How Could You? Hall of Shame-John Williams and Nathan Williams cases

John and Nathan weren’t the only ones who said they were abused in the home. 5 Investigates has spoken to four other former foster children there. As adults, they’re all still haunted by the abuse. Some struggle with mental health, substance abuse issues. Two are behind bars, including Nathan.

Nathan eventually aged out of the foster care system, ended up homeless and raped a teenage girl in 2013. He is 25 years old and is about one-third into his 20-year sentence. He takes responsibility for his crime but says the abuse he suffered in foster care is partially to blame.

“I honestly felt like I was gonna die,” Nathan said from MCI-Norfolk.

“It’s hard to look at myself sometimes and know what I’ve done, and I’m sorry for what I’ve done, truly, and I try to better myself every day because of that,” he said. “I sit in here while the people that abused me and tortured me and did vile, disgusting things to me for years sit out in society and have their vacation house and get to go wherever they want, and live, (and) live well.”

He told us the trauma from what happened to him as a child destroyed him.

“He would throw us outside in the middle of winter,” Nathan said, referring to the woman’s boyfriend. “I’d be naked. And I remember he had this big detergent bottle that he filled with water and he put it outside with me while I’m out there shivering naked, and he’d bring me inside and put me in the tub full of ice cubes and make me sit there. And if I moved, then he’d beat me. And then he’d sit there and he’d laugh as he poured the detergent bottle on my head.”

In a police report detailing the abuse, John said his foster mother’s boyfriend smeared dog feces on his brother when Nathan didn’t clean up after the family’s dogs. Psychiatric records say Nathan was even forced to drink his own urine.

“I was 4 years old wondering, when is my next meal going to be, when there’s a kitchen full of food,” Nathan said. “I’m wondering if I’m going to get beaten and if I’m going to have to sleep in a dog cage tonight or if they’re going try to feed me dog food. I feel like I was robbed of my childhood.”

The boys told police they were both routinely beaten with the metal buckle of a dog leash.

“They’re heartless individuals. it wasn’t just beatings, he treated me like a slave,” Nathan said.

“I remember him hitting my brother so hard,” John said. “I’ll never forget it. How my brother looked dead in the face. That’s how hard he had hit my brother.”

“They took everything from us,” John said.

In the end, it wasn’t a teacher, police or a social worker who stopped the abuse. It was John, who at the age of 12 got off the school bus and kept going, running away from home, through the woods to a friend’s house and telling all to police.

That led to a dozen criminal counts of assault and child endangerment against the foster mother and her boyfriend.

But the charges were dismissed after the couple struck a deal with the Worcester County District Attorney: as long as they served probation with no issues, stayed away from the boys and the mother gave up her parental rights to the boys, all of the charges would be dismissed.

A note in the court file indicates that the social worker and lawyer for DCF didn’t want the children to testify in the case because they were in stable foster homes.

Child welfare advocate Maureen Flatley called the case an epic failure of the system.

“Here are kids who are originally either abused or neglected by their birth families, who were removed from their families very often for very serious and compelling reasons but who are then by virtue of the system’s carelessness and negligence placed in settings where they’re injured and abused even more seriously,” she said.

After reviewing the records obtained by 5 Investigates documenting the trail of abuse, Flatley said that even if the children were too frightened to tell anyone about what was happening, there were plenty of red flags that were missed.

State investigators substantiated neglect, sexual, emotional and physical abuse in the home numerous times. And before the woman’s boyfriend moved in, her husband – the children’s foster father — was convicted for sexually abusing two other children in the home. He was charged nearly two years before John ran away.

“To me the Commonwealth has failed these kids in a multitude of ways and make no mistake it’s the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ responsibility to keep them safe,” Flatley said.

It’s a failure felt keenly by the Williams brothers.

“Who failed you?” Curran asked John.

“Society,” he replied. “And DCF,” or the Department of Children and Families.

Nathan and John were both diagnosed with PTSD after they left the abusive foster home. John was also treated for aggressive behavior and mood disorders.

A psychiatrist hired to help with Nathan’s criminal defense called the case one of the most horrific reported abuse histories he had seen in decades of practice. Another therapist concluding the boys were subjected to a massive amount of “torturous and sadistic abuse.”

The abuse allegations from the Williams brothers surfaced in the early 2000’s, a time when the state’s child welfare agency, then called the Department of Social Services, was drowning with too few social workers to manage all the families in crisis, according to Peter MacKinnon, president of SEIU 509, the union to which child welfare social work staff belong.

MacKinnon was a young social worker at the time and can remember the struggle it was and can still be to find good homes. Underfunded and understaffed, the department seemed unable to stop the tragedies throughout the years.

“Caseloads remained high, and we were really trying to put out fires and trying to do the best we could with the resources that we had,” he said.

Dontel Jeffers was beaten to death in 2005. Haleigh Poutre was beaten into a coma despite a dozen earlier reports of abuse or neglect. Little Jeremiah Oliver was missing for months before his body found in a suitcase dumped off of Interstate 190.

“The common response was one of outrage from the public and, and rightfully so, and demands at Beacon Hill that we’re going to fix the system and make sure this never happens again. And all those were just empty promises,” MacKinnon said.

All that was supposed to change when the administration of Gov. Charlie Baker took over.

“The department, I would say, was in a crisis,” said Massachusetts Secretary of Health & Human Services Marylou Sudders.

Sudders was newly-appointed in August 2015 when 2-year-old Avalena Conway-Coxon died in an Auburn foster home. The investigation that followed pointed to yet another case of an overwhelmed agency. But this time, the state poured more money into the system than ever before, an additional 100 million to increase the number of social workers and resources and decrease caseloads.

DCF has hired 350 new social workers and 110 new supervisors as well as a medical director, medical social workers and addiction experts. The goal is to drop caseloads so social workers can spend more time with children and families.

And just this week, the department, together with the union, rolled out a series of initiative to support foster homes.

“That’s really what this is all about, is helping kids have good lives,” Sudders said.

“Do you think the department is doing that?” Curran asked her.

“I think the department is improving because you know what? The department should always be a work in progress, because until such time that no child is abused or neglected in the Commonwealth, we always have to strive to do better,” Sudders said.

His brother in prison, his own life riven with instability, John Williams admits he finds it impossible, so far, to move past the pain and dysfunction that still dominates his life.

“I don’t know what it’s like to be a kid, but I do know what children need,” John Williams said. “It’s what we never got when we were young: love, care, compassion and empathy.””

Red flags missed, former foster children say they endured abuse for years

[WVCB 5/16/19 by Kathy Curran]

REFORM Puzzle Piece