Adoptive parents of molested boys want state to pay
By Kathleen Chapman
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 03, 2007
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2007/06/03/m1a_adoption_0603.html
The three young brothers shared a terrible secret.
For months, the couple who adopted them didn't know why nightmares
haunted the youngest.
The truth tumbled out one day as Debbie, a former private school
principal, rearranged furniture at the family's home in Boynton Beach.
The youngest boy, then only 4, heard the bed squeak as it slid it across
the floor. I know that sound, he said.
That was the sound the bed made, he said, when the bad man got up off my
brothers and came for me.
The middle son, age 5, then confirmed that their former foster father,
Hector Rosa, held them down and molested them nearly every night, then
forced them to molest each other.
Even before her son let their secret slip, Debbie discovered, Rosa's
wife had called Palm Springs police after catching him on top of an
11-year-old girl the Department of Children and Families had entrusted
to his care. Prosecutors added charges for his crimes against the boys.
He was sentenced in 2000 to life in prison without parole.
During the years that followed the trial, Debbie and her husband, Jorge,
read through boxes of documents they say were concealed from them before
the adoption and gradually learned the devastating extent of the abuse
their adopted sons endured in state care.
In 2002, the couple sued the Department of Children and Families for the
expense of the boys' treatment. They also are seeking damages, saying
that the state misled them about the boys' history. Their attorney,
Lance Block, says the cost will be in the millions.
The case is scheduled for mediation next month in Tallahassee and trial
this fall in Palm Beach County Circuit Court.
"I can't speak to what past administrations were thinking or how they
dealt with the issues," DCF spokesman Al Zimmerman said Friday. "But I
can say that this administration isn't happy because these parents
aren't happy. And we will in July work with them on a resolution."
Therapists say that what happened to these boys is a formula for
producing the most dangerous adult criminals.
After being taken into state care, they were moved seven times, returned
to a biological mother who hurt them again, told by one foster family
they were not wanted and ritualistically molested in another.
Nine years after their adoption, like many children terrorized and
rejected by those who were supposed to love them, the boys are still
unable to trust any adult. They seem to lack a conscience. And when they
fly into a rage, it takes several grown men to hold them.
The boys, now 15, 14 and 12, have been expelled from almost every
school, program and camp their parents have tried.
The oldest was arrested and kicked out of a Palm Beach County high
school this year after sneaking a chemical into his teacher's lip gloss,
Debbie said, then coming back to campus with a knife.
Recently, Debbie found a knife that her middle son had hidden in a bush
under her window and another in a hole in her closet. He says he will
kill her. You have to sleep some time, he tells her. You won't know
until the knife goes in.
"Ultimately, one of these children will kill me," Debbie said.
"Ultimately, I will open a front door and they'll have a gun.
Ultimately, something really, really bad is going to happen to me or
someone else."
No idea what they're getting
Debbie and Jorge had one adopted child when they applied to adopt from
state foster care.
Jorge, who then was a youth minister, grew up in Gainesville, the son of
a Cuban-American engineer. Debbie loved children and had been a teacher
and principal at a local private school.
They said they could take one or two young children of any race and
would be able to work with learning disabilities and moderate behavior
problems.
But they said they absolutely could not handle a child who would react
to sexual abuse by touching other children. They had a young son
already, they said, and couldn't put him at risk.
One day, the caseworker approached them with a photograph of three
adorable young brothers. It isn't often that children like this come
along, they say she told them. They say she disclosed evidence that the
oldest had been sexually abused at age 2 but said they shouldn't worry
about him acting out because the boys had been safe in the foster system
since then.
It was only years later that they learned the full story.
"It wasn't just one bad foster home," Debbie said. "There was
incompetence over and over again."
The three brothers were taken into DCF care in 1994, when they were 2, 1
and a baby. All of the boys had been hit, and a physical exam confirmed
sexual abuse of the oldest, likely by a male relative.
Two years later, the boys were returned to their mother's care. Soon
after the reunification, as a therapist asked why support like day care
had been yanked from their overwhelmed mother, she was arrested on child
abuse charges after admitting she bit her youngest on the arm and beat
him with a shoe.
According to depositions and DCF records, the two younger boys were sent
to a local shelter with largely disinterested shift workers, then forced
on foster parents who called the middle boy a devil's child.
