Bittersweet Justice: New Jersey DYFS

“The state has agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the adoptive parents of a boy who endured physical and sexual abuse in multiple foster homes before his third birthday. 

The 17-year-old boy will receive a check for $1,637.59 a month for the next 40 years, deposited into a special needs account, according to the settlement and the family’s attorney, Craig J. Hubert of Lawrenceville.

The first check was expected to arrive this month, drawn from a state-created annuity worth $467,014.33, according to the March 11 settlement.

The money will be used “for the boy’s treatment over the course of his lifetime as he is left to deal with the aftermath of horrific abuse and torture,” Hubert said.

The state child welfare system, known at the time as the Division of Youth and Family Services, or DYFS, took custody of the infant after he was was born in what is today known as Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Elizabeth in May 1999, according to the 2011 lawsuit.

His mother had abandoned him at the hospital — a phenomenon at the time in which mothers, many drug-addicted, created a wave of “boarder babies” in maternity wards across the state.

DYFS enlisted a new nonprofit agency created by First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Franklin, Harvest of Hope, to recruit foster and adoptive families on the state’s behalf for these abandoned newborns.

But neither Harvest of Hope nor DYFS performed any meaningful background checks on the foster families or their “paramours” who assumed care of the child, the first one in 1999, followed by two homes in mid-2002, according to the lawsuit.

Last year, Superior Court Judge Michael Nelson in Essex County agreed to drop Harvest of Hope from the lawsuit, citing its immunity from litigation as a charitable organization. Hubert said he has filed an appeal.

“I thought the decision by the trial judge was correct,” said Harvest of Hope’s Attorney Kenneth Ho of New Brunswick said.

The lawsuit also alleged that improperly supervised and untrained DYFS employees did not keep required routine visits, and had “failed to locate family members who were willing to care” of the baby.

Identified as S.B.K. in the court records, the baby was removed from the first foster home after DYFS confirmed that he and other children in the home had been abused and neglected. But the abuse continued in two subsequent foster homes.

By October 2002, the 3-1/2-year-old boy came to live with his eventual adoptive parents, the lawsuit said.

In settling the case, the state made no admission of wrongdoing.

The DYFS of 15-plus years ago does not resemble what is today known as the Division of Child Protection and Permanency, said Ernest Landante, spokesman for division’s parent entity, the Department of Children and Families.

“Since then, the department has been fundamentally reformed, thoroughly changing its methods and policies,” Landante said. “We vastly increased recruitment and retention of (foster) families and the use of kin so children can remain with relatives. We enhanced our screening and licensing standards and improved training for (foster) parents.”

In 1999 – the year S.B.K. was born – the national advocacy group Children’s Rights sued DYFS on behalf of foster children to force the state to spend more money and to run the dysfunctional agency properly. The lawsuit was settled in 2003 with a commitment the state would undertake a complete overhaul accept federal oversight. The latest monitoring report was released Wednesday.

The family will receive $467,014 of the $1.25 million settlement; the attorneys: $356,061 in fees and $88,414 in reimbursements; a psychiatrist: $22,000.

Hubert has also placed $298,009 of the settlement in an escrow account to satisfy an automatic lien the Medicaid program places on any settlements or judgments collected by its beneficiaries.

The boy is a Medicaid beneficiary. Hubert said he has filed an appeal to prevent Medicaid from getting his client’s money.

“Medicaid has a right to the money as a matter of law, but it doesn’t seem right my client, who had to bear this misery, should have to pay,” he said.”

N.J. pays $1.25M to settle foster child sex abuse lawsuit [Nj.com 6/10/16  y Susan K. Livio]