Texas Foster Care: “Rape, Abuse, Psychotropic Medication, and Instability” Still the Norm as State Fights Against Reform

The battle continues between the State of Texas and attorneys who represent more than 12,000 children in the state's foster care system. A panel of three judges in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans heard arguments Monday, April 30, about the constitutionality of the state's troubled foster care system. This is the latest chapter in a fight to change the system in which, according to U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack, "... children have been shuttled throughout a system where rape, abuse, psychotropic medication, and instability are the norm." After Judge Jack ruled in December 2015 that the system as it stood was unconstitutional, Texas Attorney General Kenneth Paxton appealed the decision, defending the state's foster care system. Many of the original plaintiffs in the lawsuit, who were formerly foster care children, have now become adults and aged out of the system and are missing. The San Antonio Express ran a story looking into what has happened to these Texas foster children who aged out of the system, and they found that most of them suffer unemployment, homelessness, and sex trafficking as adults.

Attorney Reporting in Newsweek: Foster Care is a System Set Up to Sex Traffic American Children

Attorney Michael Dolce, from the law-firm Cohen Milstein, recently wrote an opinion piece published by Newsweek stating that the nation's foster care system is set up to sexually traffic children. Dolce, who speaks from experience from representing children abused in foster care, writes: "Here’s the ugly truth: most Americans who are victims of sex trafficking come from our nation’s own foster care system. It’s a deeply broken system that leaves thousands vulnerable to pimps as children and grooms them for the illegal sex trade as young adults. We have failed our children by not fixing the systemic failures that have allowed this to happen for decades."

Arizona Foster Care System Revealed as Pedophile Ring: Former Foster Child Tortured for Years Sues for $15 Million

The state of Arizona, which has the infamous reputation of removing the highest percentage of children in the U.S. from their homes and families through Child Protective Services, has now also been exposed as having a very corrupt foster care network that includes pedophile rings where young children are imprisoned in state-approved foster homes and trafficked to pedophiles. In a developing story based out of the military town of Sierra Vista, Arizona, the home of Fort Huachuca, David Frodsham, a former commander with the Department of Defense in Afghanistan who was discharged from duty due to “sexual harassment” behavior and an assessment by the military that he had an unalterable personality disorder, has been arrested and convicted of operating a pornographic pedophile ring based out of his state-approved foster home. Health Impact News first reported on the charges brought against David Frodsham and his wife who were state-approved foster parents last year with the story of the young child Devani, who was seized from her family just days before her second birthday and placed into the Frodshams' state-approved foster home where she was allegedly raped repeatedly and trafficked as part of an organized pornographic pedophile ring. After David Frodsham was arrested due to a federal investigation, Devani was placed into another state-approved foster home where 80% of her body was burned by scalding water, forcing the amputation of some of her toes. Now, another foster child who was adopted by the Frodshams and put into their pornographic pedophile ring has turned 18 and come forward to reveal details of years of horrible torture and sexual trafficking while suing the state of Arizona for damages of $15 million. How can this be happening today in the United States? How can we be talking about "making America great again" when this kind of child sex trafficking is happening right here in our own borders?

Massachusetts State Auditor Finds Widespread Rape and Sexual Abuse in Foster Care but DCF Officials Won’t Report It

On December 7, 2017, Massachusetts State Auditor Suzanne Bump released an appalling audit of her state's Child Protective Services, the Department of Children and Families (DCF). The audit, which covered 2014 and 2015, found that there were many instances where children in state care, whether in foster homes or group homes or other facilities under DCF care, were abused physically or sexually, but DCF failed to report the incidents to the proper authorities. DCF officials told Auditor Suzanne Bump that they don't see sexual abuse as a serious enough problem that they need to report it.

The REAL Foster Care Housing Crisis: Too Many Foster Children, NOT Too Few Foster Homes

Thousands of children are trapped in foster care because their parents don’t have adequate housing. That is the REAL Foster Care housing crisis. Yes, there is a disconnect between the number of foster parents and the number of foster children. But that’s not because we have too few foster parents. It’s because we have too many foster children. The REAL foster care housing crisis is part of the biggest problem in American child welfare – the confusion of poverty with “neglect” and the racial bias that goes with it.

