How Could You? Hall of Shame-Win For Kids Home 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 Leesburg, Florida, “Department of Children and Families officials are looking into a Leesburg group home where three young girls who were allegedly gang-raped were living.
A DCF spokesperson said the home is a “house parent” model of a group home where the caregiver’s full-time job is to supervise the children.
The agency said it will take whatever action necessary to ensure the home is a safe place for children in state care.
Leesburg police are focusing on the abandoned homes that surround the area where three girls, ages 12, 15 and 17, said they were gang raped multiple times.
The girls lived in the Win for Kids group home nearby.
DCF’s investigation is concentrating on the level of supervision the children were receiving.
The home is located in an area known for high drug traffic and police presence. The location is not being assessed.
“I think every variable has to be looked at,” said Darrell Butler of Greater Orlando Cares, a national mentoring netword for vulnerable children in central Florida. “If the environment is a challenge we have to look at how we’re showing up and responding to kids in that environment. You can’t just take that major piece out and say, ‘Oh the drug house next door won’t affect us.’”
The Win for Kids website says it teaches kids to manage tough situations they face by providing 24-hour continuous care and therapy.
“It’s not just the four-wall environment, it’s the community environment,” Butler said.
Factors Butler hopes decision-makers will reconsider.
“I don’t know the ‘whys’ in this, I don’t know the intention, but the impact is what we see now,” he said.
The executive director of Win for Kids would not comment on the incident.”
DCF investigates Leesburg group home where 3 teenage rape victims lived[WFTV 1/29/15]
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Update:“All four residents at a Leesburg group home where reports of sexual battery emerged last week have been moved, according to state Department of Children and Families spokeswoman Kristin Gray.
After reports that three underage girls living in the for-profit group home may have been sexually assaulted by neighborhood boys, DCF began investigating “allegations of inadequate supervision” in the home.
“When we were in the home conducting the assessment … and gathering information, concerns regarding the level of supervision came up,” Gray wrote in an email. “The details about what information led us to those concerns aren’t releasable.”
The group home, W.I.N. for Kids, is licensed by DCF and has served girls between ages 6 and 17 since 2007, according to its website. It receives between $92 and $184 for each bed it occupies with a child in state care, according to a rate agreement between the group home and its community-based care agency. Children in state custody have been abused, neglected or abandoned.
On Jan. 20, a 17-year-old resident at W.I.N. for Kids told police she was gang-raped by a group of three to seven men. Two other residents at W.I.N. for Kids home, ages 12 and 15, told police that same week that they had participated in sex acts with boys in vacant houses.
Gray said that children are relocated from their current living situation during an active investigation when a request is made by an involved party. The request can come from the group home provider, DCF or a case manager, but she said she cannot disclose who asked for the change.
“If its kids are unsafe then we would move them, but in this particular situation that wasn’t necessarily the case,” Gray said.
Kids Central, the local agency that arranges placements for children in state custody, said last week that the group home was in good standing and that it did not have a history of founded abuse or neglect allegations, according to spokeswoman Nicole Pulcini Mason.
“Because of the nature of group homes, just in general, people tend to make abuse allegations and it’s kind of like the nature of the beast at some point,” she said. “It seems to be a little bit unusual they haven’t really gone through that.”
Police have not made any arrests but have identified a person of interest in the gang rape, according to Lt. Joe Iozzi. The girls received forensic interviews with children’s advocates and the 17-year-old and 12-year old received medical examinations.”
Girls removed from Leesburg group home after sexual battery allegations[Orlando Sentinel 2/5/15 by Elyssa Cherney]
Update 2:”Twyine Littlejohn misses the bubbly girls who lived in the modest home on her street.
The teenagers, sitting outside in the high-crime community, would wave hello and ask for candy or for her homemade frozen juice cups, said Littlejohn, 63.
“I talked to them, they were nice girls,” she said. “They acted like regular teenagers, but they had underlying stuff…These are kids that probably have a lot of mental-health issues and self-esteem issues that started from their families.”
Now the girls, wards of the state, are gone. The state Department of Children and Families removed them — ages 12, 15 and 17 — from the for-profit group home in Leesburg’s Carver Heights neighborhood while authorities investigate allegations that they were sexually assaulted. The accusations have raised questions about the quality of care provided by W.I.N. for Kids, which is licensed by DCF.
In a one-week span, a sobbing teenager reported to Leesburg police that she was gang-raped by a group of four to seven neighborhood men, and two other residents told police they participated in sex acts with boys in abandoned homes nearby. No arrests had been made in the cases but police are following a person of interest, Lt. Joe Iozzi said.
Now, DCF is investigating “allegations of inadequate supervision” at the group home, spokeswoman Kristin Gray said. Gray said the agency is considering several key questions about W.I.N. for Kids: “Were the children receiving proper supervision in this group home? Was the house parent providing the proper structure? Did she have control over this population?”It is unclear how many adults lived in the 1,800-square-foot home in the city of 21,000. The ranch house, which boasts a neatly-trimmed lawn with flowers and a minivan in the driveway, is licensed to take six girls. Just four had lived there recently but all have been relocated, Gray said.
