Lawsuit: Iowa Department of Health and Human Services

“A 20-year-old woman liv­ing in Sioux Falls alleges in a law­suit the Iowa Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices neg­li­gently allowed her to be adop­ted out of foster care by a con­victed felon who sexu­ally abused her for years.

Santee Sioux tri­bal mem­ber Mikalla Winkel filed the suit in con­nec­tion with child­hood abuse she said she suffered in her adopt­ive home in Sioux City, a hub for Nat­ive fam­il­ies from sur­round­ing reser­va­tions in Neb­raska and South Dakota.

Winkel’s foster place­ment came dur­ing an era when the Depart­ment of Human Ser­vices was under fire for ter­min­at­ing the par­ental rights of Nat­ive Amer­ican chil­dren in foster care at such a high rate that some Nat­ive fam­il­ies had come to refer to Sioux City as “Ter­min­a­tion City.”

A 2003 Des Moines Register series showed the rate of Amer­ican Indian chil­dren placed in foster care in Wood­bury County, where Sioux City is loc­ated, was seven times greater than that for White chil­dren: 151 per 1,000 pop­u­la­tion for Nat­ive Amer­ican chil­dren as com­pared to 21 per thou­sand for White kids, accord­ing to DHS stat­ist­ics.

The civil case comes as the U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices has sought more input this year on how to bet­ter to sup­port the Indian Child Wel­fare Act, a 1978 fed­eral law whose pro­tec­tions for Indi­gen­ous fam­il­ies have been unevenly enforced around the coun­try. The act seeks to pro­tect U.S. Nat­ive Amer­ican chil­dren, who state agen­cies removed from homes at high rates and widely placed in non­Nat­ive Amer­ican homes, sever­ing cul­tural ties and caus­ing trauma.

Dani­elle Sample, a spokes­wo­man for the Iowa Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices, said the agency could not com­ment on the pending lit­ig­a­tion. But she did say record checks of the adopt­ive par­ents were done at the time of licens­ing by Iowa Kid­sNet, a net­work of social ser­vice agen­cies.

The removal rate of Nat­ive Amer­ican chil­dren in Wood­bury County has dropped in state fiscal year 2025 to 3.9 per 1,000. The rate of all chil­dren placed in foster care in that county was 11.7 per 1,000 in the same fiscal year.

Winkel’s former adopt­ive father, who lived in Sioux City, could not be reached for com­ment.

Removed by state for mother’s addic­tion, chil­dren placed with meth user.

Born in 2005, Winkel and three sib­lings became foster chil­dren in Decem­ber 2006 after being removed from their mother’s home. Their mother regained cus­tody in Octo­ber 2007 but “con­tin­ued to have issues with sub­stance abuse and addic­tion, which made her unfit to care for her chil­dren,” the law­suit says.

Winkel’s par­ents sep­ar­ated in Septem­ber 2006.

After their par­ental rights were ter­min­ated, Winkel and two of her sib­lings were removed from their home again in 2008 and placed by DHS with Nor­man and Cam­mie Winkel in 2009 in Sioux City. Both foster par­ents were sup­posed to undergo back­ground checks under Iowa law and admin­is­trat­ive code.

The law­suit alleges Nor­man Winkel, 58, had five drug con­vic­tions at the time. Iowa court records show some pos­ses­sion charges were dis­missed, but Winkel was con­victed of both felony and mis­de­meanor charges of pos­ses­sion of methamphet­am­ine. His crim­inal his­tory included alleg­a­tions that involved lying to law enforce­ment, includ­ing false report­ing and elud­ing, though he wasn’t con­victed.

The couple were not mem­bers of, or oth­er­wise con­nec­ted to, the Santee Sioux Nation or any other Indian com­munity. The Indian Child Wel­fare Act attempts to pro­tect Nat­ive chil­dren by try­ing to keep them con­nec­ted to their fam­il­ies, tribes, and cul­tures; pre­vent dis­pro­por­tion­ate removal; pri­or­it­ize fam­ily place­ment; and ensure “act­ive efforts” for reuni­fic­a­tion in state child cus­tody cases.

Iowa code 232B.9 requires the state to show its place­ment recom­mend­a­tions con­sider the “social and cul­tural stand­ards” of Nat­ive Amer­ican com­munit­ies, and also to present a qual­i­fied expert wit­ness to show how those stand­ards will be met with its place­ment, the law­suit says.

