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Archive for the ‘child protective services’ Category

Catholic Charities Houston won’t answer several key questions on refugee child sexual assaults

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: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Over a month passed before sexual assault of refugee child reported to police

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: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

ORR report — cover-up at Catholic Charities Houston, no medical care for refugee child assault victim

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: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

ORR removes immigrant children from Catholic Charities Houston shelter due to “sexual activity”

Posted by Christopher Coen on September 16, 2011

The U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement will temporarily remove all the immigrant and refugee children from St. Michael’s Home for Children operated by Catholic Charities in Houston due to an investigation into “sexual activity” involving three children at one of the organization’s shelters. The organization allegedly assigned staff members in charge of supervising children with other assignments, which left the children to their own devices. An article in the Houston Chronicle has the story:

Federal authorities plan to temporarily remove all of the immigrant and refugee children from St. Michael’s Home for Children operated by Catholic Charities in Houston amid an investigation into “sexual activity” involving three children in one of the organization’s shelters, officials said.

The U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, which places children and teenagers caught crossing the border without family members into temporary care, so far has removed 22 of the 46 children housed at the three shelters in Houston and plans to continue removing the rest, officials with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston said Friday.

Kenneth Wolfe, an ORR spokesman, said the agency made the decision to temporarily remove the children based on its own monitoring and a state investigation…

…Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, said the state conducted an investigation after being notified of the incident on July 13. The state investigator documented deficiencies at the facility, including faulting the administrator for assigning staff members in charge of supervising children with other assignments, which left the children alone “where they acted out inappropriately.”…

…U.S. immigration officials placed 6,074 immigrant and refugee children in the care of ORR in 2009, the most recent data available. More than half of those – some 3,200 – were detained in Texas, the statistics show… Read more here

Posted in Catholic, child protective services, children, faith-based, Houston, ORR, public/private partnership | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Refugee parents find themselves in morass when key facts are lost in translation; then buried in bureaucracy

Posted by Christopher Coen on June 13, 2011

The Roanoke Times has an article about the subject of refugee parents trying to deal with the system when their children are suffering from a disorder – in this case Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). ADHD is a problem with inattentiveness, over-activity, impulsivity, or a combination, affects about 3 – 5% of school aged children, and specialists diagnose it much more often in boys than in girls. Depression, lack of sleep, learning disabilities, tic disorders, and behavior problems may be confused with, or appear with, ADHD. Most children with ADHD also have at least one other developmental or behavioral problem, and may also have another psychiatric problem, such as depression or bipolar disorder.

In the case illuminated in Roanoke the system (county social services, county attorneys) compounds the problem via their inability or unwillingness to competently manage the cultural and language barriers that new Americans have, and the power that refugee children with behavioral health issues can have. (This is yet another reason that adults should not use minors as interpreters – not only can a minor manipulate the communication but, more importantly, acting as a go-between with adults often places undue stress on a minor). In this case no amount of warning and explanation to county social workers did the slightest good — officials simply blamed the messenger — a community volunteer — because her style/approach didn’t satisfy them.

Melva Belcher is a formidable school administrator, determined and unafraid to forge her own path. When low-performing schools get into trouble, she’s often the go-to taskmaster to whom Roanoke City Public Schools turn to shake things up.

As principal of Westside Elementary School, it’s what she did in 2006 when she first encountered the likes of 10-year-old Ibrahim Kromah, a troubled refugee from war-torn Liberia who came to the United States angry and determined to wreak havoc wherever he went, fighting at school, showing disrespect to his mother at home — and even stealing the money she’d put aside for rent.

Belcher put him on a rigid discipline plan, and she visited regularly with his mom, 44-year-old Makagbe Toure, with whom she became friends.

But Belcher has been stymied by what happened to the family once Ibrahim left her school. She’s found herself face to face with a system that even she can’t stare down.

Now 64 and a semiretired administrator on assignment, Belcher watched powerlessly as Ibrahim bounced from his home in the Indian Village public housing project to four different foster-care homes in the region before finally landing, in January, at Keystone Newport News Behavioral Health Center, a residential mental-health treatment center for teens…

…This is a story about the morass that immigrant families find themselves in when key facts aren’t just lost in translation; they’re also buried in bureaucracy…

…Most service providers are well-meaning, added Liberian-born Danielle Taana Smith, a Rochester Institute of Technology sociologist who studies refugee assimilation. “But they lack cultural understanding.”