The girls’ living arrangement wasn’t unusual.Statewide, 2,125 children are placed in group homes, 386 of them in Central Florida, according to the child-welfare agency. Fewer children end up in group homes than in other placements, such as with a foster family or a relative, due in part to the fact that there aren’t enough people willing to house older wards of the state, Gray said.
Plus, teenage girls are challenging. Jack Levine, Florida’s leading child and family policy advocate, said it’s because many have been sexually or physically victimized. Even with good supervision girls can stray toward risky behavior, he said.
“The mental processes that many girls go through is a very odd combination of trust and fear,” said Levine, who served as president of the nonprofit Voices for Florida’s Children for 25 years and now works in Tallahassee. As a result, he said, these girls may be “seeking a male model that they may not have in their own family, usually utilizing their sexuality as basically pay for emotional stability. The irony is that in the giving of herself, she is not getting stability — she is getting a new level of victimization.”
As the 17-year-old from W.I.N. For Kids relayed her story to police, her “arms clenched around her torso, and [an] occasional knee pulled to her chest appeared genuine,” a report states. In the second case, one child told police she had never had sex before while the other said she frequently engages in group sex and that “she does this for attention,” according to the report. All the girls received forensic interviews with child advocates and medical exams were done on the 12- and 17-year-olds, according to Leesburg Police Maj. Steve Rockefeller.
South Carolina native Tamiko Aikens, who is listed on the group home’s website as the executive director, declined to comment on the ongoing investigation. The group home appears to cater to girls who may have been victimized or who have discipline problems, according to the website.
“We have a vision to guide our children into a state of realization in order that they may have the ability to talk through and manage tough situations rather than act them out,” the website states. The website also notes that Aikens opened the group home, which takes girls between 6 and 17, in 2007 after “a series of life events lead Ms. Aikens to her true purpose in life, to help children.”
The group home was in good standing before the sexual-battery reports, according to Kids Central Inc., a community-based care agency that arranges placements for children in state custody. The group home receives $92 to $184 for each bed occupied overnight, according to a rate agreement with Kids Central and DCF.
Littlejohn, who runs a male youth group for area kids called The Great Plan, said the house mother was strict with the girls but that she also gave them the freedom to make their own choices.
“They weren’t in jail in a locked facility,” she said. “They can move around and do what they want to do.”
Other neighbors agreed, adding that the girls could be seen sitting on an electrical box near the house and were instructed by the house mom not to move from there, apparently as a way to keep tabs on their whereabouts. In the past two years, Leesburg police responded to the group home 35 times, most often due to a juvenile complaint or a missing person. The incident reports detail a living situation in which the house mother couldn’t always manage the girls without help from law enforcement.
On one occasion in June, police were called to settle a dispute between two girls after one said she accidentally broke someone else’s shoe and a shouting match broke out, according to the report. Earlier that year, police arrested one of the residents for having marijuana.
Levine said it’s normal for any child to resist authority and that it’s impossible to predict adolescent behavior. But there are still certain expectations of a house parent in a group home, he said.
“You’ve got to set the stage for success by actually having the children understand the consequences of certain behaviors, but also to help them set their own rules,” he said. “As hard as it is, there are some people who do it and do it really well.”
W.I.N. for Kids is classified as a “parent model,” which means it’s a hybrid between a foster home, in which kids are placed with families, and a more traditional group home where staff monitors the kids in shifts, according to DCF.
Gray said that the W.I.N. for Kids environment is more preferable because it offers a “smaller, more intimate type of setting with less children and the same caregiver instead of people shifting in and out.”
Neighbor Littlejohn said she was shocked to hear about the review of the group home.
“I think she [the house mother] tried to treat them like regular kids,” Littlejohn said. “Every child wants to be treated like normal without distinctions…I saw her doing her job and whatever it took to make it work.””
Group-home supervision questioned after three girls reported sexual assaults[Orlando Sentinel 2/9/15 by Elyssa Cherney]
Update 3:”Children are being cared for again in the Leesburg group home where three girls had lived when they reported being raped in the neighborhood.[Say what?]
The Department of Children and Families ordered new training for staff members of Win for Kids.
Investigators said the victims in the case have not been able to provide helpful information regarding potential suspects.
It may be a tough situation, but not one that DCF said is a result of inadequate care.
Daily patrols have become a familiar sight in the neighborhood where the three underage girls, one as young as 12, reported being sexually assaulted in January.
After a two-month investigation, the group home–from which the girls have since been removed–can house children again.
“It was not determined that what happened was due to any fault of the group home or the houseparent,” said DCF spokesperson Kristin Gray.
DCF and the group home’s management did identify additional training needs, including enhanced methods of handling conflicts and new human-trafficking training.
“We really want our foster parents and group home providers to know what to look for and what are some of the red flags,” Grays said.
Before the incident, DCF officials said the home’s management received high marks.
The home’s contract mandates that children receive 24-hour monitoring and supervision.”
Leesburg group home running again after DCF investigation[WFTV 4/24/15]
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