How Could You? Hall of Shame-Betsy Davies and Erin Davies 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 Richfield, Minnesota, “a KARE 11 Investigation found that eight adoptive children spent years living in filthy conditions at a Richfield house despite state mandated visits from a nurse and warnings reported to Hennepin County child protection officials.

“It was a hell hole,” said Andrew Davies, 20, who grew up in the house on 15th Ave. South. “No kid should have to suffer through that at all,” he added.

Andrew is the oldest of eight special needs children, all of whom were fostered and eventually adopted by Betsy Davies and her adult daughter, Erin Davies.

Even close family friend Jessica Ballantine said she had no idea that behind the closed door and Christmas wreath out front, life for the Davies childreninside, was not so pretty. “I feel very foolish that I didn’t discover it sooner,” said Ballantine. “None of them ever said a word.”

The happy family image was shattered in mid-January of 2015. Betsy Davies had died a few weeks earlier. Court and child protection records show Erin Davies, for at least the past “six months,” was regularly drinking “until numb” and “to the point of passing out.”

On the night of the January 9, 2015, records show she was “intoxicated” “passed out” and the kids “could not wake her.” Andrew, feeling “lost and afraid,” knowing he “couldn’t care for all the kids on his own,” called family friends and asked for help. “That’s when I found and discovered the condition of the home,” said Ballantine. “I was horrified.”

When she arrived to pick up the kids, Ballantine found garbage and animal feces piled everywhere, floors rotting through, and ceilings covered in black mold that appeared as if they were about to cave in.

KARE 11’s investigative team viewed the inside of the house a few days later. A group of friends had already spent hours hauling trash and soiled mattresses outside, but the bare floor that had been uncovered during the cleaning was still filthy. There were bedrooms filled chest-high with bags of old clothing and the door to the main bathroom was sitting in the middle of the tub – a tub that obviously wasn’t being used.

I feel horrible that they never said anything, that they were living this way,” said Ballantine as she showed KARE 11 through the house. Because of the nauseating smell, no one could stand to be inside for very long.

“I had never seen anything like that in my life,” said Ballantine. “There was stuff piled everywhere, clothes and soiled pull-ups and cat feces, used syringes, pill bottles everywhere, it was not a safe environment for children to be living in.”

Ballantine’s discovery set in motion a string of events including child maltreatment reports being filed, juvenile court proceedings, and Hennepin County Child Protection taking the kids.

Erin Davies entered an alcohol detoxification program, and when Richfield city building inspectors viewed the home in February, they slapped a pad lock on the door. What Andrew Davies called a hell hole, the city ruled was “Unsafe for Human Occupancy.”

For the KARE 11 Investigative team, it raised the question – how long had it been this way? Our investigation uncovered evidence the kids could have, and probably shouldhave, been helped much sooner. KARE 11 discovered what appears to be a complete breakdown in the system by county and state workers whose very job it is to ensure the vulnerable children taken in by the Davies were safe and healthy.

“The system in my opinion had damaged these kids as much as the people they lived with,” said a long time family acquaintance, who asked that we not identify her. She described herself as a former close friend of Betsy and Erin Davies, and claims the conditions inside the house had been that way for years.

The woman said she used to try and help the Davies keep their home clean, and describes having to scrape a long-dead cat off the floor of a child’s bedroom. “I had found one of the cats that had been missing for a while, I had to scrape it up off of the floor and that was the most horrific thing I’ve ever done.”

“The best way to describe it is disgusting,” said Andrew Davies. He claims the family had been living in extremely dirty, hoarder-like conditions nearly as long as he can remember. Andrew lived in a bedroom at the back of the basement.

“How did you get downstairs and back to your bedroom,” KARE 11 reporter A.J. Lagoe, asked Davies.

“Climb over stuff or I’d clean like a pathway to my room,” Davies responded.

Lagoe continued, “You actually had to climb over stuff just to get down to your bedroom?”

“Yeah,” Davies replied.

What is even more alarming, those who knew the Davies family claim Hennepin County Child Protection was warned about conditions in the home years ago.

“You made reports to child protective services” Lagoe asked the former family friend.

“I have, I have in the past, yes.”

Lagoe continued, “And that was years ago?”

“Years ago and it’s exactly the same” she said adding, “After the second call and it was still unsubstantiated I just stopped making calls. I didn’t feel like it was going to get anywhere anyway.”

KARE 11 News obtained a letter that shows someone else also made a report to Hennepin County Child Protection in 2010. The letter details an allegation that, “a child was maltreated.” However, CPS “determined child protective services are not needed.”

