plan. They are our daughters. They are precious, precious, amazing girls, and we are so blessed to have them.”

***

“Since we posted the item less than 24 hours ago, it’s gotten over 3,500 shares on Facebook. Why? Because people are outraged that rehoming is something that can happen to adopted children, with no apparent consequences for the parents. They should be. As I wrote in the article, it’s an example of a genuine flaw in the system that needs to be addressed by statute.

Responses have been pouring in. Foster and adoptive parents have noted their difficulties in dealing with DHS before, during and after adoptions. Advocates from other parts of the child welfare and mental health systems have given their input. So far, we haven’t seen anything rebutting or refuting the facts stated in the article, or critiquing its basic points.

With one exception. Tuesday morning, as we were triple- and quadruple-checking the story, before it was ever published, I got a text from a colleague of Harris — Rep. Nate Bell, Republican of Mena. He informed me that I’m going to burn in hell for writing the article exposing Harris, who he describes as “a good man … who has given [his] life to helping vulnerable children.” I, on the other hand, am described by Bell as “the lowest fork [sic] of muckracking slime on earth.” I’m attaching images of our full exchange below.

“Hell has a special corner for the merciless. You’re headed there. Invest in asbestos,” he said, before threatening me with harassment charges should I dare to contact him “again.”

I’m placing “again” in quotes above, because Nate Bell initiated this text exchange with me. Again, before the article was ever published. Before he or anyone else had read it.

I’ve had limited but courteous exchanges with Bell in the past. Although I strongly disagree with his libertarian-leaning politics, I’ve appreciated his willingness to take a stand on some controversial issues, such as the push to separate state recognition of Robert E. Lee from MLK Day, and his dogged insistence on fiscal accountability from hidebound state institutions. I thought he was intellectually honest, if wrong on many or most issues. But sadly, he thinks someone asking hard questions about the actions of one of his fellow legislators results in eternal damnation.

At the great risk of further terrestrial or immortal reprisal, I sent Bell an email today asking if he’d read the article and if he stood by his words yesterday. No response was forthcoming.

If the cops come by investigating that harassment charge, I’ll just be cowering in my home, unarmed, like a good liberal.

UPDATE: This afternoon, Rep. Greg Leding filed a bill to make it a felony to transfer an adopted child to anyone but a relative. This appears a frontal assault on “rehoming.” Hmmm. Might that go to the child welfare committee of which Harris is vice chair?

UPDATE II: And this statement from Gov. Asa Hutchinson:

Governor Hutchinson recognizes the valid concerns over the issue of “rehoming” and will ask DHS to review this practice and to determine what changes in rules need to be considered.

UPDATE III: Put a hold on a trophy just yet for Greg Leding. This is his Twitter take on our reporting about this sad story:

Greg Leding ‏@gregleding 16m16 minutes ago
If you don’t like someone finding joy in another’s difficult situation, you might want to unfollow @ArkansasBlog for a week or so.”

***

Wonkette says, “Investigators became aware of the sexual abuse of the six-year-old when an unidentified caller contacted the Arkansas child mistreatment hotline in late March 2014, and said that

the Harrises “gave their adoptive children to a family” and “that family in turn gave the children to another family” and that [the Harrises] had “continued to accept adoption subsidy money even after giving the children away.”

And in what turned out to be a case of a government agency doing exactly what it should, the state police’s Crimes Against Children Division (CACD) quickly investigated. The call came in on Friday, March 28, and the girls were located that afternoon, at the home of the third family. The girls were interviewed the following Monday, which is when “the 6-year-old disclosed the abuse by Francis, which Francis later told police occurred sometime in January 2014, while his wife was out of state.” Francis was sentenced in November to 40 years in prison in a plea agreement.

When the Arkansas Times tried to interview Rep. Harris for their story, he went all Party of Personal Responsibility on reporter Benjamin Hardy:

In February, the Arkansas Times asked Rep. Harris to comment on the case and explain what became of the girls he and his wife had adopted. He refused, and stated that the Times was attempting to “smear” him. “It’s evil,” he said, becoming visibly upset.

When asked whether he rehomed his adoptive children with another family, he replied, “I’m not confirming that.” When asked about the statements made in the State Police report in the Francis case, Harris said he hadn’t read the file because of the disturbing descriptions of sexual abuse that they contain.

Harris then quoted Isaiah 54:17: “No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.”

“You don’t know what we’ve been through this past year. You have no idea what my family has been through,” he said emphatically. “I don’t care what the people of Arkansas think about me. I don’t care if I lose my position. I care what my wife thinks about me, and I care what my three sons think about me.”

Overcome with emotion, he then turned and walked away. Harris has not responded to repeated requests for further comment, even again this week when advised this story would be published.

He seems nice.

The Bible verse was an especially good touch. It really helps make the case that Harris is just an unfortunate victim of the liberal media, which is trying to make him look bad just because he handed a troubled little girl to someone he figured was trustworthy enough to raise her — though maybe not trustworthy enough to keep in his employ — and who then turned out to be not so trustworthy. This has been really hard on Harris, the poor guy. He’s just trying to do God’s work and to run a decent Christian preschool and to protect the religious freedoms of Arkansas schoolchildren. Is it really fair to get all over him just because he happened to do an exceptionally shitty job of protecting one child?”

Sources: A child left unprotected[Arkansas Times 3/5/15 by Benjamin Hardy]

Rep. Nate Bell blasts adoption story before seeing it; ‘rehoming’ bill introduced [Arkansas Times 3/4/15 by Benjamin Hardy]

Arkansas State Rep Probably Had Good Reason For Giving Adopted Daughter To Guy Who Raped Her
[Wonkette 3/4/15 by Doktor Zoom]

 REFORM Puzzle Piece

 

Update:”An intense and disturbing investigative piece published by the Arkansas Times alleges that State Representative Justin Harris, a devout Christian who also owns a religious preschool, gave away two little girls he and his wife had adopted six months before. The little girls were “re-homed” with a former teacher at the preschool, who then sexually abused one of them.

The story, by Arkansas Times reporter Benjamin Hardy, alleges that 38-year-old Eric Cameron Francis was essentially handed his six-year-old victim by Rep. Harris and his wife Marsha. The Harrises have three biological sons, and announced in March of 2013 that they’d adopted two little girls, the six-year-old and her three-year-old sister. But the Times learned that six months after the adoption was finalized, the girls were living with Francis in Bella Vista, about 45 miles away from the Harris home in West Fork. The Francis family also had three other adopted children.

Francis taught at the preschool Harris owns, Growing God’s Kingdom, for about three months before he was apparently fired in January of 2014 for “poor work attendance.” But the girls were left with the Francis family even after Harris fired him. In March of that year, someone placed an anonymous call to the state’s child abuse hotline. The caller, Hardy writes, stated that the Harrises “gave their adoptive children to a family” and “that family in turn gave the children to another family.” The girls were interviewed by the state police. During the interview, the six-year-old disclosed that Francis had sexually abused her.

According to jail records, Francis was convicted of rape and second-degree sexual assault. He will serve 40 years in prison. Rep. Harris, meanwhile, has refused to comment on allegations that he gave away his adopted children, telling the Times that their story was “evil” and meant to “smear” him, and, Hardy writes, becoming “visibly upset:”

When asked whether he rehomed his adoptive children with another family, he replied, “I’m not confirming that.” When asked about the statements made in the State Police report in the Francis case, Harris said he hadn’t read the file because of the disturbing descriptions of sexual abuse that they contain.

Harris then quoted Isaiah 54:17: “No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.”

Harris is a Tea Party-affiliated kind of guy: until now, he’s been best known for a series of bizarre, ideologically-flavored legislative attempts: a demand that school districts be allowed to erect Nativity scenes and say “Merry Christmas,” for example. Growing God’s Kingdom also came in for some controversy, given that Harris took state funds while running what he openly said was a religious institution, which isn’t allowed, even in Arkansas. (Oddly, the school also appeared to have some undocumented children among its pupils, even as Harris inveighed against “illegal immigrants.”)

The Times says it’s likely that the Harrises received subsidy payments for adopting the girls, given that they weren’t infants and one had what court documents described as “significant behavioral problems” stemming from past trauma. Hardy writes that the six-year-old told investigators she had been sexually abused by a family member before entering foster care.

“Re-homing” isn’t always exactly illegal, but it’s certainly not okay, amounting to what is essentially a gray market for children. In some cases, it can constitute abandonment. In 2013, Reuters published a series on American parents who were giving away their internationally-adopted children on Internet forums to people they had never met.

Harris responded to the allegations by telling the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette they gave the subsidy payments to the Francis family for the girls’ care and that they seemed to be doing well there. “We would have never knowingly put a child in harm’s way, and anyone who knows us knows that,” he told the paper. He’s also deleted his Twitter page (a cached version is availablehere) and made his Instagram private.”

Politician Accused of ‘Giving Away’ Adopted Child to Sexual Abuser[Jezebel 3/5/15 by Anna Merlan]

“The attorney for an Arkansas lawmaker from West Fork released a statement Thursday (March 5) in response to claims in published reports that he and his wife put their adopted children in the care of a man who was later convicted of sexually assaulting one of them.

Jennifer Wells of Wells Law Firm, PLLC in Little Rock sent 5NEWS the following statement on behalf of Rep. Justin Harris, R-West Fork:

Rep. and Mrs. Harris have suffered a severe injustice. Due to threats of possible abandonment charges, they were unable to reach out to [the Arkansas Department of Human Services] for help with children who presented a serious risk of harm to other children in their home. Upon the advice of both a psychiatrist and a pediatrician, they were forced to move the children to the home of trusted friends, who had a lot of experience with children with reactive attachment disorder. Rep. and Mrs. Harris are devastated about the outcome of that decision, but faced with no good option, they did the best that they knew how.”

This week reports published in Arkansas Times, a weekly newspaper in Little Rock, indicate Rep. Harris, re-homed two adopted girls with Eric Frances of Bella Vista. Court records show Francis later pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting one of them.

Harris was unavailable Thursday for comment, but he said on Facebook that he and his wife, Marsha, plan to hold a news conference Friday at 4 p.m.

Right now it’s legal in Arkansas for parents to give their adopted children to other families to raise. But a Fayetteville lawmaker wants that to be done only with court approval.

