Archive for the ‘abuse’ Category
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 26, 2012
“Car break-ins, ’30-plus’ broken windows, an old man getting punched in the face, a young woman…kicked’, and theft.” Those are some of the incidents at Summer Place Townhomes in Lansing, MI that refugees say have happened to them since November. The refugees, from Burma, Bhutan and Iraq, say they have been the target of a group of 10 and 20 local teenagers. Some of the refugees find it hard to sleep at night, while others are taking turns staying up at night to watch for trouble. The Lansing Police Department doesn’t seem to know much about what’s happening though refugees have reported the ongoing crimes. An article at Lansing City Pulse has the story:
…Bo is a refugee from Burma and has lived in Summer Place Townhomes for about seven years…
…since November, Bo and his family haven’t been sleeping due to a combination of fear and duty — they take turns staying up all night to keep intruders away. Several other neighbors in Summer Place report similar situations.
“It’s been quiet, safe, secure,” Bo said, referring to the years leading up to November. Then he rattles off nearly daily instances when he and his neighborhood have been the target of a group of local teenagers, between 10 and 20 of them: car break-ins, “30-plus” broken windows, an old man getting punched in the face, a young woman “about my age kicked by those people,” theft.
So this is why you stand guard overnight. “Yeah, it’s very dangerous. We all worry. You gotta watch out and stay awake.”
Bo fears the worst: that the harassment will turn deadly. At one point, he armed himself with a pellet gun, which he said was subsequently taken by the Lansing Police Department. “We are not shooting for anything. I believe I’m doing the right thing. It’s like I’m security, protecting all people, not just the Burmese.”
As I walk through the neighborhood Saturday before meeting Bo, refugees from Iraq and Bhutan tell similar stories.
Dozens of young children — from toddlers to teenagers — were playing in the street and courtyards. Adults gathered around, keeping an eye on them. The day before, the group came and broke a car window, said Ammar Mahdi, a 41-year-old refugee from Iraq. Mahdi’s English was broken and, at times, his 10-year-old son, Yousif, acted as a translator.
“We need help. It’s every day,” Mahdi said. “I am not sleeping.”..
…Devi Ghimisey is from Bhutan and about the same age as Mahdi. He lived in a refugee camp in Nepal for 18 years before coming to the U.S. three years ago.
“They come while we’re sleeping. Kids playing football — they come and beat them up. They come and throw rocks,” Ghimisey said.
Recently, the group stole Mohammed Mohahamed’s children’s three bikes. Two weeks ago, they broke his neighbor’s house windows. Mohahamed is 33 and also came from Iraq. “I want to change this trouble,” he said. “I want the street here safe.”…
While this has been going on, arrests have been scarce…neighbors say the response from the Lansing Police Department has been inadequate…
…neighbors say they feel discouraged from calling the police because the trouble keeps happening — even after reports…
…Alfonso Salas, who owns Lansing Athletics sporting goods store…says that while it’s a rough neighborhood to begin with, he thinks it’s racially charged. And he warns that something needs to change, or “it’s gonna get bad.”
“Because of the color of their skin and who they are, they get beat up on,” he said. “I feel for them… Read more here
Posted in abuse, Burma/Myanmar, children, hate crimes, housing, Iraqi, Lansing, Nepali Bhutanese, police, safety | Tagged: attacks, broken windows, Burma, dangerous neighborhood, Lansing, Myanmar, refugees, resettlement, Summer Place Townhomes, theft | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on March 21, 2012
In November 2010 employees at the refugee resettlement agency SISO in Hamilton, Ontario (south of Toronto) made allegations to the police that the agency head had threatened to kill them if they spoke up about abuses at the agency. The latest allegations are that three people at the agency , including the head of the agency, an ex-financial controller, and another financial officer used a sophisticated scheme that included falsification of invoices, payroll and employee information to steal $4-million. Court documents include allegations of forgery and fraudulent claims related to six well-used immigration services programs. An article at the Hamilton Spectator gives the latest update on this resettlement agency story from Canada:
Police allege top SISO officials used some of Hamilton’s most valued immigrant help programs — particularly those for youth — to hide the theft of millions of dollars, according to court documents.