After Mikalla Winkel was form­ally adop­ted in 2010, Nor­man Winkel began to groom her, and the sexual abuse allegedly con­tin­ued for many years, accord­ing to the law­suit.

In 2018 at the age of 13, Mikalla Winkel repor­ted the abuse to the Mercy Child Advocacy Cen­ter in Sioux City. Nor­man and Cam­mie Winkel divorced that year, court records show. The Iowa Depart­ment of Human Ser­vices determ­ine the abuse alleg­a­tions were foun­ded, but the state kept Mikalla Winkel in the foster home with Cam­mie Winkel.

Later, Mikalla Winkel was dia­gnosed with con­duct and mood dis­orders, ADHD and depres­sion. She also attemp­ted sui­cide, was hos­pit­al­ized sev­eral times and treated throughout the state for her men­tal health issues, the law­suit says.

In 2020, Cam­mie Winkel’s cus­todial rights were ter­min­ated, and Mikalla Winkel was placed in a pedi­at­ric med­ical facil­ity in Detroit. In 2021, court records show, she was adju­dic­ated in juven­ile court for will­ful injury caus­ing bod­ily injury after she got in a fight in Iowa’s Scott County.

Case is latest to raise ques­tions about kids placed in state’s care

Winkel’s civil law­suit is at least the second this year that has raised red flags about how the treat­ment of chil­dren adop­ted out of Iowa’s foster care sys­tem. The case of David Michael Woods was fea­tured in a Watch­dog column in July.

No one knows how many chil­dren Woods abused before he was sen­tenced to 100 years in prison. But his con­vic­tion for pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­bu­tion, and pos­ses­sion of child por­no­graphy, as well as state­ments from law enforce­ment offi­cials, made clear that as an adopt­ive par­ent, he plucked at least three chil­dren from Iowa’s child-wel­fare sys­tem, and that at least two of them were sexu­ally abused, both by him and other men he shared them with.

Chief Judge Stephanie Rose of the U.S. Dis­trict Court for Iowa’s South­ern Dis­trict, cit­ing an appeals decision uphold­ing Woods’ con­vic­tion, said at Woods’ sen­ten­cing that he “delib­er­ately sought out vul­ner­able boys within his pre­ferred age range for this pur­pose, and there’s every bit of evid­ence in his mes­sages that he delighted in groom­ing and sexu­ally abus­ing them.”“What (Woods) did to these boys is abso­lutely heart­break­ing,” Rose said. “It’s evil. There’s no other word for it.”

The state already was tak­ing meas­ures when the Woods invest­ig­a­tion began to address child-place­ment issues in con­nec­tion with two other Iowa chil­dren, Nat­alie Finn of West Des Moines and Sab­rina Ray of Perry, who died at the hands of their adopt­ive par­ents.

It’s unclear what, if any­thing, Gov. Kim Reyn­olds’ office and the Iowa Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices did after the Woods case came to light to address the cir­cum­stances under which, des­pite those changes, a sexual pred­ator was able to adopt chil­dren and share them with other pred­at­ors.

Bey­ond fail­ures in its duty to pro­tect chil­dren, the state in the fatal cases of abuse prior to the Woods invest­ig­a­tion incurred steep costs to tax­pay­ers. Set­tle­ments in claims con­nec­ted to the 2017 star­va­tion death of Sab­rina Ray in her adopt­ive par­ents’ home in Perry have totaled $14.68 mil­lion.

One court set­tle­ment in 2023 required the state to pay $10 mil­lion set­tle­ment in 2023 on behalf of two Ray sib­lings who died of star­va­tion and abuse at her adopt­ive par­ents’ home in 2017. The set­tle­ment also required DHHS to estab­lish a task force to “review imple­ment­a­tion” of recom­mend­a­tions in a state ombuds­man’s report.

Scott Wad­ding, an attor­ney whose firm rep­res­en­ted chil­dren in those cases, said earlier this year that plaintiffs’ law­yers often are deterred from pur­su­ing account­ab­il­ity on behalf of abused chil­dren.

“We had expec­ted to see, real mean­ing­ful change,” Wad­ding said. “But (the task force is) no longer meet­ing. We have seen noth­ing of any sub­stance from that task force.”

Woman Allges Iowas was negligent in her Childhood Adoption

[Argus Leader 12/14/25 by Lee Rood]

REFORM Puzzle Piece