Child protection investigations are secret, so it is not known if investigators actually inspected the house.

KARE 11’s investigation discovered Hennepin County Child Protection is not the only agency to drop the ball. Because the kids have special needs, they qualified for Minnesota’s Personal Care Assistance Program, which is run by the Minnesota Department of Human Services. As part of that program, Minnesota law requires a qualified professional, usually a registered nurse, visit the house twice a year.

Their job is to ensure the kids’ “health and safety needs are met.”

A Hennepin County public health nurse also is required to visit the house each year to do an assessment. Andrew Davies provided KARE 11 News with a copy of the assessment done for him last July when he was 19. A nurse wrote, he is “living in a neat and clean home.”

KARE 11 News wanted to know just how did Hennepin County child protection workers, the Minnesota Department of Human Services and a Hennepin County public health nurse keep missing something as obvious as the conditions inside the Davies house.

“Did they ever send anybody into the house to look at the house,” Lagoe asked Andrew Davies.

“Yes,” he said, “but we would only go in the living room.”

Andrew says Betsy and Erin would clean up the front living room just enough to be acceptable, and they would close doors leading to the rest of the home whenever anyone visited.

AJ Lagoe: “Nobody ever went past the living room?

Andrew Davies: “No.”

AJ Lagoe: “The nurses would come, they never saw your bedroom, they never saw the bathroom?”

Andrew Davies: “No.”

AJ Lagoe: “If they’d opened the door to that kitchen what would they have seen?”

Andrew Davies: “Filth.”

AJ Lagoe: “Never saw the kitchen?

Andrew Davies: “No never.”

AJ Lagoe: “Why not?

Andrew Davies: “I don’t know. That’s a good question.”

Andrew is an adult and has been living in a temporary assistance home. He’s in the process of finding his own place, while attending school for automotive repair.

The other children are currently in the child protection system. Erin Davies has been in court recently, trying to regain custody.

This case raises many questions, not just about Hennepin County and the state’s failure to protect these children, but also about what appears to be hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of fraud that taxpayers were funding.

Here is the full statement from Hennepin County, regarding this report: (Statement is from Carolyn Marinan, public relations officer at Hennepin County Communications.)

We at Hennepin County understand and share the public outcry over allegations that vulnerable children in Hennepin County – or anywhere – have lived in such deplorable conditions. Whenever such allegations come to light, we step back to look at our response and practices, and take what we learn to make improvements in our protective services system.

State data privacy laws prevent us from sharing details about any actual or alleged child protection investigation. However, we take seriously our responsibility to protect children. It is our daily work. Our staff is passionate and committed to keeping kids safe.

Unfortunately, child protection caseloads have increased over the past several years. So the Hennepin County Board increased funding for Child Protective Services by approximately $3 million in 2015, in order to hire more child protection workers and allow them more time with each case. We are currently bringing on these new staff. In addition, we will be working closely with the State of Minnesota to implement the recommendations of the Governor’s Task Force on the Protection of Children. These recommendations include an increased focus on child safety and new processes that will result in more thorough investigations of abuse and neglect reports. We are committed to incorporating these and other improvements in our system so that we can ensure the safety of every child we possibly can.”

Children lived in filth despite warnings to officials [KARE 11 4/27/15 by A.J. Lagoe and Steve Eckert]

“A Minnesota woman who kept eight special needs children in a home filled with feces, filth, urine and mold — all while billing taxpayers for her supposed childcare and somehow evading child protection officials — was charged with criminal fraud Monday, the state’s Attorney General announced.

Erin Davies, 34, allegedly stole more than $26,000 from taxpayers while forcing the adoptive children to live in filth at her Richfield home, KARE reported. She faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Her mother Betsy Davies, who ran the alleged fraud with her, died in January, shortly before the station uncovered the squalid scheme. She never faced any charges.

KARE revealed in April showed that the Davies home had mold-covered bathrooms, rooms filled with garbage and mattresses stained with urine and feces.

“These children were living in just abject squalor condition,” Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson said at the time.

Through the state’s Personal Care Assistance program, under which Davies and her mom were taxpayer-funded assistants for the special needs children, they allegedly filed claims for hours of services they never bothered providing. During some of time Davies claimed she was caring for children, she was actually drinking at bars or concerts with friends or visiting Las Vegas, records show.

Meanwhile, nurses who are required to visit the house twice a year under the PAC program never noticed the nastiness. One wrote in a report the children were “living in a neat and clean home.”

Andrew Davies, the eldest of the children raised in the home, told KARE his careless caretakers would clean up the house just enough to pass inspection, then hide the children away when the nurses came over.