House Bill 1648 by Rep. Greg Leding would prohibit the private transfer of adopted children except to relatives. Leding, D-Fayetteville, told 5NEWS on Thursday (March 5) that he was surprised to learn adoptive parents can hand their children over to other families without telling authorities.

“To be quite honest, I think most of us down here in Little Rock were completely unaware that this was possible,” said Leding, pictured above at a recent legislative forum in Fayetteville.

State officials said that practice, calling re-homing, has happened without approval from authorities nine times in the past two years that they know of. The state is working with Leding to require court approval before re-homing occurs, said Amy Webb, spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services.

Leding said he’s concerned for adopted children, so he wants to make sure the re-homing of an adopted child is managed by the courts.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a statement the recent media stories raise legitimate concerns, adding “the public policy issues pertaining to it should be addressed as soon as possible. Our children deserve nothing less than our full attention and utmost care.””

Arkansas Lawmaker ‘Forced’ To Re-Home Adopted Children, Attorney Says[5 news 3/5/15]

“Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is working with lawmakers and the Department of Human Services to potentially change state adoption procedures after a House member gave his adopted daughters to a man who later admitted to sexually abusing one of them.

Hutchinson met with two legislators after they filed bills this week to criminalize “re-homing,” an informal term for transferring an adopted child to an unrelated family without state oversight. The lawmakers acted after the Arkansas Times newspaper reported that the adopted daughter of Rep. Justin Harris of West Fork was abused.

Harris said Friday that the children had behavioral problems and professionals recommended the transfer.

Only a handful of states have enacted laws to regulate “re-homing,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Colorado and Wisconsin regulate the advertising of adopted children, while Louisiana and Florida have criminalized the “re-homing” practice. Ohio has safeguards against trading money or goods in return for an adopted child.

Harris’ attorney, Jennifer Wells, said the lawmaker and his wife adopted the 6- and 3-year-old girls in March 2013 at the request of the children’s mother. Seven months later, Wells said, he gave the girls to a longtime family friend who had worked at Harris’ family-owned preschool. Wells said the wives of Harris and Eric Francis had known each other for 20 years and that the Francis family had passed background checks for international adoptions.

Harris, joined by his wife and Wells at a news conference, said one of his adopted daughters threatened family members and one harmed a pet. A psychiatrist, pediatrician and therapist all recommended they be moved, he said.

A Human Services employee he didn’t identify said he would be charged with abandonment if he gave the girls back to the state, Harris said, and he said officials didn’t take steps that could have prevented the abuse.

“We were failed by DHS,” Harris said. “When DHS fails adopted parents, they fail the children even more.”

Harris, who took only a limited number of questions after making his statement, also said he and his wife adopted an older sister of the girls, who was transferred to another family by the department before her sisters were given to Francis.

The state’s Democratic party leader called on Harris, a Republican, to resign. Wells said Harris broke no laws and is “not planning on resigning at the moment.”

Francis, 39, pleaded guilty in November to three counts of sexual assault in the second degree, which involved the 6-year-old and two underage girls Francis knew through church. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison with an additional 20 years suspended and is being held at the Benton County Jail. The jail didn’t list a lawyer for Francis and an attorney listed in court records didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Another family has since adopted the two sisters, said Benton County prosecutor Nathan Smith.

Representatives Greg Leding, a Democrat from Fayetteville, and David Meeks, a Republican from Conway, have both filed bills to prohibit most transfers of adopted children to non-relatives without court approval.

Leding wouldn’t comment on Harris’ situation, but said most lawmakers previously didn’t know giving away children was legal.

“I think it’s natural for people to want to make sure children are kept in the safest situation,” Leding said.

It’s unclear when the bills will be heard, but they are most likely headed to the House Committee on Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs, of which Harris is vice chairman. Harris said he supports Leding’s bill.

Department spokeswoman Amy Webb has said she is barred by law from commenting on Harris’ case and said after the news conference that she was also prohibited from “clarifying any inaccurate information.””

Arkansas governor seeks adoption rules review after abuse of House member’s transferred child [US News and World Report 3/6/15 by Allen Reed/ Associated Press]

“State Rep. Justin Harris said on Friday he and his wife were not prepared to care for two adopted girls with severe mental issues and “were failed” by the Arkansas Department of Human Services.

“I want to clarify that the victims here are the children, not myself, my wife or my children,” Harris said at a news conference. “We are heartbroken by this situation. We attempted to make the situation work for two years because we cared deeply for the girls.”

Harris confirmed to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette this week that he let his two adopted daughters live with a man who later sexually assaulted the oldest child, a 6-year-old girl.

Harris and his wife Marsha adopted the sisters in March 2013 at the request of the children’s mother. There was “anger and an instant behavior change” when the girls realized they would not be “going back to Mom’s house,” Harris said.

Harris said they reached out to DHS “numerous times” but were threatened with abandonment charges.

The family has been cleared of those charges, Harris said.

Harris said at the conference that one of the girls “bashed in a 2-year-old’s head with a rock” and another “crushed a family pet to death” and abused two other pets.

Harris also said one of the girls “disclosed her plan to kill everyone in the family.”

Harris said after seeking counseling for the siblings, and at the recommendation of the professionals, he sent them to live with Eric Cameron Francis, now 39, and his wife in October 2013.

No law currently prohibits parents from leaving their children in the care of others.

Money received from the state Department of Human Services for the girls’ support was forwarded on to the Francis home, Harris said.

Francis was arrested in April 2014 and pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault in the second degree, involving the oldest of the Harris’ adopted daughters and two other girls.

The Harris family employed Francis at their daycare, Growing God’s Kingdom, for three months.”

Legislator says family ‘failed by DHS’ in adoption[Arkansas On line 3/6/15 by Danielle Kloap]

” After accusing high level DHS officials of threatening abandonment charges when he tried to give his adopted daughters back to the state, Representative Justin Harris (R- West Fork) released more information Monday about the controversy, telling THV11 through an attorney that the department knew he gave his daughters to another family and did nothing about it.

Attorney Jennifer Wells told THV11 by phone Monday Division of Children and Family Services Director Cecile Blucker was aware of the rehoming but didn’t report it to authorities.

Blucker denied THV11’s requests for an interview as the department does not comment on specific adoption cases.

Currently, there are no laws against “re-homing” in Arkansas. There are, however, two bills on the table that, if passed, would make it illegal to give adopted children away to another family. See the bill here.

Governor Hutchinson joined the discussion, releasing a statement that said:

“Today, I continued my personal review of the practices and policies of DHS when it comes to adoption of children within DHS custody. This all occurred long before I was elected governor, and my efforts are focused on what needs to change to better protect the children. DHS policy has been changed to prohibit any rehoming of DHS-supervised children after adoption and to provide additional services and support for adoptive families that encounter behavioral problems.””

Rep. Justin Harris makes new allegations against DHS officials[WTHV11 3/1015 by Kevin Trager]

“An emotional Rep. Justin Harris (R-West Fork), his wife at his side, told reporters at a press conference last week that he sent his two adopted daughters to live with another family, where one of them was later sexually abused, because he would have faced abandonment charges by the state.

Responding to the Arkansas Times’ report that uncovered Harris’ “rehoming” of his children, the state legislator said he was “failed” by the Department of Human Services when he told employees the girls were too difficult for the family to handle. He said DHS’ threat to charge him with abandonment could have cost him custody of his three biological sons (and, though he did not say so, could have cost him his business as well, Growing God’s Kingdom preschool). The lawmaker also said DHS “misled” him about severe behavioral issues with the girls. He said they suffered from reactive attachment disorder, a condition sometimes occurring among children with unstable backgrounds that results in severe emotional and social problems.

Harris spoke for the first time of a third, older sister that he said DHS made him adopt before he could take the younger sisters into his home. The Times had reported on the third sister before the press conference, held Friday afternoon in the old Supreme Court chambers in the state Capitol. The older girl, who would have been about 6 years old at the time she entered the Harris household, presented an imminent danger to his older three sons, Harris said. DHS ultimately placed the child into a hospital after just a few months of living with the family, and the Harrises did not proceed with the planned adoption. He also said the younger sisters, ages 4 and 2 when they entered the Harris home, were violent. He said one of the girls — the implication was the middle sister — had to be medicated to stop hurting her sister, and that he was advised by therapists to treat her RAD by removing toys and other belongings from her room.

After one of the two younger girls crushed a family pet to death, Harris said, he and his wife were advised by “a therapist, a psychiatrist and a pediatrician” to remove the children from the Harris home. He said he sought DHS assistance at that time but was given none. He said he thought he’d found the “perfect solution” in handing the girls over to Stacey Francis, a longtime friend of his wife’s, and her husband, Eric Cameron Francis. Eric Francis is serving 40 years in prison on charges of raping the child the Harrises rehomed and sexually assaulting other children.

This story will refer to the three girls taken in by the Harrises by pseudonyms: We will call the oldest sister Jeannette, the middle sister Mary and the youngest sister Annie. When they began living with the Harrises in 2012, Jeannette was around 6, Mary was 4 and Annie was around 2.

 

Demons

 

Nearly a dozen people interviewed by the Times tell a different story of Justin and Marsha Harris’ dealings with DHS and their relationship with the three young girls. Among them: two foster families who cared for the girls prior to the Harris adoption, the girls’ biological mother, a former DHS employee familiar with the proceedings and a former babysitter at the Harrises’ West Fork home.

Cheryl and Craig Hart, an experienced foster couple who housed Mary and Annie for a year and a half before their adoption by the Harrises, said they tried to talk the Harrises out of adopting the sisters. The Harts said that a local team working on the adoption — including themselves, DHS caseworkers, adoption specialists, CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) and therapists from Ozark Guidance, a mental health provider — made the Harrises fully aware of the girls’ history of neglect and sexual abuse and cautioned them that they were unprepared to handle children from such a background, especially considering their home included young boys. The former DHS employee confirmed this account.

The Harts also said the adoption was allowed to proceed despite their objections because of the direct intervention of Cecile Blucker, head of the Division of Children and Family Services, the arm of DHS responsible for child welfare. They say Blucker exerted pressure on the Washington County DHS office on behalf of Justin Harris to facilitate the adoption. The former DHS employee confirmed this information as well.

