How Could You? Hall of Shame-Teens Happy Homes and Tajiere Goldsmith and Jeff Castillo case-Child Death 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 Los Angeles, California, there are more issues revealed with Teens Happy Homes. Last year, one of the foster children from a Teens Happy Home placement, Javier Bolden,  was accused of murdering two college students and has a trial pending.

New investigations of Teens Happy Homes reveal that an infant foster child, Tajiere Goldsmith, died in a Teens Happy Home placement in 2008. His cause of death has remained undetermined. The foster parent in that case was Teryl Veal,  now deceased.

“Teens placed Tajiere with a newly recruited foster parent, Teryl Veal.

Veal had twice been banned from foster care for two years: in 1992 after children in her care had untreated serious burns, and in 2000 because she had beaten foster children with hangers, according to state records.

Days after being sent to Veal’s home, Tajiere died.

Veal told authorities that Tajiere had been sleeping with her on a bare twin mattress atop cinder blocks on the floor. Despite rules requiring cribs for infants, none was available in the home, according to court records.

The home overflowed with 20 people. It was filthy and crawling with bugs, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit later filed by Tajiere’s birth mother.

Sheriff’s investigators suspected that Veal rolled over on Tajiere, suffocating him. But such deaths often leave no telltale signs, according to the medical examiner, and the cause of death was never determined.

The California Department of Social Services, which licensed Teens Happy Homes, spent two hours visiting Teens on the day of Tajiere’s death before issuing its final report on the matter. It cited Teens for failing to do criminal and child abuse checks on Veal and fined the agency $100.

Teens and Veal, who is now deceased, paid an undisclosed amount to settle the suit filed by Tajiere’s birth mother.”

Financial Corruption

“Adecade ago, a team of Los Angeles County auditors delivered a damning assessment of Teens Happy Homes, a private foster care agency responsible for hundreds of children.

Agency workers bought beer and cigarettes with public funds intended for mistreated children, auditors found. It billed the state and county more than $100,000 for care it never provided. Employees wrote checks to themselves worth thousands of dollars and kept no receipts.

The auditors’ conclusion: The county needed to give Teens closer supervision or cancel its contract.

Not only did the county Board of Supervisors continue the Teens contract but it tripled its value, from $1 million a year to as much as $3.6 million, according to the agency’s tax returns. Between 2008 and 2011, 1,154 children lived in its homes.

Interviews and an examination of public records by The Times found that questionable financial practices proliferated in recent years. At the same time, children suffered abuse and neglect repeatedly.

Robert Fellmeth, director of the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law, said the long delay in reviewing the agency is indicative of the state and county’s inattention to private foster care agencies that were created over 25 years ago.

“There are some clear failures indicating the need for financial auditing and performance oversight,” Fellmeth said. “There is a need for systemic reform in this regulatory scheme.”

County Supervisor Gloria Molina said Teens should finally lose its contract, and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said that if the allegations against Teens prove true, they “would constitute a serious misuse of public funds and represent a grave threat to the health and safety of the foster children.”

Philip Browning, director of the Department of Children and Family Services, said in an interview Thursday that he was startled to learn of the depth of problems at Teens, and that he was enlisting the help of retired homicide detectives to examine allegations of child abuse and financial malfeasance at foster care contractors.”

“Teens’ chief executive, Beautina Robinson, grew up in foster care and knew the life from the inside out. She established the South Los Angeles agency’s group home in 1990 and expanded with foster homes throughout Southern California.

As a private group, Teens was only loosely monitored by the state and county, which typically audits the finances at private agencies once a decade.

The routine audit of Teens in 2003 faced problems from the beginning. Shortly before auditors arrived, a sewage backup destroyed many financial records. The remaining documents painted a picture of financial chaos.

There were canceled checks showing the agency repeatedly bought cigarettes and beer with foster care money — in one instance, 30 cases’ worth. There was $46,000 in unpaid federal payroll taxes. The agency’s bookkeeper wrote $13,000 in checks to herself. “The agency was unable to explain the nature of these expenditures,” auditors wrote.

