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Court Orders Missing Florida Girl's Records Released
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 24, 2002
Filed at 1:28 p.m. ET
MIAMI (AP) -- An appeals court on Friday ordered the release of the remaining documents from the case file of a 5-year-old girl whose disappearance went unnoticed by the state's child welfare agency for 15 months.
The Third District Court of Appeal reversed a lower court's decision to withhold documents pertaining to the criminal investigation in the case of Rilya Wilson.
Most of the information was released late Thursday after a ruling by Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman, who reviewed Department of Children & Families records with police and representatives from the state attorney's office during a daylong, private meeting.
The 959 pages of documents -- court papers and handwritten records -- chronicle the case history of Rilya and her three sisters, born to a homeless, cocaine-addicted mother and taken away because of neglect.
They also contained details of the department's handling of the case. One DCF court memo dated Sept. 4, 2001 -- seven months before the agency reported Rilya missing -- suggested no one knew where the girl and her sisters were.
``Where are the children ... why haven't they been adopted?'' the memo asked.
But Lederman ruled that information connected to the criminal investigation would not be released.
CNN, The New York Times, the Orlando Sentinel, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale, Dateline NBC and WTVJ appealed, arguing that under Florida law, only police files are protected during a criminal investigation.
At Friday's hearing, the state attorney abandoned its argument that the criminal investigation into Rilya's disappearance could be hindered by the release of the documents. Instead, the state argued that the interests of Rilya were more important than the public's right to know.
``The courts often make the right decisions for the wrong reasons,'' Assistant State Attorney Penny Brill said.
But the judges disagreed, ordering the release of the documents.
The girl, born to homeless cocaine addict Gloria Wilson, was taken by the state when she was 5 weeks old. The newly released records portray Rilya's mother as unable to care for her children.
Rilya's older sister Randie was taken away because Wilson ``continually allows the child to get severe diaper rash and bug bites from lack of care and puts the child on the porch at night with a dog to sleep.''
The agency also wrote that it had ``serious concerns as the home is considered (too) filthy and unsafe for the child.''
Rilya was sent to live with Geralyn Graham, who claims to be her paternal grandmother, and Graham's sister Pamela in April 2000.
Geralyn Graham says a child-welfare worker took Rilya away for evaluation in January 2001.
Caseworker Deborah Muskelly is accused of falsifying papers and failing to visit Rilya for 15 months. She resigned in March.
Muskelly said she had not handled the case since January 2001, but the records showed she was listed as Rilya's caseworker as recently as February.
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Legislators rip governor, DCF
By Lona O'Connor
Education Writer
May 21, 2002
Two Miami-Dade County legislators delivered a blistering indictment of the governor and the head of the Department of Children & Families on Monday at a public meeting investigating the disappearance of a 5-year-old girl.
"Prevention is not a priority of the department," said Florida Rep. Cindy Lerner, D-Miami, speaking before a panel examining the Rilya Wilson case.
Lerner and Florida Rep. Sally Heyman, D-Miami Beach, criticized DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney for not getting more money for prevention and other services from the state Legislature.
"You can't be lost if you don't know where you're going," Heyman told the panel, drawing applause from the audience. "When I hear about [Rilya] Wilson, and I hear that's an isolated case, that's absurd."
Lerner said she and others have noticed a "frightening backlog" of 50,000 at-risk children -- a number greater than the 44,000 in the child welfare system.
"All the information for those children is sitting in a file cabinet somewhere," she said.
Lerner and Heyman said Gov. Jeb Bush could find money to pay for children's services in his budget.
Lerner also called for a legislative special session to address children's welfare issues.
Kearney later countered that she had been aggressive in seeking money from the Legislature for her department.
Katie Muniz, a Bush spokeswoman, said the governor has increased the number of caseworkers in the agency and reduced the backlog of cases by infusing the department with more funding. "They've had more than a 100 percent increase in funding for child welfare services since the governor has come into office," Muniz said. Also at Monday's public hearing, the last meeting before the panel's report to the governor, a state official defended the state's computer system for tracking children.
HomeSafenet, the tracking system, is not outdated, said Randy Niewenhaus, chief information officer for DCF. HomeSafenet has come under severe criticism for being $200 million over its original $30 million budget, as well as behind schedule and hard to use.
The panel will meet again Sunday to discuss its draft report at the Wolfson campus of Miami-Dade Community College. Among the issues that panel members have noted in their six meetings:
All children in the state system should have guardians ad litem.