The RCMP announced charges last week in an alleged $4-million fraud involving three staffers at the now-bankrupt immigration settlement agency, including former boss Morteza Jafarpour…
…Former administrator Nese Burgaz has been charged and released, but ex-financial controller Ahmed “Robert” Salama is still wanted on a Canada-wide warrant.
Burgaz’s next court date is April 16.
Police allege a forensic audit of agency finances revealed a sophisticated scheme that included falsification of invoices, payroll and employee information…
SISO was Hamilton’s largest agency working with refugees and immigrants until it abruptly closed in 2011. Its 150 workers provided supports to about 400 government-assisted refugees and helped about 8,000 immigrants get access to services each year.
Court documents include allegations of forgery and fraudulent claims related to six well-used immigration services programs, including:
• Settlement Workers in Schools Hamilton (SWISH), which put counsellors in local schools to work with new immigrants;
• HOST and Youth HOST, which worked with newcomer families to ease the stress of resettlement;
• The Youth Immigrant Settlement and Adaptation Program (ISAP), which offered community orientation, housing and health-care support;
• The Resettlement Assistance Program, which offered orientation help to incoming refugees;
• Language Instruction for NewComers (LINC)… Read more here
Posted in Canadian refugee resettlement pgrm, stealing money from refugees | Tagged: Ahmed Salama, Canada, fraud, Hamilton, Morteza Jafarpour, Nese Burgaz, refugees, resettlement, SISO | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on February 24, 2012
Over the past several weeks has came news that Israel will deport southern Sudanese refugees to South Sudan, claiming that their safety is now ensured by the South’s declaration of independence last summer — even though the fledgling country is far from safe or stable for these refugees (see Haaretz article). What sense this makes escapes me since the southern Sudanese are natural allies of Israel, having experienced large-scale murderous attacks by the Islamist government of Sudan. At the same time, Israel is also ramping up hatred of other African refugees feeling persecution. (Israel has re-branded these refugees as “infiltrators” and “a threat to the fabric of Jewish society” — refusing to accept 1500 people per month, mostly African Muslims, while importing workers for cheap labor from East Asia – primarily the Philippines and Thailand.) When will we hear US refugee agencies speak out against these human rights violations? An article in Aljazeera explains the situation:
…The notion of a “Jewish and democratic state”, never a feasible reality, continues to unravel as its inherent racism is revealed in a new way. Any political discussion of refugees that are of the wrong ethnicity inevitably refers to African migration to Israel as an “existential threat”. Labelling these refugees as “threats” allows the state to criminalise and imprison them…
…State officials estimate that around 2,000 asylum seekers enter the country every month. Most of the men end up in Levinsky Park in southern Tel Aviv. At any time during the day or night, one can find young black African men sitting on the park’s benches, swings and concrete walls. In late January, a man who lived in the park died from exposure during the night.
The majority of the men who live in Levinsky Park are from Eritrea and Darfur…
…While community members and organisations have responded to the refugee-related crises developing in the country’s founding city by setting up an emergency shelter and serving warm dinners to a hungry crowd, these generous gestures are the exception in a state that fosters growing hostility to outsiders…
…”This is how the public becomes racist,” Yohannes Bayu, the director of African Refugee Development Centre (ARDC), tells me, explaining the government’s campaign against African asylum seekers, who are labelled as “labour infiltrators”…
…the media and the government has ramped up this hatred,” explains Bayu.
But Bayu adds that overt racism in Israeli society has become common, “People are attacked on the streets. People are not allowed to rent houses to African refugees.”…
…The desperate men – and some women – who leave their families and homelands behind in Africa escape torture, forced military conscription and murder. As confirmed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Eritrea and Sudan have been two of the top producers of refugees over the past two years. These states’ betrayals of their own citizens have rendered tens of thousands stateless.