What Taana Smith used to hear murmured occasionally, she now perceives as a steady drumbeat: “People are saying they were better off in the refugee camps because they may not have had much, but they had hope.

“Now, they’re realizing it’s easier to escape from a refugee camp than it is from an urban ghetto,” she said…

…the situation exploded in August 2009 when Toure thought she was signing paperwork to have Ibrahim placed at Sanctuary, the crisis intervention facility for youth.

Because interpreter services weren’t provided at that time, it wasn’t until later that she learned she had actually signed away her custodial rights, Toure said. She also didn’t realize that she’d been charged with abuse and neglect at the same time — until she was terminated from her school housekeeping job following a background check, she said.

“They said I hit him,” Toure said. “I didn’t hit him, but we always argue, and he always threatens to call his caseworker.”

The situation so angered Belcher, who had become like a mother to Toure — opening her mail and taking her to doctor appointments — that she hired lawyer Onzlee Ware to represent Toure. (The case is currently being reviewed by a regional social services administrator.)

Thus began the shuffling of the boy amid four different sets of foster parents, all of whom complained about the same disruptive behaviors that his mother had, according to documents provided by Belcher and Toure.

While cases involving legal action always require interpreters, Department of Social Services Director Jane Conlin said it’s not always clear during home visits when an interpreter is needed. As for immigrant parents communicating with social workers, she added: “I think it’s more difficult when parents may not speak English and where there may be some fear in general of the government… Read more here

But what about the basic responsibility that refugee resettlement
contractors and county social workers have to provide interpretation/translation? That probably would have made all the difference in the world in this case. (If it’s not “clear” to officials that an interpreter may be dispensed with, then isn’t it clear that they need an interpreter?) At the end of the day these public servants don’t care because its simply a nuisance to them, and they don’t suffer all the damages that result from this lack of accountability – only the immigrant parents and children do.

Note: 1) Social services working with the courts took away the six children of a Burundian refugee woman in Idaho, also apparently due to lack of interpretation, and bureacratic mistakes and misunderstandings.; 2) Combining poor social work and poor prosecution work with love of power has also driven people from their home countries – causing them to become refugees.

Posted in child protective services, children, Commonwealth Catholic Charities (Virginia), court, foster care, language, Liberian, mental health, teenagers | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

UK refugees flee police & tyrannical social workers

Posted by Christopher Coen on November 15, 2010

It turns out that refugees are not just those who flee from oppressive third world regimes but also those who flee from oppression in industrialized western countries. According to an article in the Telegraph publication citizens in the UK are fleeing from overzealous, heavy-handed social workers. One family recently landed in Cyprus after protective services took their daughter away from them simply because they had a verbal fight in hearing range of the child. The woman then had a miscarriage due to the stress of separation from her daughter, and when she became pregnant again she fled when she heard that the social workers would take the baby away upon birth.

…Roger and Carol lived happily in Doncaster with their five-year-old daughter. One day last November they had a marital disagreement, involving no more than raised voices. They were overheard by a neighbour who called the police. The couple were arrested and held for nine hours before being released without charge. But the police had summoned the social workers to remove the child, who had not been harmed in any way other than hearing her parents having a row – as countless children do every day.

The social workers obtained an interim care order, on the grounds that the child was “at risk of emotional harm”, and gave her to Roger’s parents, both of whom have worked for the police. Relations were amicable, but the grandparents insisted on working closely with the social workers. The parents were only allowed contact with their daughter in a filthy little “contact room” in the local social services office. As is usual, the parents were told that if they showed any emotion their contact would be stopped. In February, under this strain, Carol had a miscarriage.

Last June, puzzled at why the interim care order had not been renewed as the law requires, Carol called the court. She was told that the order had lapsed three months earlier. When her husband confirmed this by a second call to the court, Carol drove to her in-laws’ home to explain that there was no longer any legal reason why her daughter could not be returned to her. Her mother-in-law protested, but the child was so overjoyed to go home that she ran to get into her mother’s car. The mother-in-law stood in front of the car but Carol reversed and drove off.