Chelsey Goldsborough, who regularly babysat for the Harrises, said Mary was kept isolated from Annie and from the rest of the family. She was often confined for hours to her room, where she was monitored by a video camera. The reason: The Harrises believed the girls were possessed by demons and could communicate telepathically, Goldsborough said. Harris and his wife once hired specialists to perform an “exorcism” on the two sisters while she waited outside the house with the boys, she said.

Multiple sources who interacted with the family confirmed Goldsborough’s account that the Harrises believed the children were possessed, and another source close to the family said that Marsha Harris spoke openly about the supposed demonic possession.

The Harrises deny those claims. Their attorney, Jennifer Wells, said in a statement: “Exorcisms and telepathy are not part of the Harrises’ religious practice. They followed the techniques in a book called ‘When Love Is Not Enough, a Parent’s Guide to Reactive Attachment Disorder’ by Nancy Thomas, who is a recognized expert on therapeutic parenting techniques.”

Mary and Annie stayed in the Harris home for no more than 14 months (not two years, as Harris said at the Friday press conference). For about half of that time, from the end of 2012 to summer 2013, Goldsborough would babysit the Harris boys, Annie and, in an unconventional sense, Mary. Goldsborough said she would watch Mary on a monitor linked to a camera in her room, but usually only entered the room to provide food or water. Goldsborough, who is now a college student in Bentonville, said she would stay at the Harris house for three to four hours after school many days during the spring semester of her senior year of high school.

“The first night I was over there, I just broke down and cried with this little girl because I just felt so bad for her,” Goldsborough said.

According to Goldsborough, the two girls were kept in separate rooms that were outfitted with locks, alarms and video cameras. They were not allowed to be around each other because of the Harrises’ belief in demonic possession and telepathy, she said.

While Annie would be allowed to roam the house and interact with other family members, Mary was often confined to her room, Goldsborough said.

“We couldn’t ever take [Mary] out. I’d watch her from a camera. I think it’s crazy. They were adopted, so they’re going to want TLC.”

Goldsborough said the “exorcism” was performed by specialists from Alabama who came to the house to orchestrate the event. Other sources confirmed to the Times that Marsha Harris told them at least one “exorcism” was performed on the girls.

Goldsborough said the Harrises showed her “a picture of [Mary] where they’re like, ‘You can see the demon rising from her back,’ and it just looked like a little 6-year-old to me.” [Mary was 4 or 5.] The separate source close to the Harrises reported seeing a video that Marsha Harris said showed a demon interacting with one of the girls. The source said demons were an “obsession” with Marsha Harris.

“They consider it to be spiritual warfare,” the other source said. “I’m a Christian, and I have these beliefs, but this was completely beyond anything I’ve ever seen or heard about.”

Goldsborough said the reason the family removed Mary’s toys was “because a demon told [Mary] not to share. … Demons told her to not appreciate [her toys] and all that, so they took away all the toys and her colored clothes.”

Although she was disturbed by what she saw in the household to the extent that she reported it to DHS*, Goldsborough said she felt compelled to continue babysitting for the sake of the girls. “I think everything happens for a reason, so I feel like I was there for a reason,” she said. “In some ways I did break the rules and give [Mary] attention. When it was just me and her one night, I took her on a walk down the street to hang out and took her to the playground.”

When asked whether either of the girls displayed any signs of violence, Goldsborough said, “Yeah — they’d throw a fit sometimes if I made them eat their broccoli. They were like any other kid I watched.”

At the Friday press conference, Justin Harris said he and Marsha had their biological sons sleep in their room for “their protection” from the young sisters. The source close to the Harrises said the pet — a guinea pig belonging to one of the boys — was killed not by Mary, but by the oldest sister, Jeannette, who had long since left the home by the time the Harrises, allegedly on the advice of therapists, rehomed the girls with the Francises.

Asked about the death of the guinea pig, Wells, the Harrises’ lawyer, said via email, “A family pet, which was a guinea pig, was crushed to death by one of the children. Another pet, which was a hamster, was hurt but not killed by another child. We don’t want to identify exactly which child did what. It may be in the report you have, but just in case the minors’ identities are known, we don’t want to be specific for their own protection.”

The lawyer had not responded to a long list of other questions from the Times by midday Tuesday.

Goldsborough said Mary and Annie were moved to the Francis home in Bella Vista months after she moved away for college. “But I knew they had talked about it, they were going to rehome them,” she said. “They were looking for a new house because Marsha had gotten sick.” Doctors found that Marsha Harris had a possible cancerous mass sometime in 2013; Goldsborough believes that’s why the Harrises eventually sent the girls away. “She just felt tired all the time, and she went in [to the doctor] and they found something and she said, ‘I just don’t know if I can handle all this.’ ”

Justin Harris said they took Mary’s toys away from her at the suggestion of professionals from Ozark Guidance. But Dr. Peter Jensen, acting director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said that did not sound like an appropriate therapy for RAD.

Children with RAD may be successfully treated, especially if reached at an early age and placed in a stable, loving home, Jensen said. But “parents cannot use normal parenting. … They have to learn skills most parents don’t have — such as how to talk a child down.” Therapists need to become involved. “You can have a degree in child development, but that’s not a degree in child development run amok, gone wild.”

To allow a child with RAD to emotionally attach to her new caregivers requires a focus on positive reinforcement; any punishment must be kept gentle, Jensen said. Attachment to a mother or father figure is “a deep, biological need and necessary for normal social development,” Jensen said. With attachment comes a sense of security; without it, a child may experience a heightened wariness of his or her environment, become withdrawn, and be unable to respond to attempts at comfort.

“We see this happening in orphanages and kids moved into foster care at a young age. … Basically, they haven’t had their emotional needs met, or they’ve been taken away,” Jensen said. When a child has repeated changes of caregivers, “that child is learning that the world is not to be trusted and there is no one there for me at a critical time, and I might be bounced out at any moment,” he said.

Taking toys away for long periods of time — “that’s just the wrong thing,” a naïve idea, Jensen said.

“Sometimes you see kids put in a safe environment and all hell may break loose. Now it’s safe for them to show all the disturbance that has been hidden,” Jensen said. But “even that can be treated.”

‘This was my winning battle’

 

“All I wanted to do was to make sure my girls were safe and in a good home, you know? To at least keep them together, instead of DHS taking my rights,” said Sarah Young, the biological mother of the three sisters, in an interview with the Times.

That is why, in 2011, Young approached the Harrises and asked them to adopt her daughters, then in foster care. She said she was originally introduced to the Harrises by a former friend. After Friday’s press conference, Justin Harris gave a lengthy interview to a KARK-TV, Channel 4, reporter in which he told a similar story about how his troubled adoption began.

“A mother … heard that we were wanting to adopt,” he said. “[She] heard about us … through the church on Dickson Street [in Fayetteville] where they gave free meals. So she called us out of the blue, the mom, and said ‘Will you take my three girls? Because I’m about ready to lose them to DHS.’ ”

The girls had been taken into DHS custody in early 2011 after suffering through a staggering sequence of chaos and abuse. First, Young discovered her husband sexually assaulting Jeannette, the oldest of the three girls, and turned him in; he is now in prison. (Other sources claim Young waited for days to turn the husband over to the police.) Young then became involved with a man who cooked and sold methamphetamine; a fire started by his meth lab provoked a police investigation that sent that man, too, to prison. The child abuse hotline soon thereafter received a call from an individual concerned for the girls’ safety, and investigators found the children in the care of a woman in a house with multiple adults who tested positive for meth; one man at the home had been sexually abusing both Jeannette and Mary, and he is now serving a 120-year sentence. When DHS collected the children, the eldest was 5, the middle girl was 3 and the youngest was under a year old.

The two youngest girls were taken into the Harts’ foster home. “We got the little one first; I’m pretty sure it was the first weekend of March 2011,” Cheryl Hart said. “The middle girl came maybe two months later — she had a potential adoptive family that for some reason changed their minds very suddenly and said she had to be out right away, so we took her, too.”

The Harts kept the two younger sisters until October 2012, and their descriptions of the girls’ behavior throughout those 18 months stands in stark contrast to the harrowing picture painted by Justin Harris.

“They were not a challenge compared to a lot of kids we’ve had, but we were familiar with their kinds of behaviors,” Cheryl Hart said. The girls had regular counseling at Children’s House in Springdale, a center specializing in mental health treatment for young victims of abuse. “They got therapy every day — play therapy, occupational therapy, anger management.”

With 15 years fostering some 70 children, the Harts were veterans at living with tough kids. Mary, they said, had some problems at preschool — tantrums and occasional inappropriate behavior. She “didn’t have boundaries,” Cheryl Hart recalled. “If the checker at Walmart asked if she wanted to go home with her, she would. They were thrown in with a lot of transient people in their lives before us.

“But she was such a sweet little girl. We could reason with her and talk to her. The neighbor kids liked her. She loved to dress up.”

Craig Hart objected strongly to Harris’ implication that the girls were dangerous. “Our friends, our neighbors, our church — we can get as many character witnesses as you want for those girls,” he said. “And also, they’re both small children for their age. Unless he gave them guns, they weren’t dangerous.”

He felt especially offended at Harris’ statement in the press conference that they had to “medicate” the middle child to prevent her from “hurting her sister.” He said Mary displayed only affection and kindness toward her younger sister. “They loved each other. The older one was very protective of the younger one.”

“If they were violent [in the Harris home], they were taught violence. We had a dog, a little Bichon, that they were around all the time and there was never once any issue with her abusing an animal. … They thrived in our home,” Cheryl Hart said.

Kyra Guthrie, a Fayetteville resident and friend of the Harts, sometimes provided respite care for the foster family. “I knew the two girls for over a year and spent many hours with them,” Guthrie told the Times. “They’re just normal little girls. They were very delightful, fun, energetic … never an ounce of threat from them. They played with my adopted son in my home.”

But what of Jeannette, the oldest daughter and the first to be taken in by the Harrises, who the lawmaker said “sometimes spent about eight hours every day screaming and in a rage” and threatened violence upon his sons?

After Jeannette entered DHS supervision in early 2011, she bounced around between foster care and inpatient psychiatric treatment before landing in a therapeutic foster home in May 2011. The mother in that household, who asked that her name not be used in this story, still refers to the girl as “my daughter” and describes her as simultaneously one of the most disturbing casualties of sexual abuse she’s ever encountered and a remarkable, resilient child who she grew to love as deeply as her own biological son.