Conventions and detentions
Israeli politicians’ claims that only a “drizzle” of the African immigrants are rightfully refugees is quickly belied by the fact that almost none of the men are deported. Of the approximately 17,000 asylum seekers who reached Israel in 2011 via Egypt, only 270 have been returned to Egypt. Israel is a party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees…
However, allowing asylum seekers to remain in the country without rights hardly fulfills the directions of the Convention, which was composed in 1951 after the world saw and acknowledged the dangers posed to stateless human beings.
Before reaching Israel’s borders, asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan must survive a harrowing journey across the Sinai. They routinely experience rape and enslavement, and are reportedly the targets of organ traffickers.
Whether jumping the fence or walking across the border into Israel, asylum seekers are immediately picked up by border police and taken to a detention centre where they are held for weeks or months. …immigration authorities will begin holding these men to the extent of [a] new law – three years – once [a] new detention centre is built…
…for now the scenario for these men follows a predictable pattern: They are released in less than three months and given a three to six-month visa and then bussed up to Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, where they are left to fend for themselves… Read more here
Posted in abuse, Eritrean, Jewish, left-wing, NGO's (Non-governmental organizations), safety, Sudanese, UN (United Nations), xenophobia/nationalism/isolationism | Tagged: 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, Darfur, Eritrean, human rights, israel, Levinsky Park, racism, refugees, resettlement, sudanese | 5 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 13, 2011
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the largest refugee resettlement contractor in the U.S., has adopted a more combative style after failing to get their way on various government social services contracts. After refusing to recognize a new civil union law in Illinois, state government officials stopped working with Catholic Charities on adoptions and foster-care placements. Then, when the USCCB continued to refuse to simply refer human traffic victims – who are often raped and forced into prostitution by their captors – to the full legal range of permissible gynecological and obstetric care, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services decided not to renew the group’s human trafficking grant. The Bishops have decided to ignore critical social justice issues, such as the increasing poverty rate during these hard economic times, while pursuing a so-called religious liberty under attack agenda. They still don’t seem to get the fact that most non-Catholics – and no doubt many Catholics as well – no longer trust them after years of bruising revelations that many dioceses moved clergy involved in sexual abuse of children among parishes without alerting parents or police. An Associated Press article has more:
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meets Monday in Baltimore for its national meeting feeling under siege…
Many Catholic academics, activists and parishioners say the bishops are overreacting. John Gehring of Faith in Public Life, an advocacy network for more liberal religious voters, has argued that in a pluralistic society, government officials can choose policies that
differ from church teaching without prejudice being a factor.
“Some perspective is needed here,” Gehring, a Catholic, wrote on his organization’s blog…
…The Health and Human Services Department [HHS] recently decided not to renew a contract held since 2006 by the bishops’ refugee services office to help victims of human trafficking…the women are often raped and forced into prostitution by their captors.
Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the bishops, has called the decision discriminatory and a case of “ABC,” meaning anyone but Catholics. [HHS agency] officials vehemently deny any bias and say the sole criteria for evaluating potential grantees was which group could best serve the victims. Administration officials note that the vast network of Catholic social service nonprofits, including the bishops’ conference, receives hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding in amounts that have increased in the last couple of years…
…Scott Appleby, a prominent religious historian at the University of Notre Dame, says many church leaders have recently adopted “a more pugnacious style, much more of a kind of culture-wars attitude.” At the same time, the bishops’ have been stung by their loss of public influence from the sex abuse crisis and the years of bruising revelations that many dioceses moved guilty clergy among parishes without alerting parents or police.
“The church no longer receives deference or the hands-off attitude that it once had for many years. That’s gone,” Appleby said…
Critics of the bishops view the closer focus on religious liberty as another sign that church leaders are turning inward and away from promoting the church’s teaching on social justice.
Steven Krueger, national director of Catholic Democrats, pointed to the agenda released ahead of this week’s meeting, which included no public discussion of poverty despite the state of the economy. In the 1980s, the bishops issued an influential pastoral letter on Catholic principles and the economy, which church leaders reaffirmed in statements and education programs over the next decade.
