How Could You?Hall of Shame-Casey Ray Miller and Lawsuit 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 Keizer, Oregon, foster father Casey Ray Miller, 34, “was convicted of two counts of first-degree criminal mistreatment for injuring the girl and withholding medical treatment. He was sentenced to 13 days in jail and ordered to have no contact with foster children and undergo anger management treatment and probation.

But another girl, police later found out, also suffered abuse under Miller’s care.

Over the course of two years, Miller was accused of repeatedly sodomizing the foster child. She was only 5 years old when the abuse started.

Miller, 34, was sentenced to 30 years in prison Thursday after he pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree sodomy.

The victim’s mother spoke through angry tears at his sentencing hearing.

“You have done things to my daughter that could never be undone,” she said. “You took away her innocence.”

Having her family separated was painful enough, she said, but learning of the years of abuse and neglect endured by her children while they were under Miller’s care was an “indescribable pain.”

She said she felt like her concerns over her children’s’ care were ignored by officials. She urged others to never dismiss these worries.

“(It’s been) a living hell for my family … a nightmare we cannot wake up from,” she said.

Her daughter, now 11, stood up and quietly addressed Miller. She said she was mad at Miller and sad about the other kids he hurt.

“I also hope I will never see you again,” she said. “You were supposed to take care of me … instead, you molested me.”

Prosecutor Gillian Fischer asked Miller be sentenced to 30 years for sodomizing the girl and violating his probation from the earlier abuse case.

Before Marion County Judge Susan Tripp delivered her sentence, the adoptive mother of Miller’s previous victim spoke.

Her daughter still suffers the physical and emotional damage of having both her arms and legs broken, she said.

“She was damaged by someone who was supposed to take care of her,” she said. “I hope you will never again have the opportunity to hurt a child.”

Miller declined to speak on his behalf. His attorney, Manuel Perez, said he hoped Miller would be placed in a prison close to his family in Salem. Miller wanted to be able to have family visits, which would be hard from a prison in Ontario.

Tripp sentenced Miller to 30 years in prison and a lifetime of post-prison supervision with no eligibility for early release, alternative programs or good time.

“There’re no words that truly encapsulate how your behavior will damage these (children) for the rest of their lives,” she said.

It’s a crime she sees all too often in her courtroom.

“If they put you in Ontario, that’s fine with me,” Tripp said. “How you ruined these families’ lives, that’s the court’s concern.”

The victims’ attorney, Steven Rizzo said he planned to address the Oregon Department of Human Services’ role in the girls’ abuse in a civil lawsuit.

“It’s just another tragedy written and directed by DHS,” he said. ”
Former Keizer man sentenced to 30 years for sexually abusing foster child

[Stateman Journal 9/7/17 by Whitney M. Woodworth]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update:“A $100 million lawsuit accuses Oregon’s Department of Human Services (DHS) of overlooking physical and sexual abuse of foster children living in a Marion County foster home – and then trying to cover up the agency’s own failures to prevent that abuse.

Attorney Steve Rizzo filed the lawsuit in Oregon’s federal district court on Friday on behalf of 3 foster children whom Oregon DHS sent to live with Casey Ray Miller and Melissa Mary Miller. In 2015, Rizzo won a record $15 million lawsuit against Oregon DHS for a case in which 9 foster children were abused by their state-appointed foster father, James Earl Mooney.

The foster father in this case, Casey Ray Miller, was given a 30-year sentence in September for sodomizing one of the foster children in his care. Previously, he had been found guilty of first-degree criminal mistreatment, after it was discovered that he had broken seven bones of a 10-month-old girl in his care.

The lawsuit alleges that none of the children should ever have been placed in the Millers’ care at all. KOIN 6 News reached out to DHS for comment but was told the agency could not comment on pending litigation.

“These people were not fit. They were not even financially independent. They had serious health concerns, both mental and physical,” Rizzo said. “They never should have been put in charge of children.”

The older siblings were sent to live with the Millers starting in 2011. Within a month, the complaint says the two children showed signs of child abuse, including bruising and emotional outbursts — signs that the agency allegedly never fully investigated.

