How Could You? Hall of Shame-Midwest Academy and SB 3154 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 Iowa, Midwest Academy, a boarding school for troubled youth, “was raided and shut down following allegations of abuse.”

“Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, said that after hearing about the allegations he and ranking committee member Rep. Ruth Ann Gaines felt an obligation to look into it.

“… The point of the investigation is going to be, number one, how in the world was this allowed to continue under the radar?” Kaufmann said. “And number two, who’s accountable?”

Federal and state authorities raided the southeast Iowa school Jan. 28-29 at locations at Keokuk and Montrose after two staff members reported an accusation of sexual abuse to Iowa’s Department of Human Services.

Subsequent reporting by The Des Moines Register showed local law enforcement officers had received about 80 calls to the academy since January 2013, five of which included sexual offense allegations.

Court records also showed that credit cards were seized by authorities “to determine if those cards were used in connection with the purchase of items for female students.” Records regarding student isolation rooms were also sought, with one document citing “allegations of a pattern of child endangerment” related to their use.

“Also under investigation on the state level are possible charges of sexual abuse, child pornography, child endangerment, fraudulent practices, and ongoing criminal conduct,” Lee County Attorney Michael P. Short wrote in a motion to seal the search warrant.

Twenty-eight students were assessed by child-abuse investigators.

“As a former educator and someone who supports education, oversight of every school is important in this state,” said Gaines, a Democrat from Des Moines. “This school had none.”

In the 13 years since Midwest Academy opened in Iowa, no state agency had inspected or monitored the boarding school.

The Department of Education previously told the Register the academy wasn’t considered a school under state regulations, even though the academy’s website claimed it had national accreditation. DHS has said it has no licensing or oversight authority either.

Lee County Sheriff Jim Sholl also previously told the Register he believes all boarding schools like Midwest should be more accountable with oversight.

“If we had rules and regulations governing facilities like this, I think you wouldn’t see the number of founded or unfounded DHS (abuse) cases, and less law enforcement involvement,” Sholl said. “I don’t think it is a coincidence that they were located here in Iowa,” where such facilities aren’t regulated.

Kaufmann, a Republican from Wilton, said the committee will reach out to various state departments and agencies to try to determine what went wrong and whether the state can act, through legislation or otherwise, to prevent similar incidents.

State Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames, has drafted a bill, Senate Study Bill 3154, that would require schools like Midwest Academy to be licensed as group foster care facilities with oversight from DHS. They would be required to report their fees and undergo quarterly inspections.

Gaines said she is glad to see the House take bipartisan action on an important issue.

“It isn’t a Republican or Democratic issue,” she said. “It’s a people issue, and we need to take it under our belt and get rid of the problem.””

Legislators to investigate Midwest Academy after abuse reports [Des Moines Register 2/23/16 by Brianne Pfannenstiel]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update: “Last April, 11 students at a southeast Iowa boarding school near Keokuk stampeded through the facility’s kitchen and across an open field on the 70-acre property.

All but one of the runaways was rounded up within a few hours. The other was found the next evening.

Afterward, Midwest Academy owner Ben Trane emailed parents scattered around the country, recounting the incident and urging them not to be frightened into picking up their children.

“Please re-enforce with all your children that emotional terrorism is not tolerated anymore,” he wrote in the email, obtained by The Des Moines Register.

What happened next, according to one of five former students whose families have hired a nationally known children’s rights lawyer for possible litigation against the company, underscores why child welfare advocates have been warning for years about the risks associated with residential foster care facilities for troubled youths.

The boys were put into concrete isolation rooms, sometimes two at a time. That isolation lasted at least three weeks for each one, said David Ferlerger, the Pennsylvania children’s rights lawyer representing a student who recounted the incident.

“No matter what one thinks of therapeutic boarding schools, putting a child in a segregation room for three weeks is unacceptable,” Ferlerger told the Register.

Trane has not responded to several requests for interviews regarding allegations at the facility.