Communication among caseworkers, guardians, law enforcement, investigators and parents must improve.
Local, county and state welfare providers must be accredited to ensure quality service.
Social-service workers must have lower caseloads.
Methods to find runaways must be improved.
The committee will present its report to the governor on May 28.
At least one formal change is coming out of Rilya's case. The Miami DCF district is dropping its so-called "pickup orders," which have grown into a two-day paperwork process for declaring a child missing.
"There is no need for a pickup order in order to be legally capable of picking up a child who is previously in the system," District Administrator Charles Auslander said. Rilya's pickup order delayed the disclosure of her disappearance for two days last month.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Lona O'Connor can be reached at lo'connor@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4604.
Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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Democrats attack Bush, DCF chief
By Catherine Wilson
The Associated Press
May 20, 2002, 5:21 PM EDT
MIAMI -- Two Democratic legislators attacked Gov. Jeb Bush and the state's child-welfare chief Monday for failing to follow through on promises to make children a priority for state government.
The criticism came during and after a meeting of the panel appointed by Bush to examine what went wrong in the disappearance of Rilya Wilson, a 5-year-old in state custody who has been missing for 16 months.
State Rep. Sally Heyman, D-Miami, said if Bush ``put our children in need first, their needs would be met. That's it.''
She said she thought it was the duty of Children & Families Secretary Kathleen Kearney to ``get in our face'' to fight for an agency that has long been overburdened, understaffed and undertrained.
Outside the meeting, Heyman assessed Kearney's performance and said, ``I have no respect for the position she has taken and the role she has.''
State Rep. Cindy Lerner, D-Miami, added, ``The administration fails to champion the needs of the department.''
Kearney responded later by saying, ``I really do believe that the charges were leveled unfairly.'' She said Bush ``has been a tremendous child advocate'' and suggested the two lawmakers were passionate but not fully informed.
A Bush spokeswoman did not immediately return a phone call.
Heyman suggested Bush veto a $265 million corporate tax break he sought, devote the money to Kearney's department and call a special session to respond to the panel's findings due next week.
Heyman also bristled at Kearney's remark soon after the discovery of Rilya's disappearance that it was an isolated event following 15 months of missed monthly DCF visits.
``When I hear about juvenile Wilson and I hear that's an isolated case, that's absurd,'' Heyman said, estimating 500 court orders are in effect at any given time in Miami to look for children missing from state supervision.
Bush has ordered a spot check of all 44,000 children under DCF control.
``We don't believe that we have another child like this,'' Kearney said, referring to Rilya's extended disappearance.
David Lawrence, chairman of the governor's panel, wrapped up six days of testimony by noting the state's child-welfare department has been reorganized 22 times in 33 years and at least a dozen panels have examined the department.
``Shame on all of us if families and children don't feel safer as a consequence,'' he said.
Bush attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday at a renovated training center for an anti-drug group. He noted that Rilya entered the state child-protection system because of her mother's cocaine addiction. The governor is expected to attend his committee's final meeting and accept its report May 28.
At least one formal change is coming out of Rilya's case. The Miami DCF district is dropping its so-called ``pickup orders,'' which have grown into a two-day paperwork process for declaring a child missing.
``There is no need for a pickup order in order to be legally capable of picking up a child who is previously in the system,'' district administrator Charles Auslander told the panel. ``In some ways this is an archaic format which is no longer necessary.''
Rilya's pickup order delayed the disclosure of her disappearance for two days last month.
Panel members didn't like state figures showing child-protection workers and their supervisors have been much less likely to be fired for cause in Miami than the rest of the state. Auslander promised to look into it.
Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Children & Families and private agencies that provide services to children has deteriorated since Kathleen Kearney took over the department, a child advocate told a state panel on Friday.
"You're not going to hear from private providers. They are afraid to say what they feel," said Berta Blecke, a long-time child advocate in Miami-Dade County. "They've given up. They don't feel their voices are being heard. They are never brought to the table."
Blecke, who co-founded the guardian ad litem program for Miami-Dade 20 years ago, told the panel that the relationship of DCF, courts and private providers had been bad but deteriorated even more during the past two years.
"On all levels it's a breakdown," said Blecke.
Responding to Blecke after the hearing, Kearney said, "That's the voice of one person, and that is not indicative of the state." She added, "I'm very much a believer this shouldn't be a Tallahassee-driven system."
