Lawsuit: Oregon DHS

“A lawsuit filed Thursday accuses the Oregon Department of Human Services and at least three child welfare workers of negligence for placing a teenage girl in a home where she was allegedly sexually abused.

The lawsuit, which seeks up to $4.5 million in damages, was filed on the girl’s behalf by the guardian now caring for her, Jules Moorhouse. It alleges she was also placed in foster homes in which she was neglected.

It comes down to the fact that there are lots and lots of minors living in a broken system and being abused and there’s nobody that’s accountable to it,” Moorhouse said on Friday, explaining why she filed the lawsuit. “And lots of kids living (with) physical, sexual, verbal, emotional abuse.”

The girl is now 17 years old. She was in the state’s care from 2012 through 2015, according to a court document.

According to the lawsuit, child welfare workers including a caseworker, a foster home certifier and their supervisor failed to adequately investigate when the girl reported that she was being sexually abused. The lawsuit specifies that she was raped.

No criminal charges appear to have been filed related to her allegations of abuse. However, the man whom the suit alleges sexually assaulted her — Steven Dearmitt — pled guilty in 2015 to four counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a different young teenager in 2003. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

According to the lawsuit, the girl was cared for by her biological mother throughout much of her childhood. The girl suffered abuse and neglect that reached a “profound” level by 2012, and the state removed her from her mother’s care, according to the lawsuit.

Over the course of four years, the state moved the girl back and forth between the mother, Kristina Vosmik’s, care and a series of foster home. It was during the time child welfare workers placed her back at her mother’s home that the girl suffered sexual abuse, the lawsuit alleges. But the foster homes were no escape, either: there, she was subjected to emotional and psychological abuse and neglect, the girl’s lawyer, J. Clay McCaslin, wrote in a court document.

“The DHS defendants failed to monitor (the girl’s) health, safety and welfare (and) took affirmative steps to place and maintain (her in the) home of Kristina Vosmik, where (the girl) suffered repeated acts of sexual abuse,” according to the lawsuit.

In 2015, Vosmik told Multnomah County jail officials that she had used meth since 2003. She described a pattern of heavy usage, saying she smoked it “all day long … all day and all night.” Vosmik said she also recently started using heroin, after getting addicted to opiate pills.

The state failed to provide the girl with adequate care, counseling and treatment for the trauma she endured, which McCaslin says will require counseling and psychological treatment that could cost as much as $500,000.

Her guardian is also asking the court to award the girl up to $4 million in damages for the harm she suffered while in state care, which has caused her post-traumatic stress, panic attacks, nightmares and other trauma-related symptoms. In a court filing, McCaslin said the case falls under a state law intended to protect vulnerable people which could allow a jury to award up to triple the damages.

Oregon’s child welfare agency current faces at least eight pending lawsuits filed on behalf of children who were allegedly abused or neglected while in the state’s care. A spokesman for the agency did not immediately respond Friday afternoon to a request for comment on the latest lawsuit.

At least one of those cases also involves a child whom lawyers say case workers should never have placed in the home of one of his biological parents.

In that case, child welfare workers decided a 7-year-old boy should live with his father, despite the fact that he had a violent past, including a 2016 restraining order involving his other children and a 2008 conviction for strangling his girlfriend. The father has been criminally charged with punching, kicking and otherwise abusing the boy. Lawyers for the boy filed a $1.5 million lawsuit on his behalf.”

Lawsuit seeks up to $4.5M for Oregon girl who was abused in state care

[Oregon Live 3/16/19 by Hillary Borrud]

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