When her daughter said she was hungry, they stopped at a motorway service station. The grandmother had alerted the police, the car number was picked up by a camera and before long Carol (who was pregnant again) was arrested, handcuffed and pushed into a police van. At the police station, she collapsed and was taken to hospital. Next day she was driven back to Doncaster and interviewed four times. The police confirmed there was no care order in place but, to her astonishment, Carol was told she would be charged with assaulting her mother-in-law, although there had been no physical contact between them. She was released after midnight.

When the social workers applied for a new care order, the judge reproved their “slipshod work” but granted the order on the grounds that Carol had taken back her child “without thought”.

Before the next hearing, the parents’ solicitors advised them to undergo psychological assessments. The psychologist found nothing wrong with Carol, but Roger had “narcissistic personality traits”. They then underwent a second assessment, based on “true or false” responses to 170 statements (such as: “Last week I flew the Atlantic eight times”). This time, Roger was normal, but Carol showed “high probability of being a borderline alcoholic” – though she hardly ever drinks.

Eventually, the court ruled they could have no further contact with their child. In September, Carol was in court to face the assault charges. The magistrates found, by two to one, that though there was no direct evidence she had assaulted her mother-in-law, she had been “emotional” in court which indicated the “possibility” that she might have been similarly emotional during the confrontation. They therefore found her guilty, ordering her to return for sentencing in October.

Two days later, it transpired that the hospital she had visited for ante-natal tests had told the social workers she was pregnant. Her daughter’s guardian told her that, when the baby was born, the social workers would seize it. At this point, Carol decided she could take no more. “I had already lost one child,” she says. “I had suffered a miscarriage of justice. After all I had been through, there was no way I was going to lose another child.”…

…She discovered that a possible escape route was Northern Cyprus, which has no extradition agreement with the UK… Read more here

I don’t really doubt this story at all after the ten years I have assisted refugees and having dealt with some incompetent social workers as well as the knuckleheadedness of some of our government agencies and courts. For example, read this account of a young Liberian refugee woman’s experiences in Fargo. If it happens in the US then I have no doubt its also happening in the UK and elsewhere.

Posted in child protective services | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Burundian Refugee Woman In Boise – Court Places Six Kids Into Adoption Proceedings

Posted by Christopher Coen on February 27, 2010

A Burundian refugee woman client of World Relief is the subject of a case in which a judge terminated her parental rights, and placed her six kids into adoption proceedings (here).

Members of a local World Relief-affiliated church, as well as its pastor, claim the woman’s home was not a safe place for her children. The Court, as well, would supposedly have had to see proof of serious abuse and/or neglect (Court records remain sealed). One claim was that she left the children home alone, but a World Relief-affiliated church previously moved her to a place outside Boise, where no one from her ethnic community lived. How would she have been able to, e.g. drag all six kids to the grocery store with her? (Did she leave them in the care of the oldest child? I’m speculating.) Yet, the refugee woman should have been able to show the Court some change or improvement — assisted by social services, classes in child care, mental health services, and/or other help. What happened?

Well, they placed this refugee woman in psycho-social rehabilitation sessions at Mountain States Group in Boise, which works with many refugees (via its EMM-affiliated Agency for New Americans), yet these sessions took place mostly without interpreters, through pantomime. (The woman speaks Kirundi, the national language of Burundi). Pantomime, obviously, would have been useless.

“….at least two federal civil-rights complaints [have been filed] against Idaho health providers for failure to provide adequate interpretation, which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is investigating….If those charges are substantiated, they could call into question the validity of her psychological diagnoses and land the case in federal court.Health and Welfare’s Bureau of Facility Standards has already agreed that Niyonzima received inadequate help from interpreters at St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center and the agency’s Medicaid certification bureau reported to McMillan that psycho-social rehabilitation sessions at Mountain States Group, which provides services to many refugees in Boise, were done in large part without interpreters, through pantomime. Staff at St. Al’s even remarked to the Health and Welfare reviewer that Niyonzima reported hallucinations–at the urging of her church friends–but when an interpreter was eventually called in, it turned out she was complaining of nightmares.