The bookkeeper, fearing criminal prosecution, wrote to county auditors, saying Robinson had ordered two workers to “come up with receipts” to help keep staff “out of jail.””

“The plan fell apart when one manager refused. “He was not going to get caught up in falsifying any documents,” the bookkeeper wrote in her letter, which was obtained by The Times.

An attorney for Teens declined to comment for this story.

In the end, auditors told county officials they “should consider whether to continue contracting with this agency due to the nature of these financial issues.”

But the agency retained its contract, and the auditor-controller never completed another financial audit to see if problems had been fixed.

The problems at Teens Happy Homes weren’t just financial.

Over a three-year period, 240 allegations of abuse or neglect were filed on behalf of youths at Teens’ homes, a Times analysis of child abuse hotline data found. Teens’ rate of nearly two allegations for each home was more than two times the average for the state and two-thirds higher than that of the rest of Los Angeles County.

About half of Teens’ 131 facilities had no complaints during the period covered by the data, from October 2008 through September 2011. But four of them had 10 or more complaints, landing them among the top 40 in the county.

Investigators substantiated about 17% of all complaints from the Teens homes, about the same as the state average.

State investigators found one foster parent who had a child stay with a registered sex offender. In another home, they discovered a foster parent shoving a child’s face into her brother’s potty-training bowl. One foster mother stole the children’s allowance and gift cards.”

More Financial Corruption

“Robinson, the chief executive, said that Teens was unable to qualify for a credit card. To pay bills, she told the board she put expenses on her personal credit card and then issued reimbursement checks to herself from the agency’s account, and receipts were sometimes missing.

She said she had bought a car with agency funds and placed the ownership in her name. The perk was not included in the $112,000 compensation package reported on filings to the county or on tax returns.

Gutierrez suggested that the agency give board members a stipend, but Robinson balked. “I’ve taken care of the board that needed it personally, myself, and I would prefer the board keep it that way,” she said.

The board was concerned about inquiries being made at the time by the county auditor-controller, but Gutierrez said at the meeting that Teens was being alerted when county watchdogs suspected financial wrongdoing. “I have a person in there who is a very, very good friend of mine,” he said.

But the audit never materialized.

Auditor-Controller Wendy Watanabe said through a spokeswoman that her office had initiated the audit in August 2010 and was still working on it.

The spokeswoman said the office was unaware of any employee with a personal relationship with Gutierrez, but she added that it was not uncommon for a member of her staff to notify the agency of problems as soon as they arise. “Such a notification in no way alters or diminishes … the final audit report,” she said.

Teens Happy Homes was growing rapidly at the time. In 2010, the county’s funding of the agency swelled to $3.6 million.

Like all 50 Los Angeles County foster care contractors, Teens is a tax-exempt charity, but executives at Teens and some other contractors draw significant financial rewards from the agencies, according to Moyenda, a former Teens employee.

Moyenda said that he and his wife, Niki Milani, promised to pay $139,000 in exchange for two top positions at Teens in 2007, hoping it would bring them financial security after years working in mid-level jobs in the industry.

The agency agreed to terminate its top program administrator to make way for Milani, and it established a new quality assurance position for Moyenda.

The couple agreed to make a $70,000 down payment and promised to follow up with $1,500 monthly installments until the $139,000 was paid off, according to a copy of the agreement signed by the couple and the agency’s chief executive and board of directors. Teens did not completely report salaries on its tax returns, so it is unknown what compensation Moyenda and Milani drew from their positions.

Moyenda said they wrote a $60,000 check to Teens and a $10,000 check directly to Robinson, the agency’s chief executive.

Under the agreement, Moyenda and Milani were called “investors.” They were promised the ability to appoint three members of the seven-person board of directors.

In a brief interview, Robinson said she considered the couple’s money to be a “donation.”