Kearney has described the case of missing 5-year-old Rilya Wilson as "an isolated incident." She places blame on caseworker DeBorah Muskelly, who quit under pressure for unrelated reasons in March.
Blecke was not scheduled to speak at the public hearing, but panel leader David Lawrence summoned her to the microphone. The panel meets again Monday and must produce a report by the end of the month.
There are a number of private agencies that operate foster homes and provide other foster care services for DCF. In 2004, the state is to switch over to a completely privatized foster care system.
Blecke said that in dealing with DCF, "it's an environment of: `This is the way it's going to be, and this is what you're going to do.'" Blecke said she has heard complaints about the change in attitude from private social service agencies statewide as Gov. Jeb Bush pushes for increasing privatization of traditional welfare services.
State Rep. Nan Rich, D-Weston, said at the hearing that complaints also can be heard across the state about HomeSafenet, the state's over-budget, Web-based case-tracking system, which is three years away from completion. Originally priced at $30 million and expected to be finished in 1998, HomeSafenet's cost has ballooned to $230 million and it has been described as already out of date.
Those who are using HomeSafenet describe the case-tracking system as hostile, cumbersome, inflexible and time-consuming, Rich said. "You don't see a lot of providers here," Rich told the panel. "The providers are not coming forward because they do fear retribution."
Sun-Sentinel wire services contributed to this report.
Lona O'Connor can be reached at lo'connor@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4604.
Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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Lawyer: Deceit rampant in DCF
By Peter Franceschina
and Sally Kestin Staff Writers
May 16, 2002
Some current and former state child-welfare workers say their colleagues lied about visiting foster homes, covered up mistakes and worked amid a culture that rewards overburdened employees for leaving children in dangerous situations.
The pressure within the Florida Department of Children & Families forces out workers who want to do a good job while its managers fail to accept responsibility for monitoring children in their care, according to stinging testimony last year by current and former workers in DCF's Palm Beach County district.
Excerpts of their statements given last year were released Wednesday by lawyers suing the agency over the quality of foster care. West Palm Beach attorney Theodore Babbitt said he is outraged that DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney called the Rilya Wilson case an isolated failure. The 5-year-old Miami girl was gone from a foster home for 15 months before the agency found out in April that she was missing.
"I've taken dozens of depositions that clearly show the department recognizes this is not an isolated incident, that these incidents are occurring all the time all over the state," Babbitt said. "Part of the problem is that this culture of deceit has grown up in the department because it is so difficult to do their jobs. They are asked to do an impossible job with woefully inadequate pay."
Babbitt used DCF statistics from December 1999 to January 2001 in his questioning of agency officials. Those statistics show that 8 percent of the children in foster care in Palm Beach County were being seen on a monthly basis, the second-lowest compliance rate in the state. Federal rules set a 90 percent standard.
In Broward County, 37 percent of foster children were seen monthly, while in Miami-Dade County it was 23 percent. DCF officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties said on Wednesday those figures are based on a very small sampling of their total cases. The agency has since exceeded the federal requirement by visiting more than 90 percent of foster children each month, officials said.
"We've done very well and made major improvements since the audit," said Kim Welles, child welfare director in Broward County.
`The child is ruined'
Psychologist George Rahaim, who works with DCF in Palm Beach County, told attorneys the agency is "organized in such a way that a worker who removes a child in danger is punished for doing so" by having to decide what to do with the child.
"Life goes easier for that worker who leaves the child at risk in the home, as long as nothing spectacular happens," he said.
"But what's the consequence to the child?" Babbitt asked him.
"The child is ruined. The child goes through more and more of it," said Rahaim, who has been with the Child Protection Team since 1987, long enough that he now sees second-generation victims of abuse.
Testifying in August, he said he thought the agency was at its lowest point."It is worse now, in my opinion, than it has ever been," he said then.
The DCF statistics also show that 22 percent of the children in foster care in Palm Beach County were abused or neglected again, yet none of them was removed from a foster home.
"They have failed to move even one of these kids who have been abused. That is so horrifying I am outraged," Babbitt said.
In Broward, there were reports that 11 percent of foster children were again subject to neglect or abuse, but all of those children were moved.
In his deposition last August, David May, DCF's Palm Beach County administrator, admitted the number of visits to foster children was "way too low."
"We're not seeing kids as much as I would want to, or parents, and we're not meeting standards with those measures," May said.