The psycho-social rehabilitation sessions may also have prevented her from visitation with her children while they remained in foster-care. Federal child welfare laws call for termination of parental rights if the children have remained in foster care for 15 out of any 22 consecutive months.

Kathy Tidwell, director at the Child Welfare Center at Boise State’s School of Social Work and founder of Tidwell Social Work Services, which works with Boise’s growing refugee community, said that federal child welfare laws provide strict time limits for terminating parental rights. If children are in foster care for 15 out of 22 months, the case goes to termination. “For many refugees who come here not speaking English, who come as women from countries where the expectations of women are very different, who have trauma histories … 15 months may not be enough time,” she said.

How would this refugee woman have been able to resolve the problems she was having in 22 months if she was receiving incompetent mental health care, and/or was misdiagnosed, and/or if she didn’t even need mental health care?

The question is, why wasn’t World Relief helping to make sure this woman was receiving responsible health care and mental health services? If they had simply monitored her case, they could have identified problems and contacted hospital and mental health services administrators to advocate for proper interpretation services. They also could have monitored the legal proceedings to make sure this refugee woman received competent legal representation. Why did it take someone from a non-World Relief-affiliated church, who met her randomly by just knocking on doors, to step in and help this woman?

The resettlement agencies who give the resettlement program a bad name always say that they are not responsible for refugees after their first 3 months, 4, months, 6 months, or 8 months (take your pick), but the reality is that the resettlement agencies are supposedly the local refugee experts, and after all, they are the ones who resettled her to the area claiming it was an appropriate resettlement site. They should catch these cases where circumstances leave their former refugee clients vulnerable.

The state refugee coordinator is also there to watch what is happening to refugees in the state (in this case Jan Reeves came in the revolving door via Mountain States Group, Inc.). State officials have the power to go into agencies and view their records to find out what is happening to refugees. They can also interview refugees with an interpreter if necessary to find out directly the problems the refugee is experiencing, and not just rely on occasionally looking at agencies’ records and only speaking to resettlement agency staff members.

This case reminds me of the Liberian teenager in Fargo who was meanly mislabeled as aggressive, crazy, and low-intelligence simply because no one bothered to find competent interpretation services for her (see our post here).

By the way, the Burundian refugee woman in Boise should not have lived with church members after initially arriving in Boise. The State Department’s Admissions Office has repeatedly warned World Relief affiliates (here, here and here) that this practice is prohibited. Of course the State Department’s warnings to resettlement agencies, and other slaps on the wrist, have long been ineffective. Most resettlement agencies just do as they wish as there are no real consequences to breaking contract requirements and regulations. Certainly there are no monetary consequences.

Finally, I would like to point out the accountability-shifting in this case that is so rampant in refugee resettlement. In this case the World Relief-affiliated church (a member of the church who was a World Relief volunteer brought the refugee to the church) that worked with this refugee woman claims that their church took no actions; that it was people in the church operating under their own volition.

At [Common Ground Covenant Church in Meridian] –a small evangelical church …several other families, including the pastor, Tom Bowen, began to assist Niyonzima as well….the pastor and three women from the church came to her house and asked her how they could help……..Pastor Bowen said..”[Niyonzima] had approached our church in helping with her kids, and then when she had asked us to no longer do that, we really weren’t involved,”…stressing that it was individuals from the church, not Common Ground, providing the assistance.

But is that really the case since even the church’s pastor was involved? A bigger problem is the resettlement agencies who always blame government oversight agencies. Then we have the State Department that won’t investigate these cases. They claim that we should report problem cases to the VOLAGS or to the state refugee coordinators. Yet, state refugee coordinators in turn tell us that they don’t have to answer to anyone but their governors, the federal oversight agencies, etc. Other state refugee coordinators tell us that we should not ask them to investigate problems, that instead we should ask the board of directors of refugee resettlement agencies to investigate.

So where does the buck ever stop? It seems like just a few people accept accountability in the refugee resettlement field. It is always the responsibility of someone else. This problem is the result of a culture of non-accountability, which I believe is systemic in refugee resettlement. It must change.

Posted in Agency for New Americans (in Mountain States Group, Inc., Boise), Boise, Burundian, child protective services, foster care, Idaho, language, language interpretation/translation, lack of, mental health, revolving door, World Relief | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

 
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