Milani and Moyenda left the agency in 2010 and 2011, respectively, in a dispute over control of the agency, and filed a lawsuit against Teens, Robinson and board members, alleging they had breached their contract. Moyenda represented himself in the case, and it was recently dismissed after a court deadline for a filing was missed.

“These aren’t real charities,” Moyenda said.”

Problems keep proliferating at discredited private foster care agency

[Los Angeles Times 4/28/13 by Garret Therolf]

“Los Angeles County supervisors met behind closed doors Tuesday to consider terminating their decades-long relationship with Teens Happy Homes, a private foster care provider found by officials to have repeatedly misused funds and placed children in homes where they were abused.

“The contractor should lose any contract it has,” Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said in an interview Tuesday. “They are an irresponsible, unsafe provider. We’ll discuss it in executive session.”

No action was announced publicly after the session, but one source familiar with the discussion said Department of Children and Family Services Director Philip Browning was instructed to prepare options to correct the problems. A Teens’ official declined to comment.”

“The board will decide in two weeks on a proposal by member Zev Yaroslavsky to fund six or seven additional monitors to track the agencies’ finances.

“The Department of Children and Family Services does not have the resources currently to do the kind of full-court press on these [foster care agencies] and group homes that we demand,” Yaroslavsky said.

Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas also won approval for a one-month study of ways to improve audits of the agencies.

“That which is being done currently is simply inadequate. It’s broken and simply needs to be fixed,” he said.

The county has funded only 3 1/2 workers to conduct financial audits once a decade, said Auditor-Controller Wendy Watanabe.

In Teens’ case, the last audit was completed in 2003. Another audit is underway but might not be released for four months, Watanabe said.

Under questioning by Yaroslavsky, Watanabe acknowledged that her office has uncovered evidence of possible “fraud” at Teens. She said her department will decide soon whether to refer the case to the district attorney for possible criminal prosecution. She apologized for not alerting supervisors about her findings earlier.

“We fell short on this one. I’ll admit to that. We did not do a very good job,” she said.

In an interview, Molina said she was frustrated that Children’s Services officials did not move more quickly to cut off Teens’ funding. “They think about their responsibility to themselves before they think about their responsibility to the kids,” she said.

During the public debate Tuesday, she said Teens had “three major violations where children have died.” County officials declined to elaborate.

Molina said she had been informed by county officials that one case two years ago involved “a whistle-blower who came to [the county] … and said that [Teens] CEO [Beautina Robinson] said, ‘I was supposed to fib to you’ ” about the circumstances of a death.

“Three strikes means something in baseball and it should have meant something here the first time,” Molina said.

Michael Nash, the presiding judge of Los Angeles County’s Juvenile Court, said he was dismayed that it had taken so long for the county to act against Teens.

“The Board of Supervisors and the Department of Children and Family Services should have done something a long time ago,” Nash said. “Hopefully, [Teens will] finally be put out of business.””

L.A. County supervisors discuss troubled foster care contractor

[Los Angeles Times 4/30/13 by Garret Therolf]

REFORM Puzzle Pieces

Update: “Responding to new allegations of financial malfeasance and abuse, Los Angeles County officials have decided to stop sending children to a private foster care agency that has been responsible for more than 1,100 youths in recent years.

The action was taken after an examination of Teens Happy Homes, published in The Times last month, revealed questionable spending and repeated instances of abuse.

Fresh allegations surfaced in an ongoing audit obtained by The Times that found at least $100,000 in suspect payments: Nearly $30,000 went toward chief executive Beautina “Tina” Robinson’s personal expenses, including her car and credit card bills. An additional $70,000 covered the salaries of Robinson associates who did little or no work for the agency.

Additional records show that Maurice Mitchell, then president of the Teens Happy Homes board, retained his position while in jail before being convicted in a real estate scheme that involved identity theft, forged documents and more than $260,000 in stolen money.

Philip Browning, director of the Department of Children and Family Services, said he had not been aware of the allegations against Mitchell until they were brought to his attention in an interview.