All of that has changed, May said Wednesday in addressing the issues raised by Babbitt. He cited a number of improvements made to DCF's Palm Beach County operations since taking over in January 2001.
"We have created a new quality-assurance unit to check behind what the staff are telling us so that we know the work is getting done," he said. "There have been significant improvements in the system over the last year in terms of our accountability within foster homes."
Overworked workers
He said that he didn't believe his agency's own statistics, cited by Babbitt, about the level of abuse in foster homes and that he addressed that in his deposition. He disputed that 22 percent of children in foster care during that time were being abused again, saying current DCF figures put it at 1 percent.
Babbitt's lawsuit, which seeks an independent overseer for DCF, was thrown out by a federal judge in Miami. That decision is being appealed.
Karen Gievers, a Tallahassee lawyer who has sued DCF on behalf of foster children, is skeptical that caseworkers are seeing children as often as required. In depositions she has taken, she said workers from across the state report handling 30 to 45 cases at a time -- up to three times the recommended number.
Avoiding coverups
"It's not possible for caseworkers to be visiting the children, appearing in court, coordinating the provision of services and moving the kids to permanency with the workloads that people were testifying to," Gievers said. "They've got to be fabricating it."
Charles Auslander, district administrator in Miami-Dade County, said high turnover was one reason his staff only visited 23 percent of the children each month.
"I believe this indicator has improved somewhat but still has a long way to go," he said.
In a September deposition, Sandra Owen, a former DCF program administrator who now works for a West Palm Beach organization that provides shelter for children in state custody, said she still hears that caseworkers are falsifying visitation records.
"I think it is more endemic to the system than just simple dishonesty," she said. "I believe that people need to be willing to accept responsibility, not try to cover it up. ... And until somebody gets at the culture of these organizations, I don't know that that's going to change."
Peter Franceschina can be reached at pfranceschina@ sun-sentinel.com or 561-832-2894.
Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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Posted on Tue, May. 21, 2002
2 lawmakers blast Bush, DCF chief
BY GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES
gepstein@herald.com
Two Miami-Dade state legislators recognized as child advocates lit into Department of Children & Families Secretary Kathleen Kearney and her boss Monday, accusing Gov. Jeb Bush of putting big business before children and Kearney of being a weak champion for child protection.
Representatives Sally Heyman of North Miami Beach and Cindy Lerner of South Miami-Dade, both Democrats, used the sixth and final public hearing of a governor's blue-ribbon panel on child welfare to launch their attack. The panel is investigating the case of missing 5-year-old Rilya Wilson.
'When an administrator won't demand more monies, doesn't put a face and a name to what is needed, takes a philosophical position that `We'll make due with the budget and go along with the governor,' [then] that secretary who 'goes along,' goes against our children,'' Heyman said, referring to Kearney, who listened from the front row.
Heyman and Lerner, a former staff attorney for Miami-Dade's Guardian ad Litem program, called for a special legislative session to reform Florida's child welfare system. They chided Bush for pushing through a $262 million corporate tax break this session but only paying what Heyman called ''lip service'' to child welfare.
BUSH CHASTISED
''If [Bush] put our children in need first, then our needs would be met,'' Heyman said. ``Because it clearly isn't the governor's priority -- it's the governor's embarrassment right now.''
''The administration fails to champion the needs of the department,'' Lerner added.
Speaking later, Kearney called Heyman and Lerner ``two people I respect very much, two advocates for children.''
But she said the legislators were mistaken in saying that she has not asked for more resources and labeled their attack as ``political.''
Lerner is running for the state Senate after her House district was redrawn. Heyman has reached her term limit in the House and has not announced her future plans.
'We got everything we asked for in our legislative budget request,'' Kearney said, repeating the Bush administration mantra that the budget for foster care and other child welfare services has nearly doubled since the governor took office.
''We did ask, we will ask'' for more, but the department needs to be able to properly spend the money as well as seek it, Kearney said. ``I really do believe the charges were leveled unfairly.''
In other testimony Monday, Charles Auslander, DCF district administrator for Miami-Dade and Monroe counties, said he is ''very concerned'' about statistics prepared for the panel that suggest that he fires fewer employees proportionately ''for cause'' than other districts around the state.
A KEY FACTOR
How the department handles poorly performing employees is ''one of the matters at the heart of the Rilya Wilson case,'' Auslander said, adding that the conduct of Rilya's caseworker and the caseworker's supervisor cannot be deemed ``as tolerable.''