“I think this certainly will represent to a vast majority of Catholics a tone-deafness on the part of many, many bishops,” Krueger said… Read more here
Posted in Catholic, churches, faith-based, health, HHS, human trafficking, Illinois, sexual abuse, USCCB | Tagged: Catholic Bishops, catholic church, Catholic social service, government contractor, Health and Human Services, HHS, Human trafficking, Scott Appleby, sexual abuse, USCCB | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 9, 2011
An in-depth article on the events surrounding the December 2009 attack on dozens of Asian refugee children at a south Philadelphia school, that resulted in 13 refugee children taken to the emergency room, reveals the extent that teachers, the principle, security guards and other staff were present and unresponsive as the attacks occurred. Refugee students report that the principle disappeared while walking children home just before vicious beatings took place. Teachers and cafeteria staff called the students “Yo Dragonball” or “Yo Chinese” and even mocked their accents. The School District of Philadelphia also apparently has an ongoing pattern of unresponsiveness to reports of students bullying refugee students, despite an early 2011 settlement with the Justice Department.
The article also points to relatively large number of refugees from Burma/Myanmar that the State Department resettled in a relatively short period, which the school district was not ready to accommodate. These are some of the considerations the State Department needs to make when reading glowing annual resettlement proposals from their private resettlement contractors
We should not underestimate the catastrophic long-term damage to refugees resulting from these brutalities during their formative years. The article points out that bullying can lead to a lifetime of low self-worth, suicide attempt or depression, and that doesn’t even consider the trauma, tumult and deprivation that refugee have already endured before their resettlement. Hyphen Magazine magazine published this article:
On a cold December day in 2009, just weeks before Christmas, 15-year-old Trang Dang was walking home from school with her sister and eight friends, all recent Vietnamese immigrants. Also part of their group: the principal of their school.
Dang, who is 5’9” with a medium build and a dimpled, contagious smile, asked the principal to accompany them because she and the others were terrified by the intense bullying and violence against Asian students that had taken place earlier that day at their school, South Philadelphia High School. Midway through the walk, the principal, LaGreta Brown, disappeared, Dang said. “She walked to the corner with us and then we didn’t see her anymore,” Dang said. They debated whether to stay or continue walking. “Our friends said if we stand here, we’ll get in trouble,” Dang said. So they opted to try to make it home that day on their own.
They never did.
About half a block from school, a mob of at least two dozen students started chasing them. Dang was the first to be caught. She was punched in the face, shattering her glasses. “It was a quick hit and then they ran,” she said. “After I got hit, then my mind just went blank. I was crying. It wasn’t that painful, I think, but I don’t really remember. I think because I’ve tried to forget about that day.” The entire group was cornered, and all were hit. Dang still doesn’t know for sure why the principal seemingly left the group…
…The entire day, roving gangs of high schoolers searched for and attacked Asian teenagers in a nightmarish ordeal. Most of the attacks took place on the premises of this poor school in south Philadelphia while teachers, security guards and other staff were present.