Even when complaints about the conditions came in years ago from family friends, child protection services never followed up, determining that “child protective services are not needed,” KARE reported. It’s unclear if inspectors ever visited the home more often than required by law.

After inspectors finally wised up and removed the children from the home in January, they were placed in protective custody and are now in foster care. Local building officials deemed the home “unsafe for human occupancy.”

Long before the alleged scam got busted, a local newspaper profiled Erin and Betsy Davies as benevolent workers who were getting squeezed by budget cuts for PCA caretakers.

The 2011 article in the Twin Cities Daily Planet noted that Betsy had already adopted four special needs children, and at the time was about to adopt two more, even though caring for the children had already made her “tired to the bone.””

Minnesota woman who kept adoptive special needs children in filthy home charged for defrauding taxpayers [NY Daily News 7/29/15 by Jason Silverstein]

Twin Cities Article from 2011

“Betsy Davies is tired to the bone. The Richfield mom adopted four special needs children and is in the process of adopting two others. Now her two oldest sons’ Personal Care Assistance hours have been cut in half.  The Personal Care Assistance, or PCA, program provides in-home care so that people with disabilities can live independently.

For Davies, whose two oldest sons need constant supervision, the PCA hours have been a lifeline. Her oldest has multiple disorders and learning disabilities, and may never live unsupervised.  A younger son was severely abused as a child before coming to Davies. He has severe behavioral disorders, is bi-polar, has fetal alcohol effect, and is prone to explosive fits.

Davies said they struggled with the original PCA support they had, and with their hours now cut in half, that she can’t help but feel abandoned.

“During the adoption process, we were assured by the county and the state that we would have services to help us meet the individual needs of our children,” she explained. “PCA hours are a tremendous help when you are working with special needs children.”

This July, the Davies family may be facing more cuts in their PCA hours.  Her family is one of thousands across Minnesota who are in a state of panic over what will happen to their children or loved ones.

“Cutting PCA services without a reliable and reasonable replacement for those services for people puts them at risk – these are vulnerable people in our communities,” said Karen Conrath, board director with The Arc of Minnesota, and a retired 35-year veteran of social services.

Defining Need

In the face of last year’s budget cuts, the Minnesota Department of Human Services developed a new assessment, creating more stringent guidelines for people to qualify for PCA services.

The first thing the new assessment did is change the definition of “dependency” to cover only those who need “hands on assistance” or “constant supervision and cuing” and it excluded those who need prompting and cuing due to cognitive limitations, brain injuries, dementia, mental illnesses, and behavioral issues.

The assessment also trimmed the amount of time allocated for each activity of daily living, or ADL, to just 30 minutes.  ADLs include grooming, dressing, bathing, transferring, mobility, positioning, eating and toileting.

When these changes took effect a year ago, by conservative estimates, over 4,800 people saw their PCA hours reduced or eliminated.

This coming July, Level 1 behaviors will be eliminated as a eligibility criteria and nearly 2,200 people will lose services – the vast majority being children. Level I behavior is when someone is physically aggressive towards themselves, others, or destructive to property and requires an immediate response from someone else to stop it.

“What that new assessment did was really strip away individual consideration of a person’s needs, and really collapsed things toward the average. Which is fine if you’re average, but it’s horrible if you are someone with really high needs.” said Anne Henry, an attorney with the Disability Law Center.

Ironically, the legislative auditor’s report that served as a catalyst for the change (see sidebar) had also warned “assessment guidelines should not be too rigid, given the need to take into account individual circumstances.”

“It’s just so unfortunate at a time our resources are shrinking to have taken the least expensive, most flexible program we have, and cut out a lot of people who really need that help. It’s not like they are going to just disappear, and so we’re going to have consequences for these decisions unless we do something to fix it,” said Henry.

Shifting the Cost

The stringent guidelines under the new assessment have many advocates fearing that the cuts in hours will lead to more costly health consequences.

“PCA services are one of the most cost effective services that we have in the state of Minnesota, and if we let those go, we’re opening ourselves up to more expensive service options,” said Conrath.

The Courage Center is already seeing this with the community they serve. The organization surveyed 109 individuals who have already seen cuts in PCA hours of service this year for themselves or family members. Nearly a quarter of the people surveyed reported increases in medical services, including hospitalizations, wound care, increased therapy and medications.

When care is not managed, people with disabilities, particularly those that have experienced a catastrophic life changing event like a brain or spinal cord injury, are much more vulnerable to secondary conditions, explained Nancy Flinn, director of outcomes and research at Courage Center.