“Now, I’m really good with kids with sexual trauma. But this kid was so sexualized, I’d never seen anything like it,” the therapeutic foster mother said. “My husband was so worried of any allegations that he wouldn’t go down the hall to her room.

“I had a big dog outside, and I caught her trying to stick a stick up the dog’s nose. So you think of the typical labels these kids get, like ‘Oh, they’re a sociopath,’ but when I asked her what she was doing she said, ‘I was trying to get him to kill me, so I could go to heaven.’ It wasn’t about controlling an animal — she was so sad about everything that happened to her, she really wanted to die.”

Therapeutic foster parents are trained to deal with the intense demands of traumatized children and nudge them toward healing and bonding with intentional, careful steps. Gradually, the foster mother said, this troubled girl’s behavior began to change.

“She did so good. It was hard. She was the toughest kid I ever had, but when she finally came through and I realized I could take her to our homeschool co-op, she was just like a normal kid. She’d get overexcited or scared, and we’d come back out and she’d calm down with me. I’d take her to parks and she wouldn’t run off or act all crazy or beat other children to death — she was just another kid.”

Meanwhile, Sarah Young, the biological mother, had made a plan of her own. When DHS takes children from a home, it’s usually assumed to be temporary — the eventual goal being reunification with the birth family — but the agency will move to terminate parental rights if it determines the birth parents are unfit.

Given the abuse the kids had endured while entrusted to her care, Young believed that it was unlikely a judge would return her children. She mistrusted DHS and disliked the foster system. She told the Times that she wanted to get the girls into a permanent home — and to keep the three of them together, above all else — in large part because of her own unhappy childhood spent in foster care in Minnesota.

“When I was a child, I was abandoned, then adopted, and then my adopted mom threw me back in the foster system because she didn’t want me. Because of my behavior, my problems. That’s something I didn’t want for my girls. I knew how foster homes are — some are good, some not.” And then, she found the Harrises.

Justin and Marsha Harris always evinced a keen, sincere interest in helping vulnerable kids. In the KARK interview, Justin Harris noted that he and his future wife met at Children’s House. She was a volunteer and he an intern, confirmed a source familiar with the Harrises. They married four months later.

“We had wanted to adopt from the very beginning. … We had decided to add on to our house in order to expand the family, and we couldn’t have any more children, so at that point we had decided we were going to adopt. We just always kept that in our mind,” Harris said.

To both Young and the Harrises, it must have seemed like providence. Here was a young, desperate mother pleading for help, seeking a home for her three little lost girls. And here was a stable family with a successful business, the father a state representative, seeking new children. “Marsha was showing me these really beautiful pictures of these rooms that they had supposedly set up for the girls,” Young recalled.

So one day in late 2011, a few months after they were first introduced, Young met with the Harrises. “Their attorneys pulled up all the paperwork for me. They came in to one of the church lunches and had me go to the bank with them to have it notarized and all that stuff to take it back to their lawyer.

“DHS was still trying to go after me, and when they talked about terminating my [parental] rights, I said, ‘I don’t have any rights. I turned them over to these people,’ ” Young said. “I never signed any parental rights away to DHS. I figured this was my winning battle. … I felt it was better. It was the only chance I had to keep my girls together. This was my last effort at being a good mother.”

 

The adoption

 

“Our idea was going to be to have a private adoption,” Harris said in the KARK interview. “[The biological] mom wanted to have control of what happened to the children … and Marsha and I said we didn’t want to go through DHS because of some issues we’d had with them in the past.” (Roughly around this time, in late 2011, the Harrises were feuding with DHS over an investigation involving Growing God’s Kingdom that found the school included overtly Christian instruction despite receiving public money.)

DHS, Harris said, would not let him and Marsha adopt the girls privately — that is, via the legal documents drafted by their attorney attempting to transfer custody from Young to their family. Instead, “they wanted us to do it through the system.” Even once the couple began the lengthy process of adopting through DHS, though, he said the agency “fought us the whole way. … They felt like we had an ulterior motive to wanting these children in the first place.”

But it was not just DHS. The two foster families themselves strongly objected to the Harris adoption, whether done privately or through the system. When the therapeutic foster mother argued that troubled Jeannette in particular should not be placed into the Harris home, she said, Justin Harris waved away her concerns.

“She was a kid that needed an experienced family,” the mother explained. “The problem was simple hubris. He saw it as, ‘I’m with God. God’s going to solve this.’ … There are lots of children you could adopt — you don’t need to take the most traumatized ones out of the system. He was told by many people in DHS, ‘These are not the kids you want to just jump into.’ … That’s why I’m angry. I knew [Jeannette] wouldn’t last five minutes there.”

But Justin Harris now says he and Marsha were pressured to take Jeannette against their wishes. He said at the Friday press conference that they wanted only to adopt the younger sisters but were forced to accept the eldest as part of a package deal: “Marsha and I always planned to have five children. … We decided to adopt two girls. After initiating a private adoption, we were informed in a meeting with DHS, CASA, the attorney ad litem, and Ozark Guidance that we could not adopt the two children unless we also took their older sibling.”

Harris contradicted himself in the KARK interview later that same evening, stating that Sarah Young asked him, ” ‘Will you take my three girls?’ … and we said, ‘Yes, we will take your three girls.’ ”

Cheryl Hart also vividly remembers the roundtable meeting described by Harris, which she said occurred on Valentine’s Day 2012. What she recalls is that Justin and Marsha Harris did not heed the warnings of person after person familiar with the sisters’ special needs, who uniformly counseled against placing troubled girls in a home with young boys and busy parents.

“We tried to sort of put all our cards on the table and say why this was a bad idea,” Cheryl Hart said. “But the Harrises were hell-bent on having it happen. … Organizations, counselors, therapists, caseworker after caseworker told them, you don’t know what you’re getting into. They just were in denial the whole time about how troubled these girls were. … They repeatedly told us they had degrees in early childhood development, they had therapists there at their preschool, and they had God to help them through this.

“I asked them point blank, ‘Why would you put your sons through that?’ Because [Jeannette] at the time was aggressive — that’s how she learned to get things in her life. And they knew [Mary] had been sexually assaulted, and she would have some anger issues.” The former DHS employee the Times contacted for this story independently confirmed this account of the Valentine’s Day meeting.

Cheryl Hart also remembers Justin Harris often mentioning the name of DCFS director Blucker, the person ultimately in charge of adoption and foster care for the state of Arkansas. As a legislator, Harris knew Blucker personally — and has some influence over her budget.

“In most conversations with us, [Harris] would mention Cecile’s name. ‘Well, Cecile said this, Cecile said that,’ ” Cheryl Hart said. It is her opinion the Harrises called Cecile Blucker “to expedite things.”

That summer, the adoption case went before 4th Circuit Juvenile Court Judge Stacy Zimmerman in Washington County. And in court, Cheryl Hart recalled, something strange happened: Everyone on the DHS team that had previously opposed the adoption changed their recommendations. “Everyone testifying before the judge had stipulations, like ‘To be followed up,’ ‘To continue their therapy at Children’s House,’ but nobody would say, ‘We really don’t think this is a good idea.’ ” The Harts believe Blucker’s influence made the adoption happen. They said she exerted pressure on people in the local DHS team on Harris’ behalf.

DHS can’t comment on specific cases, but when the Times previously asked DHS spokesperson Amy Webb whether senior agency officials at the state level ever override the recommendations of a local adoption team, she said, “I’m sure that’s possible that’s happened. That’s part of the process you want. That’s why we have supervisors and area managers … because you want as many eyes as you can to help make sure we make the best, most appropriate decisions for those kids. So, sure, higher-ups will get into discussions about what is best and what is not.”

However, a source familiar with the workings of state-level DHS informed the Times that Blucker supposedly remarked in 2012 that “Harris threatened to hold up the budget for the division if he didn’t get to adopt those girls.”

Justin Harris suggested he used his influence to obtain the three girls during the adoption hearing, according to Cheryl Hart.

“At the hearing, the ad litem attorney — you know, the one who is representing only the interests of the children — said, ‘When we met less than a couple of days ago, everyone’s recommendation was for these kids to not go to this home. Now, what has happened in the last 24 hours that everyone’s recommendation has changed?’

“Harris’ face was getting all red,” Cheryl Hart added. “And the ad litem asked him, ‘Did you make calls?’ And he finally said, ‘I did what I had to do to get these girls.’ I expected the judge would [stop the adoption] but she gave them the oldest girl.” The younger two sisters soon followed.

The Harts reject Harris’ claim that the family didn’t want the oldest child. “They said the whole time in court they wanted all three, and that’s why they were chosen [to adopt] … They fell on their knees when they were told they could take her.”

As for the transfer itself, Craig Hart said, “It was not the process normally followed when we had kids go into an adoption situation … the court said there should be a transitioning period between us and them, and we saw them only once after they moved in [with the Harrises]. We still are in contact with a lot of our former fosters who have been adopted. They cut us off completely, quickly — they just thought they knew so much.”

Cheryl Hart said their offers of respite care — that is, extended childcare to allow parents time away from difficult kids — went unanswered. “We offered to be respite for them, to give them relief, to help out any way that we could because we’d been living with [Mary and Annie] for a year and a half. They never once called us.”

‘This was my winning battle’

 

“All I wanted to do was to make sure my girls were safe and in a good home, you know? To at least keep them together, instead of DHS taking my rights,” said Sarah Young, the biological mother of the three sisters, in an interview with the Times.

That is why, in 2011, Young approached the Harrises and asked them to adopt her daughters, then in foster care. She said she was originally introduced to the Harrises by a former friend. After Friday’s press conference, Justin Harris gave a lengthy interview to a KARK-TV, Channel 4, reporter in which he told a similar story about how his troubled adoption began.