In total, at least 26 Asian immigrant students were physically assaulted in a series of violent conflicts. Thirteen Asian students ended up in the emergency room for injuries ranging from a broken nose to black eyes. One had to have surgery because he could no longer breathe through his nose…
…Some speculate that the ethnic tensions at the school can be attributed to lack of adult intervention, adults modeling bad behavior such as racially charged name calling, stereotypes and an influx of Asian students in a relatively short time period without the school or district adequately addressing the changes…
…In the last five years, there were 534 documented assaults at the school, more than any other in the district…
…In some cases, bullying can lead to thoughts of suicide, according to Eliza Noh, an Asian American studies professor at California State University, Fullerton, who has studied suicide among Asian Americans. “Some Asian American women I interviewed reported being victims of racist bullying when they were young, contributing to their low self-worth, suicide attempt or depression later in life,” Noh said. Liu pointed out bullying victims are essentially trauma victims who experience post-traumatic stress disorder similar to war veterans. He warned that young people may experience psychosomatic symptoms like feeling ill, as well as hypervigilance, heightened startled responses, depression and social withdrawal… Read more here
Posted in abuse, Burma/Myanmar, capacity, children, dangerous neighborhoods, Dept. of Justice, FBI, mental health, Philadelphia, safety, schools, State Department, teenagers | Tagged: Asian, bullying, Burmese, children, Myanmar, Philadelphia, refugees, resettlement, South Philadelphia High School, State Department | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on October 21, 2011
Once again a school in Philadelphia is the subject of a case involving a refugee child beaten so badly that he had to go to a hospital. A year ago 30 Asian refugee children went to the hospital after just one bullying incident. Now, a Liberian refugee father claims that his pleas to a teacher and principal about the regular beatings of his 6-year-old son brought no relief, and that a phone call and later letter to the district superintendent also got no
response. An article in the Philadelphia Inquirer explains the story:
At first, Gbahtuo Comgbaye, a West African immigrant, was more puzzled than worried when his 6-year-old son started coming home from school with bruises on his chest and neck.
His concern turned to alarm on a mid-September morning as he helped his child, Menduawor, get dressed for the day. The boy tearfully asked, “If my friends beat me up, and hurt me, and wanted to kill me, would you do something about it?”
The story that emerged: Menduawor, a slight, soft-spoken boy, was being routinely beaten by three bigger first-grade classmates at Patterson School in Southwest Philadelphia. They told him, “We don’t like your name.”…
…Comgbaye described his growing horror as his son came home from school bruised and shaken day after day. He said that his pleas to the teacher and principal brought no relief and that a phone call and subsequent letter to the district superintendent got no response.
At the end of September, the boy was beaten so severely that his mother took him to the emergency room at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Hospital records show Menduawor was treated for chest and abdominal injuries, which physician Sarah Wood wrote were caused by blows from a person or object...Read more here
Posted in abuse, children, dangerous neighborhoods, Liberian, Philadelphia, safety, school for refugee children, schools | Tagged: accountability, bullying, human rights, Liberian, Philadelphia, refugees, resettlement, schools | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on October 3, 2011
A series of robberies, physical assaults and even a BB gun shooting have recently created fear among Bhutanese refugees resettled to Erie, Pennsylvania. Joel Tuzynski, the executive director of the Multicultural Community Resource Center has written an opinion piece in the Erie Times-News about the issue.
…Erie has been fortunate to be the new home to several hundred new arrivals of the Bhutanese Nepali community…
…Their transition from an Eastern tradition into Erie has become a very difficult journey because some of the “criminals in our midst” have seen these people as “easy marks.”
There have been a series of robberies, physical assaults and even a BB gun shooting, that have recently created fear and wondering among the Nepali regarding their new home.
These attacks upon young Nepali men and women, who are naive to the ways of the modern world, trusting of others, and non-violent by choice, are verging upon what we fear is becoming “ethnic intimidation” at this point.
Erie Mayor Joe Sinnott and Erie Police Chief Steve Franklin are trying to work with the Nepali community about reporting and solving these crimes.
…when a young man is robbed in broad daylight outside of our MCRC [Multicultural Community Resource Center] — a program that exists to welcome and assist them — it is time to call the public’s attention to this situation, which has reoccurred too often.
The physical assaults, robberies and intimidation, must stop, as it is a violation of basic civil rights guaranteed to all people under our Constitution.
We call upon our neighborhood watches, the police SWAT teams, local, state and federal officials and other concerned citizens to help us stop this targeted, criminal, uncivilized, mean-spirited, ill treatment of our newest neighbors, the Nepali community… Read more here
This case gets back to the issue of using refugees to boost the number of inhabitants of US cities with declining populations. Erie’s population was 138,440 in 1960, which declined to 101,786 in 2010. Is it ethical to use these people — as part of a humanitarian program — to boost declining population levels, when many of these places are also particularly unsafe for refugees during their vulnerable time of transition?