The secondary conditions include diabetes, hypertension, infections, wounds, asthma. Things can rapidly spiral out of control, leading to hospitalization.

“It doesn’t take a lot of hospital stays, or clinic visits or changes in medication to add up to a lot of money, and so that cost shifting is something that’s not really being talked about or dealt with,” said Flinn.

Flinn described the delicate balance of care for people with disabilities as a thin margin of health.

“If you and I have something happen – we get the flu, we fall – we don’t have a lot of secondary consequences. We recover and move on.  One of the problems with the cuts in PCA, is that it appears to have cut through that thin margin, and we’re starting to see health consequences.”

Flinn said she doesn’t have a problem with the state re-evaluating the PCA program and being stringent with guidelines, and said that’s good public policy.

“But when I see people who cannot transfer themselves in and out of their chairs, having their hours cut so that they have to be up in their chairs longer, putting them at risk for pressure wounds, or having to go to bed at 7 o’clock because there won’t be anyone there later to put them to bed, that doesn’t seem to make sense either,” she added.

One expensive consequence of leaving a person in their chair too long is the risk of pressure wounds, said Flinn.

“If they get a pressure wound and they can’t get it healed, the problem is if it goes on and ends up resulting in a graft, that would cost up to $100,000 to resolve, and they may end up in a nursing home for a period of time while it’s healing,” she explained.

In contrast, the year before cuts were made, the average annual cost of PCA services was just under $28,000.

The human cost

The National Alliance of Mental Illness, Minnesota (NAMI-MN) also did a survey of individuals and families who access PCA in Ramsey County, and how the cuts have impacted them.

“A lot of family members said they would have to reduce their work hours in order to care for that child or adult. Nearly half said they would most likely end up in residential or foster care. Others said they’d end up in a nursing home,” said Sue Abderholden, executive director of NAMI-MN.

Another question the NAMI-MN survey asked was why families used PCA services rather than another alternative.

“We had quite a few families with children who use PCA because child care centers wouldn’t accept their children, or their children were too old for child care and could not be left alone,” said Abderholden.

Flinn said about 31 percent of the people surveyed by Courage Center who lost hours, moved to be closer to family support.  One mother surveyed was forced to quit her job to care for her daughter.

“It’s hard to look at that when the economy is so tough – to have a family member have to quit their job in order to come home to take care of a child. It’s just really hard to listen to some of those stories. It really is tragic,” said Flinn.

John Tschida, the vice president of public affairs and research at Courage Center, has a severe spinal cord injury, and says he understands the need for assistance with the very basic things that most people take for granted.

“I’m also a user of these services. I pay for them out of pocket, but without them, I couldn’t get to work in the morning, I couldn’t do the job that I do,” he said.

He said if the PCA services weren’t available him, his wife could theoretically fill the gap.

“But I can tell you that would be a recipe for divorce.  In some cases we are seeing marriages fall apart as a result of this law.  Because spouses need to be nurses in addition to loving spouses, and that fundamentally changes the relationship,” he added.

What’s the alternative?

One of the main rationales for the cuts, according to state officials, is that there are alternative services available, but no one seems to know where these programs are. So for individuals that simply cannot live independently on the reduced PCA hours, families and advocates fear the only alternative is a nursing or residential facility.

“Starting in July, the criteria to get into a nursing home will be less stringent than the criteria to get PCA services. What sense does that make?” asked Henry.

She would like the state to look at the Community First Choice Option program, a federal program that will soon be available through the Affordable Care Act.

“At its heart, it’s a modernized version of PCA services. It updates the program, which hasn’t really been updated for 20 years, and it makes the service more useful to the variety of people that we understand today have a functional need for support in the home,” Henry said.

The program will be available next October, and the federal government has not yet released guidelines or rules.

Abderholden said there was a state program for children with mental illness or behavioral disorders called the Children’s Therapuetic Services and Supports, which has behavioral healthcare aids – similar to a personal care assistant, but with more training.

“But the problem is the payment rate was so low, providers couldn’t hire anyone,” she explained.

Another option for people who have severe disabilities is the Community Alternative for Disabled Individuals waiver, or CADI.  But the county waiting lists for these services are long.

Most aren’t holding their breath for a miracle from the state. Once the changes were put in motion by law, they are extremely difficult to reverse, says Rep. Larry Hosch of St. Joseph – particularly if it means increasing the deficit.

“If we do so, it would mean making another difficult cut somewhere else that also impacts people.  I’m going to be advocating for either a robust alternative to be implemented, or for us to allow the Level 1 behavior to still qualify, but it’s going to be very, very difficult,” he said.”