“A mother … heard that we were wanting to adopt,” he said. “[She] heard about us … through the church on Dickson Street [in Fayetteville] where they gave free meals. So she called us out of the blue, the mom, and said ‘Will you take my three girls? Because I’m about ready to lose them to DHS.’ ”

The girls had been taken into DHS custody in early 2011 after suffering through a staggering sequence of chaos and abuse. First, Young discovered her husband sexually assaulting Jeannette, the oldest of the three girls, and turned him in; he is now in prison. (Other sources claim Young waited for days to turn the husband over to the police.) Young then became involved with a man who cooked and sold methamphetamine; a fire started by his meth lab provoked a police investigation that sent that man, too, to prison. The child abuse hotline soon thereafter received a call from an individual concerned for the girls’ safety, and investigators found the children in the care of a woman in a house with multiple adults who tested positive for meth; one man at the home had been sexually abusing both Jeannette and Mary, and he is now serving a 120-year sentence. When DHS collected the children, the eldest was 5, the middle girl was 3 and the youngest was under a year old.

The two youngest girls were taken into the Harts’ foster home. “We got the little one first; I’m pretty sure it was the first weekend of March 2011,” Cheryl Hart said. “The middle girl came maybe two months later — she had a potential adoptive family that for some reason changed their minds very suddenly and said she had to be out right away, so we took her, too.”

The Harts kept the two younger sisters until October 2012, and their descriptions of the girls’ behavior throughout those 18 months stands in stark contrast to the harrowing picture painted by Justin Harris.

“They were not a challenge compared to a lot of kids we’ve had, but we were familiar with their kinds of behaviors,” Cheryl Hart said. The girls had regular counseling at Children’s House in Springdale, a center specializing in mental health treatment for young victims of abuse. “They got therapy every day — play therapy, occupational therapy, anger management.”

With 15 years fostering some 70 children, the Harts were veterans at living with tough kids. Mary, they said, had some problems at preschool — tantrums and occasional inappropriate behavior. She “didn’t have boundaries,” Cheryl Hart recalled. “If the checker at Walmart asked if she wanted to go home with her, she would. They were thrown in with a lot of transient people in their lives before us.

“But she was such a sweet little girl. We could reason with her and talk to her. The neighbor kids liked her. She loved to dress up.”

Craig Hart objected strongly to Harris’ implication that the girls were dangerous. “Our friends, our neighbors, our church — we can get as many character witnesses as you want for those girls,” he said. “And also, they’re both small children for their age. Unless he gave them guns, they weren’t dangerous.”

He felt especially offended at Harris’ statement in the press conference that they had to “medicate” the middle child to prevent her from “hurting her sister.” He said Mary displayed only affection and kindness toward her younger sister. “They loved each other. The older one was very protective of the younger one.”

“If they were violent [in the Harris home], they were taught violence. We had a dog, a little Bichon, that they were around all the time and there was never once any issue with her abusing an animal. … They thrived in our home,” Cheryl Hart said.

Kyra Guthrie, a Fayetteville resident and friend of the Harts, sometimes provided respite care for the foster family. “I knew the two girls for over a year and spent many hours with them,” Guthrie told the Times. “They’re just normal little girls. They were very delightful, fun, energetic … never an ounce of threat from them. They played with my adopted son in my home.”

But what of Jeannette, the oldest daughter and the first to be taken in by the Harrises, who the lawmaker said “sometimes spent about eight hours every day screaming and in a rage” and threatened violence upon his sons?

After Jeannette entered DHS supervision in early 2011, she bounced around between foster care and inpatient psychiatric treatment before landing in a therapeutic foster home in May 2011. The mother in that household, who asked that her name not be used in this story, still refers to the girl as “my daughter” and describes her as simultaneously one of the most disturbing casualties of sexual abuse she’s ever encountered and a remarkable, resilient child who she grew to love as deeply as her own biological son.

“Now, I’m really good with kids with sexual trauma. But this kid was so sexualized, I’d never seen anything like it,” the therapeutic foster mother said. “My husband was so worried of any allegations that he wouldn’t go down the hall to her room.

“I had a big dog outside, and I caught her trying to stick a stick up the dog’s nose. So you think of the typical labels these kids get, like ‘Oh, they’re a sociopath,’ but when I asked her what she was doing she said, ‘I was trying to get him to kill me, so I could go to heaven.’ It wasn’t about controlling an animal — she was so sad about everything that happened to her, she really wanted to die.”

Therapeutic foster parents are trained to deal with the intense demands of traumatized children and nudge them toward healing and bonding with intentional, careful steps. Gradually, the foster mother said, this troubled girl’s behavior began to change.

“She did so good. It was hard. She was the toughest kid I ever had, but when she finally came through and I realized I could take her to our homeschool co-op, she was just like a normal kid. She’d get overexcited or scared, and we’d come back out and she’d calm down with me. I’d take her to parks and she wouldn’t run off or act all crazy or beat other children to death — she was just another kid.”

Meanwhile, Sarah Young, the biological mother, had made a plan of her own. When DHS takes children from a home, it’s usually assumed to be temporary — the eventual goal being reunification with the birth family — but the agency will move to terminate parental rights if it determines the birth parents are unfit.

Given the abuse the kids had endured while entrusted to her care, Young believed that it was unlikely a judge would return her children. She mistrusted DHS and disliked the foster system. She told the Times that she wanted to get the girls into a permanent home — and to keep the three of them together, above all else — in large part because of her own unhappy childhood spent in foster care in Minnesota.

“When I was a child, I was abandoned, then adopted, and then my adopted mom threw me back in the foster system because she didn’t want me. Because of my behavior, my problems. That’s something I didn’t want for my girls. I knew how foster homes are — some are good, some not.” And then, she found the Harrises.

Justin and Marsha Harris always evinced a keen, sincere interest in helping vulnerable kids. In the KARK interview, Justin Harris noted that he and his future wife met at Children’s House. She was a volunteer and he an intern, confirmed a source familiar with the Harrises. They married four months later.

“We had wanted to adopt from the very beginning. … We had decided to add on to our house in order to expand the family, and we couldn’t have any more children, so at that point we had decided we were going to adopt. We just always kept that in our mind,” Harris said.

To both Young and the Harrises, it must have seemed like providence. Here was a young, desperate mother pleading for help, seeking a home for her three little lost girls. And here was a stable family with a successful business, the father a state representative, seeking new children. “Marsha was showing me these really beautiful pictures of these rooms that they had supposedly set up for the girls,” Young recalled.

So one day in late 2011, a few months after they were first introduced, Young met with the Harrises. “Their attorneys pulled up all the paperwork for me. They came in to one of the church lunches and had me go to the bank with them to have it notarized and all that stuff to take it back to their lawyer.

“DHS was still trying to go after me, and when they talked about terminating my [parental] rights, I said, ‘I don’t have any rights. I turned them over to these people,’ ” Young said. “I never signed any parental rights away to DHS. I figured this was my winning battle. … I felt it was better. It was the only chance I had to keep my girls together. This was my last effort at being a good mother.”

 

The Harrises sent Mary and Annie to live with the Francises in October 2013, just a year after they had taken them into custody. The girls remained with the Francises until February or March of 2014 — a month or two after Francis stopped working at the Harrises’ daycare. In the interview with KARK last Friday, Harris said Francis left to spend more time studying for a seminary degree and that the parting was amicable. When news of the rape came out in April 2014 and Harris was questioned about his former employee, he told theTimes he’d fired Francis for a poor work record. The lawmaker did not reveal at the time the child Francis raped was Harris’ own.

For unknown reasons, Mary and Annie left the Francis home in early 2014 to live with yet another family, where they remain today. This couple, the girls’ fourth set of parents in two and a half years, has now legally adopted them.

Although they still decline to share the full circumstances of their adoption, the parents said they felt compelled to respond to the statements Justin Harris has made this past week that portray the girls as dangerous and violent.

“We are aware of the very public conversation going on about events pertaining to our daughters,” they said in an email to the Times. “We are deeply grieved over Justin Harris’ accusations toward our daughters in order to self-protect; it is inexcusable. Like the Harts, we also have two small dogs and the girls have only been gentle towards them. These girls are happy, healthy children who have gone through things no child should ever have to endure. Since they have been home with us, they have adjusted beautifully and are thriving in our home with unconditional love and patience. We are truly amazed at our daughters’ ability to love and bond with us, given all they have experienced. They are both extremely protective toward each other and love each other with all their hearts. They are a beautiful example to us of God’s amazing grace and the power of love to heal the broken heart. Our daughters are a precious gift from God and truly a blessing to each one of our lives and our extended family and friends. We love them deeply and are committed to do everything we can to help them live healthy, happy lives.

“We choose to forgive the Harrises and hope they will truly follow Christ in humility and repentance for the mistakes they made in our daughters’ lives. Due to the sensitivity of our daughters’ story, and out of respect for them, we are asking the public for privacy during this time.”

(Jeannette was eventually adopted by a therapeutic foster family and is said to be doing well. That family could not be reached by the Times.)

Craig Hart also raised the issue of faith when addressing Justin Harris’ comments about the girls. “We started through our church. I know that the Harrises talk a lot about Christianity, but we’re Christians. We [started fostering] because of our Christianity. We took all of the kids we had to church and Sunday school. We kept a loving Christian home for them to be a part of it. It really repulses us what he said. It’s really upsetting.”

If Harris’ account of the girls as violent and threatening holds little water, however, the other half of his narrative presents a more immediately sympathetic defense: DHS is not a friend to parents in need.

“We care deeply for the girls but we were failed by DHS,” Harris said at his press conference. “Despite what you may have read, we reached out to DHS numerous times and were met with nothing but hostility.” He grew emotional describing his dilemma: “We were threatened with possible abandonment charges and potentially losing our own boys as well if we returned the girls to DHS custody. In fact, a past DHS employee at the time came to us and confirmed that the plan at DHS was to seek abandonment charges if we returned the girls.”

Harris later suggested in the KARK interview that the agency was threatening him because of his political beliefs. “I hold DHS accountable … And I’m not sorry for doing it,” he declared.

He also mentioned Cecile Blucker’s name, but this time not in a congenial context. “Cecile Blucker knew where the kids were. They kept up with the kids,” he said, referring to the rehoming. On Tuesday, shortly before this story went to print, Harris sharpened his accusations, telling KTHV-TV, Channel 11, that Blucker — the state’s top official for child welfare — knew he gave the girls to another family and did not report it. A source familiar with DHS indicated that there may be at least some truth to that claim. The rehoming of Mary and Annie officially came to the attention of DHS on March 28, 2014, thanks to an anonymous call to the child abuse hotline operated by State Police. But the source told theTimes that Blucker was made aware that the girls had been rehomed days before the call was received by the hotline. According to the source, Blucker made contact with Harris, who agreed to return the girls to DHS custody at a specified time, but Harris did not show up at the office — and Blucker did not notify State Police that the girls’ wherebouts were unknown.