Posted in Catholic Charities, dangerous neighborhoods, Erie, Hindu, International Institute of Erie, intimidation of refugees, Nepali Bhutanese, police, population levels, using refugees as pawns to boost, safety | Tagged: BB gun, bhutanese, catholic charities, erie, ethnic intimidation, International Institute of Erie, Joel Tuzynski, MCRC, mugging, Multicultural Community Resource Center, nepalese, Nepali, physical assaults, police, refugees, resettlement, robberies | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on October 3, 2011
The case involving repeated sexual assaults of an 8-year-old refugee boy at a Catholic Charities Galveston-Houston shelter – and the agency’s subsequent cover-up of the case – continues to unfold. The agency won’t answer further questions on the cover-up, including whether the 8-year-old was separated from the two older boys after the assault, how many other children reported witnessing the abuse, what kind of treatment was provided for them and when. Its also seems that government oversight agencies have only been able to slowly dredge out details of the case from Catholic Charities, and that the faith-based agency continues to withhold many key details. It’s also now clear that a Texas state oversight agency did not have a mere “technical glitch” causing closure of the case without investigation, but had a series of failures – putting children at great ongoing risk. Another article in the Houston Chronicle reveals more details of the case.
…In the hours and days after a staff member interrupted the July 1 assault in the upstairs room, the senior management of the Catholic Charities’ program failed to get the boy medical treatment, doctored incident reports and tried to minimize what had occurred in order to “protect the program,” according to a federal report.
But it was not just the boy’s caretakers who stumbled, state and local law enforcement records show. A worker for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services intake system for reports of potential abuse and neglect also made a mistake, accidentally delaying an outside investigation into what happened for nearly two weeks.
After the federal government brought that error to the state’s attention, the case was referred to the wrong agency, leaving it in limbo until it landed with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office in August.
In the end, children’s advocates say there is blame to go around, calling for accountability for the shelter program management, who are now part of a criminal investigation. They also called for a review of the state’s intake system to ensure that technical problems with law enforcement notification are quickly fixed.
“Certainly some fault has to go to St. Michael’s for what happened, but if … this reporting went awry and was misdirected in some sort of way, just imagine the hurt that might have been caused to a number of these kids by something not happening soon enough,” said Bob Sanborn, president and CEO of the Houston-based nonprofit Children at Risk.
“When it comes to kids, we need to take immediate action.”…
…The shelter management did not call the sheriff’s office, but they did call the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) Statewide Intake Division roughly six hours after the incident, at 6:34 p.m……any report to that state hotline reporting potential abuse or neglect should have triggered a chain of events, including notification of the licensing division for DFPS and a fax or email notification to local law enforcement, said Patrick Crimmins, a DFPS spokesman.
But the worker at the state intake center was confused and couldn’t immediately find a state license for St. Michael’s, Crimmins said. The intake report was “mistakenly closed” without notifying the licensing division or law enforcement about any incident at St. Michael’s, he said…
…On July 13, ORR called the state to check on the status of its investigation, but state licensing officials still had no idea what happened at the shelter.
They re-opened the initial July 1 report and sent out a state monitor to investigate within 72 hours. But the automatic notification system again failed, this time referring the report to the wrong agency, the Houston Police Department. The shelter sits near the city-county line but is within the jurisdiction of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office…
…By mid-August, ORR was suspicious enough about what happened at the shelter that day to send a team of monitors to Houston. They issued a scathing report that documented a reporting delay, failure to seek medical care and the doctoring of incident reports, notifying Catholic Charities on Sept. 8 that they would remove all children from their care, at least temporarily…
…Catholic Charities still refuses to answer several key questions about the incident, including whether the 8-year-old was separated from the two older boys after the assault, how many other children reported witnessing the abuse and what kind of treatment was provided for them and when… Read more here
Catholic Charities Galveston-Houston is the agency which was the subject of complaints from gay Iraqi refugees in 2010, and allegations that one of its workers sexually assaulted an 11-year-old refugee boy in 2007.