As state and federal authorities continue to investigate allegations of child sex abuse and other mistreatment of children at Midwest Academy, some Iowa lawmakers have been moving swiftly to require oversight of private-pay facilities that foster struggling youths.

State officials concede that they don’t know how many youths are being housed in Iowa’s private-pay foster care facilities, because no state agency licenses or regulates them.

But in May, Hillcrest Family Services in Dubuque, which has been providing government funded residential care for years, is expected to open one more. Awakenings Academy will be a private-pay, six-bedroom program with a more holistic approach for behaviorally challenged boys ages 12 to 17.

“Parents whose kids do not qualify for state or federal subsidies still have needs,” said John Bellini, a vice president for Hillcrest.

A bill passed by the Iowa Senate would at least mandate certification of those homes — requiring that they meet basic health and safety needs, protect children from abuse and neglect, conduct background checks, and limit the use of seclusion and restraint. House members have said it’s too late to pass their own bill, but they are weighing whether to add the language into a human service appropriations bill.

Nationally, though, residential group homes for troubled youths that receive taxpayer money are coming under increased scrutiny. In states such as California and Illinois, scandals have erupted over widespread reports of sexual abuse, excessive use of restraints and lack of supervision at group homes.

The number of children in any kind of foster care, including residential and group homes, has dropped by almost one-third since the late 1990s. Still, about 57,000 — or 14 percent — of the nation’s foster youths live in group care, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which has been pushing Congress for legislative changes.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators, including Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, co-chair of the Senate’s caucus on foster youths, has been looking to shift funding away from group care that isn’t deemed clinically necessary in favor of options that keep more children home or with relatives.

Major national providers of residential and community-based programs generally agree with that goal.

At a congressional hearing that Grassley chaired in 2014, Jeremy Kohomban, CEO of Children’s Village in New York City, said group care is “simply the wrong intervention for most youth, including teens.”

Kohomban said reforms are needed to address “perverse incentives” that steer most federal child-welfare dollars into foster care, including group settings.

But if you talk to parents who took their children to Midwest Academy, they will tell you almost uniformly that they could no longer handle their sons or daughters at home. And few places would take them.

“I didn’t sleep at night until I put him in there,” said Jeff Rolczynski, who brought his 16-year-old to Midwest Academy from Illinois. “He was either going to be dead or in jail.”

Rolczynski said he traveled the country in 2011 looking for a place to put his son, who had problems with drugs and alcohol, as well as acting out.

“My son’s psychologist said I basically had two choices: either I need to come home every day and handcuff him to a bedpost, or find a boarding school of some sort,” Rolczynski said.

In return for tuition ranging from $30,000 to $50,000 a year, Midwest Academy marketed a “merit model” of behavioral modification that some former students and parents likened to brainwashing.

Boys and girls reported being stripped of their possessions and shoes, cut off from communication with family, and prohibited from speaking to their peers until they earned privileges through “good behavior, academics, and leadership.”

Rolczynski said his son, now 20, changed his behavior in just five months. “It didn’t fix him. But it did give him a base as to how he could get back on track,” he said.

While some parents loved the rigid atmosphere at the boarding school, others complained that it was a traumatizing, one-size-fits-all program that had no basis in child psychology.

Laura Gillings, who lives in Minnesota, said her son spent a majority of his three months at the school in 2006 in isolation. Afterward, she said, she learned that he was on the autism spectrum, “which explains why he couldn’t understand how to get out of isolation.”

Gillings said her son, now 23, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder  after attending the academy and Tranquility Bay, a similar school in Jamaica recommended by the staff. That school was shuttered in 2009 after reports of alleged child abuse, unsanitary living conditions, unqualified staff and denial of medical care.

“I am still in debt … paying for the schools that ruined our family,” Gillings said.”

Midwest Academy Highlights What Worries Child Welfare Experts About Group Care [Des Moines Register 3/12/16 by Lee Rood]