When asked if Blucker had prior knowledge of the rehoming, Webb, the DHS spokesperson, said the agency could not comment due to the confidentiality of adoption cases. Because adoption proceedings are so closed, it is nearly impossible for Blucker or DHS as a whole to refute Harris’ statements that the agency (or individuals within it) provided insufficient support, threatened him and ultimately turned a blind eye to the rehoming. Webb did offer this statement after Harris’ press conference, however: “Though Rep. Harris is talking about this adoption, by law we cannot do so and are concerned about the very sensitive and protected information that has been released about vulnerable children. We also are prohibited from clarifying any inaccurate information.”

While Harris slings barbs at DHS, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson has ordered a review of the agency’s practices regarding adoption. Three separate bills have now been filed in the legislature to prohibit rehoming, and the governor is supporting such legislation. Harris has said that he will support rehoming legislation as well, although if such a law had existed when he sent his daughters to live with Eric and Stacey Francis in October 2013, he would have been committing a felony. For the most part, Harris’ peers in the legislature are keeping quiet about the controversy, but the public at large is paying attention to the story. As of Tuesday, a Change.org petition calling for Harris’ resignation had garnered 5,000 signatures.

While some individuals from West Fork had nothing but harsh words for the Harrises, both Chelsey Goldsborough and the source close to the Harrises said they took no joy in speaking out against the couple. “It’s odd, because they’re not bad with children,” said Goldsborough, relating how the Harrises had her watch educational videos about child development before she baby sat. “It’s just — I don’t know. Something somewhere along the line got them out of hand with their own children.”

The unnamed source close to the Harrises felt torn about speaking up. “I’m not trying to devastate them … but people should know what they’ve done to these poor little girls. They genuinely had a commitment, I think, but it wasn’t near as easy as they thought that it was going to be. And I’m shocked, because they did work with these children at Children’s House, and they saw how difficult foster parents have it with little kids who have mental issues. You don’t just change them in a couple of weeks to be the way you want. I was shocked they seemed to have that mentality that they could fix these girls in a short amount of time and have a big happy family.”

One of the many people who contacted the Times after the original story broke was a therapist who works with children with reactive attachment disorder and who is familiar with DHS. Speaking anonymously, she expressed frustration with both adoptive parents and DHS.

“The failed adoptions that we have seen are parents who think they can love their child into being good,” the therapist said. “In a good disclosure meeting, all the child’s current and potential behaviors are discussed in depth and there is a clear road map of what it will take to make this adoption successful. … Adoptive parents don’t believe us. They think their family is different. They think they are the fairy godmother and their charity is to save themselves a Cinderella.”

But regardless of the facts of this particular case, DHS is often culpable in failed adoptions, she said.

“DHS has a long history of avoiding, lying, or otherwise hiding kids’ behaviors in attempts to place children quickly. There are far too few foster parents, and children often end up having to stay at the DHS overnight with a worker, sometimes for several days on end because there are no placement options. They get desperate. It is not OK, but I understand. Some adoption specialists do a hell of a job. The ones that are good, that is their life.” Others, she said, don’t care.

“Without significant support and education, parents grow to dread and then hate their child. In weak moments a parent might feel like the child is less than, not deserving of compassion and basic dignities (albeit these thoughts happen mostly after much physical aggression, sexually acting out towards parents and kids, homicidal thoughts or statements, hours-long tantrums, etc.).

“I do have compassion for parents in the throes of dealing with this. Our whole staff does and understands that it just isn’t always going to work out. But we also know this for sure: There is nothing more traumatic for a child than losing their birth parents. Equally as painful is being promised a family that you will never have to say goodbye to and then losing them. Now imagine that happening three different times. I’d be pretty pissed off, too.””

Casting out demons: why Justin Harris got rid of kids he applied pressure to adopt [Arkansas Times 3/12/15 by Benjamin Hardy]

“Rep. Justin Harris spoke to Channel 7 News Tuesday, answering questions on his allegations against the Department of Human Services.

Since last Friday, Rep. Justin Harris has leveled serious accusations against the Department of Human Services, saying he was threatened with abandonment charges if he and his wife returned their adopted daughters. Harris said DHS hostility was the reason they “rehomed” their daughters with another home. Someone in that home, Eric Francis, was convicted of sexually assaulting one of those girls and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

DHS has repeatedly told Channel 7 News that it’s not their policy to threaten abandonment and that parents can dissolve an adoption.

If DHS broke protocol as Harris claimed, Channel 7 News asked him Tuesday, why he didn’t sound the alarm against DHS before the story of “rehoming” his adopted daughters came out?

Harris says he was already working on safe haven legislation for adoptive parents to return kids with no problem.

“I met with the friends of the court; they said this is already law. I said what are you talking about? And they said this is already law. It’s in the bill of rights you should have gotten as adopted parents. And we weren’t given a bill of rights,” Harris said.

Harris said he then put his bill aside. The Arkansas Times reported when Harris was asked about the sexual abuse by his former employee Eric Francis, he failed to disclose the victim was his adopted daughter. But Harris says he was forthcoming with legislators about his struggle with “rehoming” his adopted children all along.

“None of this was secret. I mean this was something we were struggling with, we were dealing with, so this was something I was working on,” Harris said.

Harris said they tried to seek help at the local level of DHS first.

“Then we would work our way up and the hostility went all the way to the top,” said Harris.

A former DHS aide and volunteer driver, Connie Ramey, says she heard some of that hostility firsthand.

“I heard one of the workers behind me get real hateful with this person. I never even turned around and I said I don’t know what you’ve done to them. And I when I turned around it was Marsha Harris,” Ramey said.

Harris ended Channel 7 News short 10 minute interview by saying he supports a bill that would make what he did–rehoming of adopted children–a felony.  He also says he agrees with Gov. Hutchinson’s statement that DHS policies need to be reviewed. Harris would not answer the last question on if he thinks he should be legislating on matters related to DHS because he said would not take another question.”

Rep. Harris speaks to Channel 7 on adoption controversy [KATV 3/11/15 by Elicia Dover]

“Allegations of wrongdoing continue to pile up against Arkansas Republican state Rep. Justin Harris, who adopted two girls out of the foster system, then “re-homed” them with a man who raped one of them when the girls became too difficult to care for.

According to the Arkansas Times blog, Harris violated state Department of Human Services (DHS) regulations by featuring one of the girls in a campaign ad when he ran for his state house seat.

Arkansas DHS policy strictly prohibits any activity that would compromise a foster child’s anonymity. Harris used the photograph of the girl when she was still a ward of the foster system.

The Times reported that the girl in the ad was the eldest of the three deeply troubled sisters who the Harrises took into their home in the fall of 2012. In order to clearly tell the girls’ story, the newspaper re-named the eldest girl Jeannette, the middle girl Mary and youngest Annie. The Times identified the girl in the photo as Jeannette, whom the Harrises never adopted, but sent on to another foster home.

DHS spokeswoman Amy Webb told the Times that she could not comment on the Harris campaign ad directly, “If we were made aware of a situation like you described, we would immediately call the foster or pre-adoptive parent and tell him to discontinue using the picture on any campaign material. We would not be comfortable with a foster child’s picture being used during a campaign. [DHS’s Office of Policy and Legal Services, which according to department rules, has to approve public use of any media featuring a foster child] would not agree to that either.”

Numerous sources have come forward and decried the appallingly botched adoption, which Harris and his wife Marsha reportedly pushed for over the objections of the girls’ previous foster parents, child care professionals and DHS officials. Harris reportedly threatened to cut the DHS budget if his family didn’t get to adopt the girls in spite of the fact that he and his wife were repeatedly warned that the sisters were special needs children who would require intense counseling and other forms of therapy in order to adapt to a new home.

“The problem was simple hubris,” said a foster mother who worked with the girls. “He saw it as, ‘I’m with God. God’s going to solve this.’”

The Harrises have stringently denied any wrongdoing in the case. In an emotional press conference with their attorney last week, they blasted the DHS and the media and insisted that they are being unfairly blamed for the rape of the middle sister by Eric Francis after the Harrises handed the girls over to Francis and his wife Stacey.

They issued a public statement in which they insisted “Rep. and Mrs. Harris have suffered a severe injustice. Due to threats of possible abandonment charges, they were unable to reach out to DHS for help with children who presented a serious risk of harm to other children in their home.”

The DHS vehemently disputes the Harrises’ claims, as do multiple witnesses who said that Marsha Harris was convinced that the girls were possessed by demons and could communicate telepathically. The family kept Mary, the middle girl, locked in a room for the bulk of her day with no toys or books, and monitored her with a video camera.

“The first night I was over there, I just broke down and cried with this little girl because I just felt so bad for her,” said babysitter Chelsey Goldsborough.

Marsha Harris had stripped the girl’s holding room of book, toys and colorful clothes “because a demon told [Mary] not to share,” Goldsborough said. “Demons told her to not appreciate [her toys] and all that, so they took away all the toys and her colored clothes.”’

Arkansas Republican who gave girls to rapist used foster daughter illegally in campaign ad[RAW Story 3/14/15 by David Ferguson]

“A pair of Arkansas Republicans have stepped up to the plate to defend an embattled state lawmaker accused of “rehoming” his adopted daughters to a rapist, using Facebook to attack the media coverage of their colleague.

On Wednesday, the Arkansas Democratic Party called upon Rep. Justin Harris (R) to resign following revelations that he and his wife made the “unilateral decision to move two of his adopted daughters into another family’s home” where one of the girls was sexually assaulted. The call for his resignation comes following a week of stories reported by the Arkansas Times, — which originally broke the story — containing interviews with Department of Children and Families staffers, previous foster parents, and baby sitters, saying Harris and his wife mistreated the two girls and have lied to the press about their dealings with the DCFS.

On Facebook, Arkansas Secretary of State Mark Martin (R) got into an argument with a fellow commenter on a post linking to a Times story on Harris, saying she was “making a judgement based upon misinformation by a vile socialist anti-Christian propaganda blog about one of the most righteous seeming, humble, and gentle men I have ever met in my life.”