Posted in Catholic, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, child protective services, faith-based, Houston, ORR, police, sexual abuse | Tagged: catholic charities, Department of Family and Protective Services, DFPS, houston, Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, police, protective services, refugees, resettlement, sexual abuse, sexual assault, St. Michael's | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on September 28, 2011
It turns out that not only did Catholic Charities Galveston-Houston not report an incident involving the sexual assault of a refugee boy to the ORR until July 5 (four days after it occurred on July 1) — and did not mention the sexual assault part – but law enforcement was not notified until over a month later, on August 5. The Texas protective services, which claims that Catholic Charities notified it within 24 hours of the assault as required, claims to have closed its investigation due to a “technical glitch”, but reopened the case when Catholic Charities inquired about the investigation on July 13. The protective services investigation then found that the shelter left children unsupervised and children were acting out inappropriately. Records also showed a worker supervising children when that worker was actually off the clock. A report at Houston’s KPRC Channel-2 details what happened:
HOUSTON — An 8-year-old boy said he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by two boys at a home for children.
The boy said a 10-year-old and an 11-year-old boy assaulted him at the St. Michael’s Home for Children, which is run by Catholic Charities. The home cares for children who are refugees from foreign countries.
Harris County sheriff’s deputies said a worker at the home caught a 10-year-old molesting an 8-year-old in July. The 8-year-old later claimed he was also molested by an 11-year-old.
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, which licenses the home, launched an investigation and found children unsupervised and children acting out inappropriately. Records show a worker supervising children when that worker was actually off the clock.
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement also launched an investigation. It removed all but five children staying in the home. They were working on new living arrangements for those children.
Investigators said Catholic Charities immediately notified the state of the claims. The state closed its investigation after a technical glitch, but when Catholic Charities inquired about the investigation on July 13, the case was reopened.
Deputies said they were not notified of the alleged incidents until Aug. 5… Read more here
An updated version of the Houston Chronicle article from Monday adds further details.
Posted in Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, child protective services, children, faith-based, Houston, ORR, sexual abuse | Tagged: catholic charities, houston, law enforcement, protective services, refugees, resettlement, St. Michael's Home for Children, technical glitch, Texas Department of Family and Protective Services | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on September 27, 2011
An incident at a Catholic Charities shelter in Houston that media outlets previously reported as “sexual activity” between three children is now being reported as a sexual assault. An investigation by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) found that Catholic Charities did not report the July 1 sexual assault of a boy until four days later, nor did they seek medical treatment for the child. Catholic Charities management also did a cover-up, including doctoring of first reports. An article at UPI reports on the ORR investigation:
HOUSTON, Sept. 26 (UPI) — Federal officials were removing children and teens from three Houston shelters after learning the sexual assault of a child at one facility was covered up.
As of Friday, only five of 72 children and teens, mostly refugees, remained in the three Catholic Charities shelters, the Houston Chronicle reported.
An investigation by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement found that Catholic Charities did not report the July 1 sexual assault of a young boy at a St. Michael’s shelter until July 5 and also failed to get the boy medical attention until the latter date.
“CCGH staff had knowledge that a [child] had been anally penetrated as the result of a sexual assault … and did not seek medical treatment,” a report by the office states. “Program staff should have observed that a sexual assault of a child is grounds for immediate medical attention.”
Federal investigators conducted an unannounced visit to the site of the sexual assault in August and found that initial reports of the attack had been doctored.
“The ORR monitors found significant concerns, including the fact that management had full knowledge of the extent of the assault and submitted erroneous … reports to this office, which deliberately misled ORR,” the agency’s director wrote in a Sept. 8 letter to the president of Catholic Charities… Read more here
An article in the Houston Chronicle reports that Catholic Charities management also pressured staffers to withhold details from investigators.
Posted in Catholic, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, child protective services, children, faith-based, health, Houston, medical care, ORR, sexual abuse | Tagged: catholic charities, chilren, cover-up, doctored documents, houston, Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, refugees, sexual abuse, sexual assault | Leave a Comment »
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
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