Browning also was told of complaints of physical abuse from a former Teens foster child, who recently came forward after reading about the agency’s problems in the newspaper.

Browning said the allegations will have to be confirmed. If true, “I can’t imagine us being in business with people who have done this,” he said.

Teens officials declined to comment on the latest audit findings and Browning’s decision.

The county now is considering even stronger action to terminate its relationship with Teens. Supervisors Michael D. Antonovich and Gloria Molina urged the county to cancel its contract and remove all children from the agency’s care.

The two supervisors have not been able to secure a needed third vote from the five-member board. Supervisors Don Knabe, Zev Yaroslavsky and Mark Ridley-Thomas, who represents the South Los Angeles district where Teens is headquartered, declined to comment.

Under Teens Happy Homes’ contract, the supervisors can terminate the relationship without cause or penalty, according to a DCFS spokeswoman. Los Angeles County almost entirely funds Teens’ budget — up to $3.6 million a year.

Michael Nash, the presiding judge of L.A. County’s Juvenile Court, and Leslie Starr Heimov, who leads the court-appointed law firm representing foster children, have called on the supervisors to sever the contract.

That action can be taken, Heimov said, without having to disrupt the placement of children whose foster parents are providing good care. “If the parents meet standards,” she said, “the county needs to assist them with a new certification by a new contractor. The county has successfully managed large, sudden closures of contractors in the past.”

The now three-year-long audit of Teens’ alleged financial abuses probably will not be officially released for another four months because of potential appeals.

The documents obtained by The Times show that in addition to Robinson’s $112,000 salary, the agency provided $23,032 to cover the down payment, warranty, monthly payments, insurance and satellite radio for her personal car. The agency also paid her personal credit card expenses totaling $5,671, the auditors said.

The $70,000 in questionable salary payments went to Robinson’s daughter, one of her former foster children and another person.

Her daughter, who was listed as the agency’s operations manager, was seriously ill for all of 2009 but was not placed on medical leave. She received her full salary.

Robinson’s former foster child was living in Alabama at the time and there was no evidence he did any maintenance work the agency had paid him to do, the audit said. The third person, whose relationship with Robinson is unknown, received $19,000 in pay but had no personnel file on record at Teens Happy Homes and was unknown to the supervisor in charge.

The auditors painted a picture of an agency in financial chaos, with few meaningful controls.

County Auditor-Controller Wendy Watanabe has said she is considering [Why just considering?] forwarding allegations of fraud by Teens Happy Homes officials for criminal investigation.

The audit did not look beyond the agency’s financial problems, but an earlier Times investigation found that Teens had a significantly high rate of child abuse complaints compared with the state average.

Jeff Castillo, the former foster youth who lived in Teens group homes and recently came forward with abuse allegations, said his tongue had been severed and his hands scarred with bite marks during beatings by staff members after he complained to social workers.

He said his accusations rarely resulted in investigations. “I went from making complaints once a week to once a month to once every six months,” Castillo said.

Castillo said Robinson told all foster children to call her “Don Tina.” To placate the youths, they were provided drugs, alcohol and tobacco, he said.

Castillo, 29, later joined the military and now works for a court receiver responsible for rehabilitating apartment buildings.

Teens was “supposed to protect abused children like myself, but they just picked up where my parents left off,” Castillo said.”

L.A. County officials to stop sending children to foster agency

[Los Angeles Times 5/14/13 by Garrett Therolf]

Update 2: One of the two county supervisors recommending the severing of the relationship with Teens Happy Homes was on vacation at the latest county board meeting. The measure failed to gain enough support but can be brought up at a future meeting.

“Over a three-year period, 240 allegations of abuse or neglect were filed on behalf of youths at Teens’ homes, a Times analysis of child abuse hot line data found. Teens’ rate of nearly two allegations for each home was more than two times the average for the state and two-thirds higher than that of the rest of Los Angeles County.

