How Could You? Hall of Shame-Kevin Barker

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 Sacramento, California, “foster parent Kevin Barker was arrested last week on child porn charges, accused of installing hidden cameras in his bathroom.

Tuesday, one mother of a child in Barker’s care says she was not notified by Child Protective Services of his arrest. Instead, she says she found out from watching the news.

“I lost it. I didn`t even know how to think,” she said. “My mind was in every place.”

FOX40 has chosen not to identify the woman.

“I’m frustrated because I feel like CPS should have informed me,” the mother said.

Now that detectives are investigating Barker’s home, CPS couldn’t answer specific questions about him like how many children he’s cared for and how long.

“If a major incident occurs in foster care, it is CPS practice to notify child’s counsel, parents’ counsel, and in most cases the biological parents. In some cases, biological parents are notified of the major incident by their attorney or not at all if parental rights have been terminated,” CPS said in a statement.

The mother FOX40 spoke with Tuesday says her parental rights had not been terminated, and she was allowed to have unsupervised visits. She said her sons were taken away after a series of domestic dispute calls at her home involving her and her son’s father.

“We got in an argument and CPS came out,” she said. “Nothing physical. Literally arguing.”

She believes the children would have been safer in her care.

So what does CPS actually do during visits to foster homes for annual evaluations?

Children’s Advocacy Institute spokesman Ed Howard said they typically don’t involve taking apart a bathroom to look for hidden cameras.

“You know, it’s supposed to be something north of just a cursory look around,” Howard said. “But it’s not a home audit.[Well it SHOULD be!!!]

They don’t take the house down to the studs.”

http://fox40.com/2018/03/07/mother-says-she-learned-of-foster-parents-charges-from-news-instead-of-cps/

[Fox 40 3/7/18 by Nicole Comstock]

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