These Are The People "Protecting" Our Children
These Are The People "Protecting" Our ChildrenStories here are reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
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New York ACS worker arrested in rape of teen
Richland, Washington, Child Protective Services worker pleads not guilty to cocaine possession
Arapahoe, Colorado, county's fumbling creates a family's nightmare
© 2006by Rocco Parascandola, Newsday, Inc.
January 28, 2006 — Police on Friday arrested an Administration for Children's Services supervisor after a 15-year-old female relative accused him of repeatedly raping her for more than a year - most recently while three younger relatives were in a room nearby, police sources said.
The allegation was quickly followed by an accusation from another female relative, in her early 20s, who told detectives the man also sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager, sources said.
Travis Davis, 41, of West 142nd Street in Harlem, was charged late Friday with one count of rape and two counts of performing a criminal sex act, police said. He is expected to be arraigned Saturday. In a statement earlier in the day, an ACS spokesman said the ACS supervisor who was arrested had been immediately suspended without pay.
Detectives also had interviewed both the older female relative and the 14-year-old daughter of the man's girlfriend, police said.
Police said the 15-year-old and her mother went to the 23 rd Precinct in East Harlem and reported the allegation at about 3:30 AM Friday, after the teen told her mother she was afraid to see Davis. She told police he had been raping her since about 2004, police sources said.
Officers located Davis at his residence, where police said some of the assaults were alleged to have occurred.
At a news conference, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the ACS worker has made statements to detectives.
The Administration for Children's Services, in a statement that did not name the supervisor, said the man had worked for ACS for a decade. A department spokesman said his $57,796-a-year post there was largely administrative, training prospective foster and adoptive parents in the Division of Family Permanency Services.
In past years, he had monitored case records from ACS headquarters and worked in the Neighborhood Based Services Division as a liaison with community groups and organizations, the statement said.
The 15-year-old told detectives the latest incident occurred January 21, 2006, in Davis' Harlem apartment, sources said.
She said the assault included rape and occurred while three other relatives — two girls, both 8, and a boy, 4 — were in another room, sources said.
Detectives do not believe that the three younger children were harmed, sources said.
The arrest was the latest setback for a city agency that has come under scathing criticism after the deaths in recent months of four children whose families had been investigated by ACS.
A series of changes were sparked by the Jan. 11 murder of Nixzmary Brown, 7, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, who authorities said was tortured and beaten by her stepfather. Both the stepfather and the girl's mother have been charged with second-degree murder in the slaying, and both are being held without bail.
Already under way is a citywide review of the thousands of child protective cases under ACS' jurisdiction, ordered by ACS Commissioner John Mattingly. On Tuesday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that workers with law enforcement experience, such as retired police officers, will be hired and spread through the agency's 14 field offices to improve coordination and communication between ACS and police.
Earlier this week, a Bronx mother was charged with trying to drown her 5-month-old baby in a bathtub. An ACS caseworker had visited the home two days earlier and urged an aunt to let the mother and child live with her, because the mother appeared to be suffering from post-partum depression, police and ACS sources said.
January 29, 2006 (AP) — A Child Protective Services employee has pled not guilty to a single count of cocaine possession, but state officials say the employee has been suspended from any direct dealings with children.
Officers say they found the drug in the purse of Geri Lee Foraker, 36, after she was stopped Friday in West Richland for reportedly driving erratically. Ms. Foraker is a supervisor in the Richland office of the state Child Protective Services agency.
Geri Foraker pled not guilty Thursday in Benton County Superior Court.
Kathy Spears, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Social and Human Services, said Foraker remains employed by the agency but will not serve as a CPS worker or supervisor on any cases involving children until the criminal case is resolved.
A decision on whether she will keep her job also will be made then, Spears indicated. "We hold our social workers to a high standard because they work with vulnerable children," she said.
According to court documents, Foraker told officers the drugs belonged to her brother.
Blood samples were taken from Ms. Foraker at the hospital after her arrest. Test on the samples will be done at the Washington State Patrol crime lab in the next few weeks, said West Richland Police Chief Layne Erdman.
Foraker was given an April 3 trial date and released from jail on her own recognizance.
© 2006 by Boston Herald editorial staff
February 8, 2006 — Trust us, the Department of Social Services keeps saying, whether the case is that of a brain-injured child or children left alone by their dysfunctional mother.