Cutting into the thin margin of health: PCA changes in Minnesota[Twin Cities Daily Planet 1/25/11 by Sharon Rolenc]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update: “Erin Davies, 34, one of the women at the center of a KARE 11 News investigation, appeared in Hennepin County Criminal Court Wednesday afternoon.

Davies received a court appointed attorney, meaning taxpayers will now foot the bill for her defense. Her next court date is October 1st.

The Minnesota Attorney General filed criminal fraud charges in July against Davies.

The charges came after KARE 11 first reported in April how eight special needs children had been living in filthy conditions for years while the Richfield woman and her mother had been billing taxpayers for some of their care through Minnesota’s Personal Care Assistance – or PCA – program.

KARE 11 also reported that PCA billing records raised questions about whether the state had been charged for services that weren’t provided. Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson promised to investigate. On July 27th, Swanson’s office filed an 11 count criminal complaint accusing Erin Davies of defrauding taxpayers out of more than $26,000. If convicted, she could face a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Erin’s mother, Betsy Davies, died in January. She was not charged.

KARE 11 reported that Erin had billed the PCA program for caring for Andrew Davies, one of Betsy’s sons. State billing records, obtained by KARE 11, show Erin Davies claimed to provide Andrew with 15 hours of PCA care at the same time Facebook posts showed she was playing the ponies with friends at Canterbury Park.

Last summer, records show Erin billed the state for providing PCA care for children here in Minnesota while records indicate she was actually in Las Vegas with friends.

The Attorney General’s office found that Erin billed for PCA services that “could not have been provided.”

In court Wednesday, Davies stood before a judge for the first time. Judge William Fisher ordered her to have no contact with any Medicaid recipients other than her two adopted children. They are currently in the custody of Hennepin Child Protection.”

Court appearance for woman charged after KARE 11 Investigation [KARE 11 8/13/15 by Steve Eckert and A.J. Lagoe]

Update 2:“Erin Davies, 34, one of the women at the center of a KARE 11 News investigation, pleaded guilty in Hennepin County Criminal Court to charges she bilked taxpayers out of more than $63,000.

The Minnesota Attorney General filed criminal fraud charges in July, 2015, against Davies. The action came in the wake of a KARE 11 investigation that first reported in April how eight special needs children had been living in filthy conditions for years while the Richfield woman and her mother had been billing taxpayers for some of their care through Minnesota’s Personal Care Assistance – or PCA – program.

KARE 11 also reported that PCA billing records raised questions about whether Medicaid had been charged for services that weren’t provided. Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson promised to investigate. Three months later, Swanson’s office filed an 11 count criminal complaint accusing Erin Davies of defrauding taxpayers

Erin’s mother, Betsy Davies, died in January. She was not charged.

KARE 11 reported that Erin had billed the PCA program for caring for Andrew Davies, one of Betsy’s sons. State billing records obtained by KARE 11 show Erin Davies claimed to provide Andrew with 15 hours of PCA care at the same time Facebook posts showed she was playing the ponies with friends at Canterbury Park.

Billing records from 2014 also show Erin billed the state for providing PCA care for children here in Minnesota while friends and social media posts indicate she was actually in Las Vegas with friends.

The Attorney General’s office found that Erin billed for PCA services that “could not have been provided.”

On December 22, Davies entered into a plea deal. She admitted to falsifying her PCA timesheets since 2009, stealing $63,376.98. She was sentenced to 150 days in the Hennepin County Workhouse and ordered to pay restitution for the fraudulently gained funds.

The judge in the case allowed Davies to pay her restitution at a rate of $50.00 each month. At that rate, the 34 year-old would need to live to be 139 years-old to fully reimburse taxpayers.

The Minnesota Attorney General lacks jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute child abuse and neglect. That’s a county responsibility. To date Hennepin County has failed to file criminal child abuse charges, despite repeated complaints to Child Protection Services regarding the conditions the children lived in.

KARE 11 documented bedrooms filled chest-high with bags of old clothing, animal feces on the floor, urine stained mattresses, floors rotting through, and ceilings covered in black mold. Authorities eventually condemned the home, declaring it was “Unsafe for Human Occupancy.”

Allegations of physical abuse were also made to Hennepin CPS. Those records are not public and Hennepin County says they are bound by statute not to say what’s been done with them.

Erin Davies is required to turn herself in to the county workhouse by January 26, 2016. After 90 days served, she’ll be eligible for electronic home monitoring.”

Conviction for woman charged after KARE 11 Investigation [KARE 11 12/31/15 by A.J. Lagoe and Steve Eckert]