In a series of comments screen-captured by the woman, Martin responded to her comment that Harris gave away the children “like they were animals he picked up at a shelter,” by saying you have to have adopted a foster child to know what Harris and his wife had gone through.

“Unless you have adopted a child and experienced what adoptive parents go through, I think there is very little you have a right to say. This judgement against the Harris’ [sic] is the most hypocritically self-righteous bull I have ever heard,” Martin responded. “People like you are what makes people refuse to risk fostering or adopting. I believe it is people like you who are the problem. Not people who try and fail like the Harris’ [sic].”

After more back and forth, Martin concluded sarcastically, “You gots me. I am so dumb. You so smart. I sorry.”

Fellow Republican state Rep. Dave Meeks used his own Facebook page to defend Harris, describing him as a friend and saying the Times is “out to destroy Conservatives, Christians.”

Meeks, who immediately introduced a bill banning rehoming following the Harris revelations, stuck up for his friend and fellow lawmaker, saying the assault on Harris is an assault on Christianity and would have an impact on the ability of the state to find families willing to take in foster children.

“I know this might anger some people, but I don’t throw someone I consider a friend under the bus. Yes, I am speaking of Rep Harris. He is someone I have gotten to know and has built up credibility with me,” Meeks wrote. “The tabloid that is doing most of the reporting on this has no credibility with me whatsoever. The experience that I have had with this tabloid is that they are out to destroy Conservatives, Christians and are willing to spin, lie, or make up stuff to do it.”

Meeks conceded that the reporting by the Times could be true, adding that he still believes his friend.

“Could any of the reporting by this tabloid be true? Of course. Is any of what Rep Harris saying the truth? Most definitely.”

Like Martin, Meeks maintained that the stories about Harris could ultimately have a damaging effect on foster care and adoption in Arkansas.”

Republicans defend Arkansas rep who ‘rehomed’ adopted girls with a rapist [RAW Story 3/13/15 by Tom Boggioni]

“A pair of bills that would seek to end the practice of “rehoming” in the state of Arkansas received overwhelming approval in the State House Friday (March 20), including from a state representative whose personal controversy brought the issue to the legislature’s attention.

The House voted 88-0 each to approve House Bills 1676 and 1648 during a Friday morning session at the state Capitol. Rep. David Meeks, R-Conway, who sponsored House Bill 1676, said his bill was modeled after a Louisiana bill on the topic.

The practice, called “rehoming,” involves allowing adoptive parents to transfer custody of their adopted children to someone else. Meeks said his bill would ban parents from finding someone else, other than family, to transfer custody of a child.

There have been about 10 cases of rehoming in Arkansas in recent years, Meeks told the House, noting the bill would also provide post-adoptive services to parents who may face trouble with an adoption. The bill also strengthens the state’s abandonment statute.

Under Rep. Leding’s bill, HB 1648, rehoming would be banned except to relatives, would provide a clear definition on the terms of any subsidy agreement between the state and adoptive parents as well as mandating a home study by the Department of Human Services. Leding said the bills were a joint effort to address a serious issue. The two bills both make “rehoming” a felony crime.

Both bills received strong support in the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday with sponsors working with the governor’s office and DHS to craft the legislation, Leding said.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson also announced this week that he will conduct an investigation, out of his office, to study the child welfare system in the state.

The bills now head to the Senate, where Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, will be the chief sponsor for both measures

Officials have been discussing the issue since details about an adoption involving Rep. Justin Harris, R-West Fork, were disclosed. In a story earlier this month, the Arkansas Times reported on allegations about the adoption of three children that Harris and his wife, Marsha, did with DHS in 2013. Two of the children were given to another couple, Eric and Stacy Francis, according to an Arkansas State Police investigation.

Eric Francis was arrested in connection with sexually assaulting one of the children and was sentenced to 40 years in prison in the case.

The Harris’ have not been arrested or charged with anything in connection with the case and have stated their family had numerous problems with DHS officials on the adoption matter. Harris, who resigned his committee leadership posts Monday, voted yes on both bills.”‘

Arkansas House OKs two ‘rehoming’ bills, Rep. Harris votes for both [The City Wire 3/20/15 ]

Update 2: Last Mom has an analysis the case here. Exceperts are as follows:”In case you haven’t followed, basically Harris used his political power to adopt two little girls who were in foster care (allegedly), against the advice of all professionals involved. Their older sister was initially placed with them, but was removed from the home due to her behaviors/trauma-related issues before the adoption was finalized.  The girls were 2, 4 and 6 when first placed with the Harris family.

The Department of Children and Families didn’t think the girls should be placed with the Harris family.  They girls had been horrifically abused and needed specialized care – probably a home without other children already in it.  Harris “did what he had to do” to get them placed in their home anyway.

The girls acted out as warned. The Harrises say the girls were violent to animals, their biological children and each other.  There are allegations the representative and his wife kept one child locked in her room and had exorcisms performed.  That’s speculation, though a babysitter did file an abuse report.

After the children were with them just over a year  the Harrises took it upon themselves to give them to another family, where one of the girls was sexually abused. That family gave the girls to another family before the Department of Children and Families was anonymously notified of what was going on.

Representative Harris is playing the victim card. It’s true they would have likely been charged with neglect if they asked the state for help finding a new home for the girls. They would have risked losing their biological children, their childcare center and their reputations.  But that doesn’t give them an out on following the law.”

”

There’s plenty of blame to go around here:

• The biological mother (and father, wherever he is):  The three girls had been in foster care for two years when their biological mother approached the Harrises  and asked them to adopt her daughters.  Her rights were about to be terminated and she didn’t want the girls to bounce around foster care like she did as a child.  She also didn’t want them separated.  I understand her last ditch effort to try to make things okay for her kids even after the horrific circumstances that got them removed from her care to begin with, but her approaching the Harrisess is what got the ball started.
• Social Services.  The initial stand was that the Harris family was not a match for these children.  However, instead of fighting for the best interests of the children they caved to Harris’s political pressure. Not okay.
• Representative Harris and his wife:  I do not doubt these girls had big, huge, scary behaviors.  The Harrises  were told the girls suffered horrible abuse and had a history of acting out.  They may have only been 2 and 4 years old when they moved in with the Harris family, but even tiny kids can have super human strength, speed and rage when fueled by trauma.  I assume Harris and his wife had great intentions in wanting to adopt these little girls.  I’m sure they thought their love and God’s help would heal them.  Harris used his political position to get the girls placed with them and to bypass traditional monitoring.  Even if the allegations of keeping them locked in rooms and having exorcisms performed are false, the Harrises  still failed these girls.  They were thinking of themselves and avoiding legal troubles and the public eye when they took it upon themselves to “rehome” the girls.  Oh, and it seems the Harrises  kept taking the adoption subsidy even after they sent the girls to live with someone else (where one was raped and then they were giving to yet another family).
• The family the Harrises “gave” the girls to:  The Harrises sent the girls to live with Eric Francis, his wife Stacy and their children (who were adopted internationally).  Eric was an employee of the Harrises, though they fired him while the girls were living with him for poor work performance.  (They fired him, yet allowed the children to continue living there.  They didn’t trust him with their business, but had no issue with their children living with him?)  Eric Francis is charged with raping the older of the two girls from the Harris adoption .  The Francis family then “gave” the girls to yet another family.  Someone finally called the Department of Children and Families and while interviewing the girls, the sexual abuse in the Francis home came out.  The victim was six-years-old when she told the interviewer she was raped.
• The abusers:  There’s no way to even know how many people abused, neglected and betrayed these little girls.”

“I wrote about this when Reuters did a series on adoption re-homing  last year.

1. When the child isn’t able to safely live in the family environment.  This happens.  Sometimes the child needs a different kind of family – often one where they only child of parents experienced in trauma and mental health issues.  Other times they aren’t ready to live in a family environment at all because they have been so hurt by them in the past.
2. When the parents decide the child would be better off somewhere else.Sometimes parents are exhausted and check out.  Sometimes they have trouble bonding with the child.  Sometimes they just don’t like the child (often because the child’s protective behaviors to keep people from getting close enough to hurt them have worked so well).  When the parent isn’t willing or able to put the work in to build the relationship and help the child heal, the child is better off with a different family.
3.  (Obviously) when the child is being abused or neglected.  (Another “duh.)”

***

“Spurred by the disclosure that a lawmaker transferred custody of children he had adopted to a family where one of the children was sexually abused, Arkansas’ governor on Monday signed legislation barring the practice known as “re-homing.”

The new statute signed by Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, forbids parents from assigning custody of children they adopt to another household, except close relatives, without court approval. The crime would be a felony punishable by a prison sentence and fines.

The Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York, which tracks such legislation, said Wisconsin and Louisiana have also banned re-homing. Florida and Illinois are weighing legislation to restrict or ban the practice, it said.

The issue arose in Arkansas when it was revealed that State Representative Justin Harris and his wife had adopted two sisters, aged 3 and 5, in 2013 only to assign them to an employee of the childcare center he owns when the children failed to fit into to their new home.

Harris’ employee, a former youth minister, pleaded guilty last year to sexually abusing the older girl. He is now serving a 40-year prison sentence.

The sisters were removed from the home and are now living with another adoptive family outside Arkansas.

Representative David Meeks, himself an adoptive parent and an author of the new law, said what happened to the older sister was deeply disturbing.

Harris, a Republican, refused calls by Democrats to resign his seat in the Arkansas House but did leave his leadership position on two key committees, one of them overseeing state services to children.

Harris said he continued to receive state payments after he had re-homed the two girls but said he relayed the money to their new parents.”

 

Arkansas governor signs adoption law banning ‘re-homing’4[Business Insider 4/6/15 by Steve Barnes]

Update 3:Ugh!Ted Cruz gives Justin Harris a Power of Courage award!

 

“A So-called family values organization will present an award at a fundraiser for GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz to a lawmaker who gave his two adopted daughters away to a rapist.

Arkansas State Sen. Justin Harris, a Republican, will be given the “Power of Courage” award by the Family Council Action Committee, a non-profit that is vocally anti-LGBT, the Arkansas Times reports. The awards will be given out Wednesday evening at a Cruz fundraiser dinner.