The family had a cage for roosters in the back yard, and one of the boys
said they were locked inside when they misbehaved. The family denied
putting the children in a cage but acknowledged that the boys were
threatened with that punishment if they didn't go to bed, according to a
DCF abuse report.
DCF removed the boys but had a hard time finding anyone else who would
take all three at once. They finally found a willing volunteer in Hector
Rosa, whom the state had licensed to take foster children.
The boys' longtime therapist, Elaine Baker, told the boys' DCF
caseworker from the beginning that she had a very bad feeling about Rosa
and his wife. Both parents had been abused themselves as children, and
Hector seemed overly controlling. One day he showed her a bruise the
size of an orange on one boy's back but said it was an accident.
Workers at the Tiny Kingdom day care didn't like the parents either, and
said they weren't giving the children enough to eat.
One day, Baker was talking to the youngest boy at the curb in front of
Rosa's home when he grabbed onto her leg and started to sob.
"He said, 'Ms. Elaine, please don't make me go back in that house,' "
Baker said in her deposition. His cries were so desperate that the
neighbors came out to stare.
Living in fear
After the adoption, on the day the youngest let the secret slip, Debbie
got her first sense of the terror Hector Rosa inflicted on the boys.
When she asked her middle son about what the youngest boy said, he
panicked. "You've done it now," she remembers him yelling at his
brother. "He's going to kill us all."
The boys then ran around the house, locking all the doors, she said.
They were so afraid for their lives, she said, that a decision was made
that they should be in the courtroom when Rosa was sent to prison. When
they got home, Debbie said her youngest boy asked: "Who is going to
guard Hector when the guards sleep at night?'"
But by then, the damage to the boys was evident. Trying to fight back
against the adults, they hoarded food, set fires and dug holes in the
walls to hide scissors and knives.
"They were like little prisoners of war, and we were their captors,"
Debbie said.
They molested each other and touched other children at school and in
Jorge's Sunday school class. Debbie installed alarms on their bedroom
doors and gave up her career so she could watch the boys around the clock.
The Department of Children and Families continued to pay Baker the
therapist for several years after the adoption. In 2000, the agency
agreed to fly the family, Baker and a second therapist to a nationally
known program in Colorado that specializes in abused children who have
trouble bonding with adults. When the couple arrived, they were told
they were not allowed to see several boxes of DCF records on their own
children's histories in state care.
Their former caseworker, Myra Zuclich, acknowledged in a recent
deposition that, on the orders of her supervisors, she did tell the
program to keep the records hidden from the parents.
All hope not lost yet
Now, with the youngest at home and the other two in group homes, Debbie
and Jorge are afraid of what they could become if they do not get
serious intervention.
"The thing about the kids is they are super, super intelligent," Debbie
said. "I mean, they've been with us. They know what manners are, they
know how you should talk to people and they can do that. In a very scary
way ... because they are charming and friendly, and they could come in
and sit with you and make you feel you are so special ... you wouldn't
suspect."
Debbie and Jorge believe their sons would benefit from a nationally
recognized program specializing in reactive attachment disorder, the
inability of children to love or trust a caregiver. DCF denied their
request for a follow-up visit to the program in Colorado years ago,
saying there was no money.
"They do have potential," Jorge said. "They do have opportunities. But
the window is closing. They need help and there are programs out there."
When the boys turn 18, the only program available to them will be the
judicial system, Jorge said.
What DCF needs to acknowledge, Debbie said, is that "they created this."
"They had a little teeny baby, a 1-year-old and a 2-year-old in their
care. And this is what came out the other end."
CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A
DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NATIONAL
SECURITY AGENCY/CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WIRETAPPING PROGRAM....
CPS Does not protect children...
It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even
killed at the hands of Child Protective Services.
every parent should read this .pdf from
connecticut dcf watch...
http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf
http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com
Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US
These numbers come from The National Center on
Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN)
Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS
*Perpetrators of Maltreatment*
Physical Abuse CPS 160, Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13
Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12
Fatalities CPS 6.4, Parents 1.5
Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that
are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per
100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse
and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the
citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold
parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY
government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and
death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more
human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which
they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that
they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when
children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a
bunch of social workers.
BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...
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