According to the complaint, the 10-month-old was then placed with the Millers two years later, in 2013. Even after Miller admitted he had abused the infant – abuse that occurred a month after the infant entered the home — DHS allegedly “chose not to conduct a medical evaluation or child abuse assessment” of the two older children in the home. The lawsuit claims this failure to investigate put the two other children at significant risk.

DHS is also being accused of seeking to cover up its own wrongdoing, as it pertains to the 10-month-old abuse victim. The lawsuit says that after Miller admitted to abusing the infant, DHS sought a “self-serving” diagnosis of brittle bone disease for the girl – a diagnosis that Oregon Health & Sciences University (OHSU) did not deem accurate after examination.

“What we’re alleging is that, in this case, when the agency became, frankly, aware of abuse, the agency took upon itself to investigate the conduct leading to abuse and ultimately fed into what we are alleging was a cover-up,” Rizzo said.

Then, in January 2017, one of the older children who had been living in the home came forward to say that Miller had repeatedly sexually abused her while she was living in his home.

The lawsuit claims that DHS employees Karla Major, Marcy Stenerson, Jennifer Laib, Heather Uerlings, and Sherrie Mahurin did not properly investigate signs of child abuse in the Miller home, thereby failing to protect the children in the state agency’s care.

The lawsuit alleges it was Mahurin “set in motion a plan to conjure or suggest that [the 10-month-old child’s] multiple fractures were not caused by Casey Miller’s admitted child abuse; but rather, that they resulted from brittle bones.”

The lawsuit also questions DHS’s practice of approving foster parents who will be financially dependent on the money they receive from the state for the care of foster children, arguing that this dependency violates DHS rules and “creates a substantial risk of serious harm to foster children and perpetuates child abuse.”

With the lawsuit, the plaintiffs are seeking to have the courts forbid the state agency from certifying non-relative foster parents who don’t have the financial resources to care for foster children outside of the state’s foster care payments. The plaintiffs are also seeking to stop DHS from conducting investigations of child abuse that happen in the state’s foster care program, claiming that it is a conflict of interest. The lawsuit also asks to have the agency fire the DHS employees who participated in the alleged cover-up.

$100M lawsuit alleges foster child abuse cover-up by Oregon DHS

[KOIN 4/30/18 by Gabrielle Karol]

Update 2:“The Oregon Department of Human Services has agreed to pay $40 million to settle a lawsuit filed by four former foster children who were sexually and physically abused in a foster home, court records show.

The agency’s settlement offer marks the culmination of a five-year court battle that scrutinized the harsh treatment of children in Oregon’s foster care system and exposed the agency’s efforts to cover up the abuse of the children in a Marion County foster home in Keizer. In a court filing submitted on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Eugene, the children’s attorneys said their clients have accepted the state’s offer of $40 million – the largest in an Oregon state foster care lawsuit.

One of the victims in the case endured sexual abuse that led to a 30-year prison sentence for a former foster father in 2017. With detailed documents and testimony, the lawsuit alleges caseworkers repeatedly ignored signs of abuse and tried to cover up the abuse of one child who suffered seven broken bones – even as a criminal prosecution was underway.

Portland attorneys Steven Rizzo and Mary Skjelset said in a statement they and their clients want to see the system change.

“For years, our clients – small children – suffered in the custody of Oregon’s Department of Human Services: They suffered severe abuse whose grim hallmarks – emotional distress, suspicious injuries and reports of concern – arose from a home dangerously unqualified to provide safe foster care,” they said in a statement to the Capital Chronicle. “In telling their stories, our clients wanted most to prevent this tragedy from repeating and thereby improve the lives of other foster children. No amount of money can fully account for what these children and their families endured. We hope that the magnitude of this settlement will motivate meaningful reform and evoke the public attention that DHS, and those entrusted to it, so deeply need.”

Jake Sunderland, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Human Services, declined to comment on the case.

The case stems to 2011, when the Oregon Department of Human Services certified Melissa and Casey Miller, a couple in Keizer, to be foster parents in their 900-square-foot home. The 80-page lawsuit lays bare a repeated pattern of agency workers seeing signs of abuse, injuries and emotional trauma and not taking action to remove the children from the home.