 

Another Republican, Rep. Charlene Fite, will also be honored with the award, which they are being given because they “demonstrated courage by standing strong in faith when situations were tough at the State Capitol and they did so with grace. They are consistently models of their Christian values in their homes, their communities, and their churches.”

According to the Times, Harris used his influence as a lawmaker to pressure state child services to allow him and his wife to adopt two young girls, even though caseworkers said the couple was ill-suited to care for them.

Eight months later, the adoption failed. The Harrises sent the girls to live with family friends. One of the girls was sexually abused by the father, who is now serving a 40-year prison sentence for crimes against children.

Before “rehoming” the girls, the Harrises believed the children were possessed by demons and could communicate telepathically. The Harrises apparently feared the girls and had an exorcist “cast out” the demons. According to the Times, they kept one of the girls locked in a room with no toys or books, monitoring her on closed-circuit television.

While the other child was allowed to roam the house, the girls were separated by an elaborate system of locks and alarms.

The Harrises were not prosecuted because there was no law on the books in Arkansas barring “rehoming” of adopted children at the time. After the case became public, lawmakers quickly made it illegal to do so without court supervision, but the law is not retroactive.

In a press release for the event obtained by the Times, mention of these events is only made obliquely:

Even when opposed by the liberal media, Representative Harris has always held firm and stood tall in his faith. No one can deny Representative Harris’ faith has always led him while serving at the Arkansas State Capitol. In 2015, Harris sponsored the Parental Involvement Enhancement Act, requiring parents to be involved in their children’s decision to terminate life by requesting an abortion. This is now law today.

According to the Times, Harris makes his living running a religious preschool called Growing God’s Kingdom.”

GOP lawmaker who ‘rehomed’ adopted daughters with rapist to get ‘courage’ award at Ted Cruz dinner [Raw Story 8/12/15 by BETHANIA PALMA MARKUS]

Update 4:“Family has always been important to Justin and Marsha Harris, who are raising three boys in their devoutly Christian household in Arkansas.

In fact, the Harrises said they love their family so much that they decided years ago to adopt even more kids.

“We saw the need of other children, and we think that is the philosophy that should be out there,” Justin Harris told ABC News’ “20/20.”

So, Justin Harris said, it almost felt like divine intervention when one evening in 2011 after dinner they received a mysterious phone call from a mother of three girls who they’d never met.

“‘Will you please take my daughters?'” Justin Harris recalled the woman asking. “She [was] going to lose her children.”

The three sisters were 4 years old, 2 years old and 9 months old. Though it seemed like a strange request, the Harrises were known as childcare professionals. They both hold degrees in child development and run a Christian day care center called Growing God’s Kingdom. Justin Harris, running as a family values conservative, had also been elected to the state legislature. And over the following months, the Harrises eventually decided to take the girls in.

“Why we’re wanting to do this was because we had love for children. That was it. There was no other motive in our hearts,” Justin Harris said.

ABC News “20/20” has declined to name the biological mother and the three girls out of respect for their privacy.

Justin and Marsha Harris soon learned that the girls were born to a mother addicted to drugs and a string of men prone to criminal activity and abusive to the kids. Their home had burned down in a meth fire. By this time, the three sisters were wards of the Arkansas Department of Health Services (DHS).

“The two younger girls were doing great, just two normal little girls. The older girl had some problems, and she would have some outbursts sometimes,” adoption specialist Jan Wallis, who was working at DHS at the time, said of working with the girls.

Wallis placed the oldest daughter in therapeutic foster care and the two youngest girls in the home of Cheryl and Craig Hart. The Harrises wanted to permanently adopt the three girls, but DHS was concerned about placing abused girls in a home with the Harrises’ three other young children, which experts say is an inherently volatile situation.

In summer 2012, despite objections from DHS, a judge approved the triple adoption, deciding that the oldest sister, then 6 years old, would live in the home first for a six-month trial period, followed by the other two sisters for a six-month trial period.

All three sons also moved into the Harrises’ master bedroom. “My children that were first given to me, my biological children, those are the ones that we were going to safeguard first and foremost,” Marsha Harris said.

Marsha Harris, an abuse survivor herself, thought she could help the oldest girl heal, but almost immediately, the Harrises said they learned they had taken on more than they’d bargained for.

“In the very beginning, she would not attach to anyone. She would come in. She cussed us out. She had a lot of anger,” said Marsha Harris. “And I had showed DHS a video of her. And they were like, ‘Oh, good luck with that.’ She was just screaming and raged at the tops of her lungs.”

The two younger sisters moved into the house next, which the Harrises said triggered bad memories and bad behavior for the girls.

“I would ask the middle one. I would say, ‘What are you doing, you know, when you sneak out of your room?’ And she said, ‘I’m going to kill my brothers,'” Marsha Harris recalled.

Scared, the Harrises said they installed cameras to track the girls at night and took shifts watching the cameras to make sure the girls didn’t sneak out of their rooms.

They eventually learned the oldest daughter had reactive attachment disorder (RAD), which caused an inability to “attach with others.” The middle sister was later diagnosed with RAD.

RAD is an often misunderstood psychological condition that can develop when a child’s basic needs for comfort and affection are not met. In serious cases, these children can become dangerous.

After only 16 days with all three girls under their roof, the Harrises called DHS and dropped the oldest girl off at an inpatient psychiatric facility. Then on a day visit home, the Harrises said she killed the family’s guinea pig.

“Her words to me were, ‘I stepped on it until I felt it with my foot, and I wanted it to die so that my brothers can hurt like I hurt,” Marsha Harris said.

After that, the oldest girl’s removal from the home became permanent in January 2013, and because it was within her six-month trial period, her adoption was never finalized.

The Harrises said the middle sister then began acting out, despite regular therapy sessions. Nevertheless, the proceeded with the adoption process, and that March, with the trial period complete, a judge made the adoption of the middle and youngest sister permanent.

Chelsey Goldsborough, the Harrises’ babysitter that spring, said she arrived in the home and was told about a set of strange rules and even stranger explanations for them. Goldsborough said said the middle sister was almost always kept separated from her little sister. According to Goldsborough, it was because Marsha Harris said the girls “had demons, and they could telepathically speak to each other” and that “a demon … was lifting up off the bed, like levitating” and that “a demon was having sex” with the middle sister. Goldsborough said the Harrises had even brought in experts to perform an exorcism.

“There was a group coming in from Alabama that was supposed to pray over the children and get the demons out as an exorcism, is what they said,” Goldsborough told “20/20.” “But they did not want me around because if your heart wasn’t in the right place, then the demons would attach to you instead.”

The Harrises categorically deny all of Goldsborough’s allegations, including that they talked about demons. They even dispute the amount of time Goldsborough worked for them, saying she was only in their home for 36 hours. The group from Alabama were not exorcists, the Harrises added, but spiritual guides.

“We are Southern Baptist. We do not do exorcism. … I’ll be very clear about that. Period,” Justin Harris said. “The middle [sister] told the babysitter that she had a demon in her, which is part of the RAD. And that’s where the babysitter kind of, you know, may have taken some of that. But that’s part of the middle child’s manipulation. We can’t answer for that.”

By fall 2013, the Harrises said they had to give up and remove the girls from their home. But because the Harrises were the permanent, legal parents for the younger girls, Jan Wallis told them there could be serious consequences if they tried to send them back.

“There’s a process that any time someone gets a child back, they are charged, but they’re not always found guilty,” Wallis said.

“When you’ve done everything and used every resource they’ve given you, and you’ve worked and done what the therapists have told you, you have nowhere to go. It wasn’t working, and we tried everything we could. But I had to take care of my three boys, and if people want to judge me for that, I’m sorry,” said Marsha Harris.

In October 2013, six months after the Harrises officially adopted their two little girls, they said they feared a failed adoption would have criminal consequences, and they opted to “re-home” the sisters.

In explaining to the girls why they were leaving, Marsha Harris said she “told them, ‘You know, we’re gonna go live where someplace where we feel like you can be safe, your brothers can be safe.'”

Re-homing, a term borrowed from the pet adoption world, is a legal loophole in the adoption system that allows adoptive parents to give their adopted kids to someone else. There is virtually no vetting in this process and no court oversight, but the practice is legal in 43 states. Justin Harris said he felt they “had no choice.”

Marsha Harris reached out to her old college friend Stacey Francis and her husband Eric Francis, who worked briefly at the Harrises’ day care center.

“I said, ‘Well, here is the situation.’ And I told her about the girls. And she said, ‘Well … We’ve been praying about it. We want to adopt,'” Marsha Harris said.

Then within months of moving into the Francis home, the middle child was molested by Eric Francis.

“This guy, I looked him in the eye. He worked for the Bentonville public school for five years, did FBI background checks, did safe home studies — three for international adoptions. There’s no way we could’ve known that he was a bad guy or a pedophile,” Justin Harris said.

Months later, many people were outraged when they learned that the Harrises had re-homed the girls, posting critical comments about them online, and the Harrises went into damage control mode. They held an 11-minute news conference at which they said they were heartbroken about the situation, but that DHS did not help them and that they “were not prepared to deal with children who had RAD.”

Eric Francis was given a 40-year sentence for sexually abusing the middle girl after she and her little sister were re-homed into his care.

The state police investigated whether the Harrises should be charged with child abandonment and cruelty but found no evidence of wrongdoing. Still, Justin Harris announced he would not run for reelection. Before he made that decision, Harris voted in support of a new Arkansas law, which went into effect in April, making “re-homing” of adopted children a felony.

And the three little girls finally found their forever homes. The eldest daughter was adopted into a family and is reportedly doing well. The two youngest sisters are with two new parents in a different family and have two new older sisters.

“We pray for them. We continually want the best for them,” Justin Harris said.”

Arkansas State Rep. Refutes Claims Exorcism Was Performed on Adopted Kids [ABC News 10/23/15 by JENNIFER JOSPEH, LYNN REDMOND, ALEXA VALIENTE]

“The briefly adopted daughters of state Rep. Justin Harris will appear Friday night on a television news program to repudiate the Arkansas Republican’s claims that they are demonically violent.

The lawmaker took in three sisters in 2011 despite concerns that he and his wife were ill-equipped to care for the girls — who had been abused — but Harris apparently used his political influence to push through the planned adoption.