Lawsuit: Hawaii DHS
“Three former foster children from Hawaii are suing the state, alleging continuous abuse at the hands of their parents, as well as sexual molestation involving another sibling.
The civil complaint was filed last week by Jolyn and Kurt Kipapa’s foster children, six years after the mother was stabbed to death by her foster son Kaanoi, who was 16 years old at the time.
During Kaanoi Kipapa’s sentencing, his defense attorney told the court that he was beaten daily by his siblings on Jolyn’s orders from the time he was a young boy.
Kaanoi was sentenced in May 2019 to eight years in prison for manslaughter, with credit for five years of time already served.
He told the court: ‘I was so broken, so damaged that I didn’t know what else to do. I will forever be sorry for what I done. She didn’t deserve to die.’
Attorney Randall Rosenberg, who is representing the three former foster children in the lawsuit, told Hawaii News Now that his plaintiffs, who were part of the large Kipapa household between 1996-2014, were used as slave labor, isolated from their friends and starved by their parents, who he said had a lock on the refrigerator.
‘This was for all intents and purposes a house of horrors for these children,’ said the lawyer.
According to the lawsuit, the foster parents forced their 11 children to work for free for their family’s cleaning business.
Rosenberg, the plaintiff’s lawyer, also said the parents knew that one of their foster children was molesting his siblings, but turned a blind eye to the abuse.
The attorney argued that the Department of Human Services, which has been named as a defendant, carries responsibility for what happened inside the family’s home in Waimanalo because it had placed the children in the Kipapas’ custody and failed to investigate allegations of abuse when one of the children told a social worker about it.
The lawsuit claims that the DHS caseworker, who has since retired, accused the foster child of lying.
According to the complaint, the social worker in questions was in cahoots with the Kipapas and was funneling additional foster children to them to increase their monthly stipend.
On July 5, 2014, Kaanoi Kipapa armed himself with multiple kitchen knives, entered Jolyn’s room, where she was confined to her bed with a leg injury, and proceeded to stab her in the head and body.
He then called police to report the murder, saying that ‘something dark came over him and that his mom was in bed with blood all over her.’
The first officer responding to the family’s home found the then-16-year-old Kaanoi emerging from a back room covered in blood.
Some family members who appeared in court during Kaanoi’s sentencing last year denied his claims of abuse.
‘I know there’s nothing that that lady did that would deserve death like that,’ Kurlyn Kipapa, Jolyyn and Kurt’s sole biological child, said to her adopted brother.
But Kaanoi’s step-brother Taylor-James Mendiola, 24, backed up the claims, saying the physical and mental abuse were so regular he grew up thinking it was normal.
Mendiola told Hawaii News Now last year that he and his siblings were forced to perform chores for hours each day, were not allowed to access the fridge or the kitchen cabinets, and had security cameras watching their every move.
When he was in the eighth grade, Mendiola said Jolyn and her husband pulled him out of school and put him to work picking up trash all day.
When he was 16 years old, Mendiola said he attempted to commit suicide by hanging after being subjected to constant bullying for being gay and battling depression, but one of his sisters saved him.
He told the news outlet that the abuse he had allegedly experienced at the hands of his fosters parents has left him suffering from nightmares.
It is unclear if Mendiola is one of the three plaintiffs now suing the state.”
[Daily Mail 4/27/2020 by Snejana Farberov]
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