The first two children arrived at the house in December. The younger one, 2, started to show signs of abuse within the first month, including bruises and marks on his face, ears, neck, ribs, and legs, the lawsuit said. But the agency disregarded numerous reports and concerns about the child, including calls to the child abuse hotline, the lawsuit said.

The older child, a 5-year-old girl, also showed signs of sexual abuse, which were ignored, the lawsuit said. Instead, the agency worked with the Millers to curtail visits with her biological mother, the lawsuit said.

In 2013, a 3-year-old foster child was placed in the home, who also soon showed anxiety and signs of physical injuries and distress. And during one agency visit to their home, an agency caseworker saw a lack of cleanliness and safety hazards, including cobwebs, mold, peeling paint and dangling power cords.

DHS placed a fourth child in the home, a 10-month-old girl, who was treated at a hospital emergency room in 2013. She had seven fractures on her arms and legs.

In a police interview, Casey Miller told detectives he yanked the child’s arm and heard a “loud pop,” and in other instances “grabbed” the child’s wrist and legs roughly.

Police arrested Casey Miller for criminal mistreatment, a felony for the physical injuries and withholding medical attention. By then, DHS had already received complaints that he had roughly treated the toddler and it had overly relied upon Melissa Miller’s assurances that the children were merely acting out, the lawsuit said.

As Miller’s criminal case progressed, the agency contacted Oregon Health & Sciences University to get expert testimony about whether the child’s multiple fractures were from brittle bone disease. But unbeknownst to the OHSU experts, the agency withheld the police reports with Miller’s statements, the lawsuit said. After a prosecutor provided police reports, the OHSU experts confirmed that brittle bone disease was not the cause of the fractures.

He was sentenced to 36 months of probation.

In 2015, one of the other foster children – by then in an another home – disclosed sexual abuse from Casey Miller. Another foster child disclosed sexual abuse in 2017, the lawsuit said.

In that case, Casey Miller forced the young girl to watch pornography and sexually abused her repeatedly, the lawsuit and criminal court documents show. Whenever Miller was done abusing her, he offered her chewing gum or pocket change from his job at a gas station, the lawsuit said.

In 2017, Casey Miller was sentenced to 30 years of prison for the sexual abuse. Melissa Miller was not charged.
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The court filing shows how Portland attorneys Steven Rizzo and Mary Skjelset spent years navigating roadblocks from the state agency, fighting for records and assembling the historic case.

In 2017, the two started to investigate on behalf of one child who suffered sexual abuse in an agency-certified foster home in Marion County.

As their investigation progressed, they found two more children who were victims. That same year, the attorneys submitted signed releases on behalf of the children to access their child welfare records from the agency.

“The agency pushed back,” Rizzo wrote in the filing. “Notwithstanding the releases, DHS resisted producing the requested records.”

The agency claimed the children would have to pay $10,000 to access their records and cover a $175-an-hour fee so agency attorneys could review and black out their records, the filing says.

“Weaponizing the law against children that it failed to protect, DHS caused unnecessary delay and expense,” the attorneys wrote.

After a year of investigating, the case was filed in 2018. The attorneys continued to get records from law enforcement agencies, the Marion County District Attorney’s Office and other sources. As they deposed witnesses, they found that the agency had never referred three of the children for a medical evaluation as required by the state law for signs of abuse.

In 2021, the attorneys and children still fought to get records, including communications between an attorney and two agency employees who had dismissed one child’s allegations outright, the filing said.

In June, the settlement talks started, with the final offer of $40 million extended in October. Without a settlement, the case was headed to trial next year. The plaintiffs were prepared and had 35 witnesses lined up to testify.

To reach that settlement, the attorneys obtained and reviewed more than 233,000 pages of agency records and other documents, including counseling, school and medical records from about 20 other organizations. They also obtained dozens of sworn statements.

The children, now approaching adulthood, will share the award after attorney fees and court costs. Court documents don’t disclose the breakdown of the award among the children. Their attorneys are asking the judge to keep the breakdown confidential to protect the privacy of the plaintiffs.”
DHS offers record $40 million to settle lawsuit from abused foster children
[Oregon Capital Chronicle 12/21/23 by Ben Botkin]