Well, now we know that the agency that was supposed to protect Haleigh Poutre neglected her as badly as her adoptive parents, allowing her to suffer months of horrible abuse. And now we know that the agency that was supposed to protect her wanted to remove her from life support just six days after she was admitted to a hospital with brain damage.
Now hapless Commissioner Harry Spence thinks she's just a miracle child, breathing on her own, picking up toys on command. But last September 19, his agency asked for court permission to remove her from her ventilator and feeding tube. We know this now only because of the court-ordered release of a redacted brief.
What else don't we know about this case? Even Haleigh's biological mother was forced by DSS to sign a gag order in order to see the child. The agency continually hides behind its supposed need to protect the privacy of the children it serves, when time after time it is merely covering up its own incompetence.
© 2008 by Susan Greene, Denver Post Columnist
June 26, 2008 — Josh Raykin had never spent even a night away from his parents.
That is, until Arapahoe County snatched the 8-year-old from his home after an abuse allegation that social workers dragged their feet investigating.
The ordeal began while Josh was playing outside one day before dinner in April. A neighbor knocked on the door to tell his dad that police had come to take Josh away.
The strawberry-blond kid with pale blue eyes was born in 1999 after Michael and Melanie Raykin tried for 15 years to conceive. Michael, a courier, and Melanie, a hairstylist, work extra hours to send Josh to Denver's Montclair Academy and give their boy advantages they never had as kids in the former U.S.S.R.
"He means everything to us," Michael says.
But on the sidewalk late that day in April, deputies wouldn't let him go near the son whom the county suspected Raykin of molesting in ways too intimate to be described in these pages. Deputies said the allegations came from Michael's young nieces — girls the couple hadn't seen since they went into foster care months earlier because of abuse allegations in their immediate family. The girls also had pointed the finger at their grandfather, but charges were dropped.
"They blew my mind. I didn't know what to say," says Michael, whose most serious brushes with the law had come with a few speeding tickets.
Mother, father and son were forced to sit on their curb as neighbors watched and whispered, and deputies waited for a case worker to arrive. Josh, complaining he was hungry and cold, started hyperventilating.
Once the social worker came two hours later, he wouldn't release the boy to his aunt nearby, nor tell the Raykins where he was taking Josh. Instead, he told Melanie to pack a bag for the boy she had never once left once with a sitter.
Josh screamed, "Leave them alone. They're the best parents in the world," as the case worker prodded him into his car.
He spent a week with an Aurora foster family that required the Jewish kid to pray to Jehovah at each meal. They took away the Pokemon toothbrush and stuffed toys that his mom had packed for him. They shut off his shower after five minutes. And most days, he says, they made him wash toilets with a washcloth.
For one sleepless week, the Raykins made phone calls, met with lawyers and sat in Josh's room "taking turns breaking down." Human Services CPS refused to allow them even one phone call to tell their only child they loved him, were fighting for him and would come for him soon.
Melanie says CPS social workers kept pushing her to say her husband molested their son, insinuating that such an admission would set Josh free. They suggested that Josh having once kissed his cousins on the lips — as is the norm in his parents' culture — was a sign that he had been molested. As social workers saw it, Michael's habit of buying his son toys and taking him to the movies was "grooming" to cover up sexual abuse.
Though counties normally interview kids before yanking them from their homes, it took Arapahoe County a week after removing Josh for that interview to take place.
"And now, because of that interview, he knows about things that I don't want him to know at 8 years old," says Michael, crying.
Michael passed a lie-detector test. His innocence claim was buoyed by a sheriff's investigator who rallied to his side until a judge released Josh, finding "there is not reason to believe any inappropriate sexual activity" took place [Guilty unless and until you can prove you are innocent].
CPS Human Services cited confidentiality laws when asked about its fumbling of the case. "We only remove the child from the home when we believe or know to be true that staying in the home is not in the best interest of the child," said county spokeswoman Nichole Parmelly [It frequently seems that what CPS social workers believe are the voices in their head].
Two months later, Josh has nightmares and trouble falling asleep [and he and his parents will probably be troubled the rest of their lives by this incident].
"We live, we work, we're quiet, we pay taxes. We came from such a hard world to be free in a country where, just like this," says his mom, snapping her fingers, "they can grab your kid away from you right off your street."
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
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| Chapter 8 — Who's Minding The Minders? — The Fate Of Children |
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