Texas Sheriff Blasts CPS for Allowing Man Accused of Sexual Abuse to Foster 180 Girls

Medina County Texas Sheriff Randy Brown had some harsh criticisms of Texas Child Protection Services (CPS) this past week after they arrested a 58-year old man for sexually abusing 5 former foster care children. The man, Miguel Briseno, had at various times taken care of up to 12 girls at one time, and a total of 180 girls had passed through his care. Sheriff Brown told the San Antonio Express: "It's not a question about whether there are more, it's just about how many." "Those girls were taken from some environment and then you have some jackass like him abusing these girls that already have troubles," Brown said. "I'm aggravated at the whole system. I'm aggravated at the company that placed these girls. It was a money-making deal, the way they were running those girls through there like livestock. It wasn't about making a better world for them. They were making a profit off them."

Report: The Corruption and Sadistic Culture Within Child Protective Services is a Threat to Every Family in America

The Huffington Post has released a report on Child Protective Services (CPS) by Child Advocate and contributor Patricia Mitchell, founder of Patricia's Children, Inc. The report is filled with documented data that is important for all families to know, due to the threat that CPS poses to literally every family in America. Some of the data in the report will come as no surprise to the families impacted by medical kidnapping. While children and parents are being destroyed behind closed agency and courtroom doors, the majority of the public remains blissfully ignorant of the reality, much like the citizens in Eastern Europe were unaware of the atrocities happening to their fellow citizens in the concentration camps under the Nazi regime. This is information that needs to be shared with friends and neighbors, politicians, media, and policy makers, and it needs to provide a catalyst for change. We simply cannot maintain this trajectory and survive as a culture. The cost - our children - is simply too high. The report concludes: "Currently, billions of dollars are used to support the barbaric treatment of our most vulnerable citizens. Ending the daily corruption and sadistic culture within Child Protective Services is the civilized thing to do." We agree.

Child Protective Services Failure – A Tale of Two Boys Who Suffered Abuse

They are a microcosm of the failures of the Child Protective Services System - two young men whose stories clearly illustrate two sides of the same coin. It was a chance encounter in the middle of Union Station in downtown Washington, D.C. As we talked with these young men, I realized that their stories were perfect demonstrations of why Dee Prince, Whitney Manning, and I joined hundreds of other parents and activists in our nation's capitol for the Million Parent March events of September 17 - 19, 2017. One of them had grown up in the foster care system since age 3, and told that he and his siblings had been abandoned by their mother because she didn't care. After he aged out of the system at age 18, he found out he had been lied to, as he was reunited with his mother and siblings. He was never abused in his home. The other young man grew up being abused in his home, and there were people who knew, who saw, yet did nothing. They left a scared, hurting little boy in a bad situation and didn't intervene. The contrast in their stories is riveting, yet it is something that I hear on almost a daily basis. The Child Protective System failed the children in both cases. Why?

Oregon Pays $7 Million After Preschoolers Starved by Foster Parents

Oregon's child welfare agency has agreed to pay $7 million to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of two children who were nearly starved to death by foster parents the state approved for them. The Yamhill County foster parents who for years withheld food from the two preschoolers and subjected them to other abuse, John and Danielle Yates, are each serving 2 ½ years in prison. According to the lawsuit, caseworkers and their supervisors ignored complaints and obvious problems during the 2 1/2 years the children lived with the couple. A state review of the case found that a caseworker saw the emaciated children less than a month before doctors at Randall Children's Hospital determined they suffered from chronic starvation. But the caseworker did nothing. At Randall, the lawsuit says, doctors found the children resembled victims of a famine: their ribs visible, their bellies protruding and their brain development severely affected.

L​andmark Federal Lawsuit Charges Missouri With Failure to Protect Foster Kids from Powerful Psychotropic Medications

Watchdogs Children’s Rights, National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) and Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics have today filed a landmark, civil rights complaint against Jennifer Tidball, Acting State Director of the Missouri Department of Social Services and Tim Decker, Director of the Children’s Division of DSS, on behalf of all minor children and youth who are or will be placed in Missouri’s foster care custody. The first class action lawsuit to shine a federal spotlight solely on the overuse of psychotropic medications among vulnerable, at risk populations – such as Missouri’s 13,000 children in foster care – the complaint alleges longstanding, dangerous, unlawful and deliberately indifferent practices by the defendants.