About half of Teens’ 131 facilities had no complaints during the period covered by the data, from October 2008 through September 2011. But four of them had 10 or more complaints, landing them among the top 40 in the county.

Investigators substantiated about 17% of all complaints from the Teens homes, about the same as the state average.”

L.A. County keeps troubled foster care contractor

[Los Angeles Times 5/21/13 by Garrett Therolf]

Update 3:The county supervisors will bring the topic up again at the June 4, 2013 hearing.

“Los Angeles County Supervisors Gloria Molina and Michael D. Antonovich will make another attempt to cut a troubled foster care contractor with a history of misused money and child abuse.

Under the supervisors’ proposal, the county board has once again scheduled a public vote for Tuesday on the county’s relationship with Teens Happy Homes, a contractor that has received up to $3.6 million per year and cared for more than 1,100 foster children in recent years.

An earlier vote was taken off the schedule for unexplained reasons, and it is unclear whether the proposal has obtained a decisive third vote to win majority support on the five-member board.

Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, in a prepared statement, said the motion “seeks to correct a problem that is undeniably troubling. The only question that remains is whether we are on solid legal ground. County counsel and the Department of Children and Family Services have some answering to do before Tuesday.”

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said: “I have asked the department to give me a list of all the agencies in just as unsatisfactory a situation. Let’s look at all of them together and treat them the same.”

Michael Nash, the presiding judge of L.A. County’s Juvenile Court, and Leslie Starr Heimov, who leads the court-appointed law firm representing foster children, have called on the supervisors to sever the contract.

The calls were issued after an examination of Teens Happy Homes, published in The Times, revealed questionable spending, including tens of thousands of dollars that went to personal expenses of the chief executive, Beautina Robinson.”

L.A. County to try again to cut troubled foster care contractor

[Los Angeles Times 5/30/13 by Garrett Therolf]

Update 4: Decision delayed until June 11

L.A. County delays decision on troubled foster care contractor

[Los Angeles Times 6/4/13 by Garrett Therolf]

Update 5: “The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has voted to sever its contract with a private foster care agency after reports of misspending funds and alleged abuse.

City News Service reports the board will give Teens Happy Homes Inc. 90 days’ notice following Tuesday’s unanimous decision.

Problems at the agency go back at least a decade. Audit findings show agency employees were spending money meant for children on beer and cigarettes, in addition to allegations of child abuse and neglect.

The agency had more than 80 children in 42 homes at last count in April.

Supervisors Michael Antonovich and Gloria Molina have been pushing to end the county’s contract since April. The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is considering separate charges against Teens Happy Homes.”

LA terminates contract private foster agency

[Mercury News 6/11/13 by Associated Press]

“Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey is considering whether criminal charges should be filed against officials at Teens Happy Homes, a foster care contractor with a long history of financial improprieties and substantiated instances of child abuse, according to spokeswoman Jane Robison.”

 

“”We’ve read the press reports and we’ve heard the allegations,” said Max Huntsman, the unit’s second highest-ranking prosecutor. “We’re going to carefully examine what happened or didn’t happen.”

Huntsman said he did not know how long his office might review the matter before deciding whether to file charges.”

“Teens Happy Homes has hired criminal defense attorney Anthony Willoughby, a former candidate for state Assembly who has previously represented defendants accused of official misconduct. Willoughby and Teens chief executive Beautina Robinson did not return calls seeking comment.

The contractor has received up to $3.6 million annually from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to recruit, supervise and pay foster parents to take in abused children. Between 2008 and 2011, 1,154 children lived in its homes.”

L.A. County D.A. considers criminal charges against foster agency

[Los Angeles Times 6/7/13 by Garrett Therolf]

Update 6:“The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to cancel its decades-long relationship with a foster care contractor with a long history of financial misspending and substantiated child abuse. Supervisors Gloria Molina and Michael D. Antonovich had pushed for the county to cut ties with Teens Happy Homes following a report in The Times regarding the agency.