Rilya's caretaker has told authorities that she last saw the girl 16 months ago when she was picked up by a DCF worker, but DCF has no record of that event. Police are investigating Rilya's disappearance as a possible homicide.
Top department administrators have blamed caseworker Deborah Muskelly for failing to make required visits to Rilya and filing misleading reports on her status. Muskelly and her supervisor, Willie Harris, resigned after DCF raised performance questions in cases other than Rilya's. Muskelly has denied any wrongdoing. Harris has not commented.
Shay Bilchik, former head of the U.S. Department of Juvenile Justice under Attorney General Janet Reno and now president of Child Welfare League of America, told the panel that Florida must do everything it can to bring its caseloads down and get accreditation.
© 2001 miamiherald and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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DCF worker depositions show bleak picture of department
By BRENDAN FARRINGTON
Associated Press
May 15, 2002, 5:01 PM EDT
WEST PALM BEACH -- Several current and former employees in Florida's child welfare system have testified that counselors routinely falsified reports of visits to foster children, attorneys suing the state said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Gov. Jeb Bush signed a bill that makes it a felony for child welfare workers to falsify documents and a judge appearing before a panel formed following the disappearance of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson criticized the performance of caseworkers.
In West Palm Beach, the attorneys released portions of depositions from Palm Beach County workers who detailed problems ranging from failure to visit children to removing children from their homes and placing them in abusive foster homes.
``I have heard of foster care counselors ... who have reported that they have seen 100 percent of their children and that's not true,'' Sandra Owen, a former Department of Children & Families programs director, said in a deposition taken last September.
``I think it's more endemic to the system than just simple dishonesty,'' said Owen, who left the department to run a West Palm Beach organization that provides shelter for children in state custody.
George Rahaim, a psychologist who provides services to the department, said the agency is structured in a way that ``life is easier for the worker who leaves the child at risk in the home.''
``Management ... has been kind of a disaster,'' Rahaim said. ``I began knowing the department in terms of child abuse and neglect in 1987. It has gotten worse over time. It is worse now, in my opinion, than it ever has been.''
Other depositions detailed a survey the department conducted that showed required monthly visits were made to only 8 percent of Palm Beach children in state custody. The survey showed that 21 percent of the children in the district were placed in abusive or negligent foster homes.
DCF District Administrator David May, who had portions of his deposition released, said the data was old and not very accurate.
He said the figures were based on a sampling of 20 to 30 children and were compiled more than two years ago _ before he took over the district. The district now has 2,100 children in its custody and May said more than 90 percent are seen each month and less than 1 percent end up in abusive homes.
``It's a little curious that this is coming out now,'' May said. ``We need credibility and all of this, particularly dredging up old depositions that were based on still older data, doesn't help with that.''
The lawyers, Theodore Babbitt and Bob Montgomery, sued the state and Bush in June 2000 hoping that the federal government would step in and oversee the DCF. A federal judge recently threw out the suit, saying the court had no jurisdiction. The attorneys are appealing the decision.
The released excerpts came from five depositions _ all from Palm Beach County _ of about 100 they took around the state.
DCF chief Kathleen Kearney said: ``It's not a new case and it's something we won.''
But Babbitt said they are appealing the decision because the state hasn't improved the department.
``Every two years or so a child dies and the department responds by creating more paperwork, by not changing the system,'' he said. ``It's not an individual problem _ it's not one case worker who is falsifying records _ it's a system that is not working.''
The bill that Bush signed in Tallahassee was introduced during a special session this month in response to Rilya's case. The Miami girl was missing for 15 months before DCF knew she was gone. Her caseworker allegedly filed false reports about monthly visits with the child.
The new law makes it a felony for state workers to falsify records related to children, the elderly or disabled in state care. State workers who falsify those specific documents would face a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Caseworkers, the DCF employees assigned to supervise children in the field, also came under attack Wednesday in Miami at a hearing of the governor's blue-ribbon panel examining the state's performance in Rilya's disappearance.
``There is no safety net because of lack of supervision,'' said Circuit Judge Jeri Cohen, who hears DCF cases in Miami every day. Rilya's case, with 15 months of missing monthly visits, is a prime example, ``and we knew that,'' she said.
``You can't do this without money, You have to dedicate more resources,'' Cohen said. But she said she's pessimistic the Legislature will address the problems soon because things in Tallahassee ``sit on shelves.''
Caseworkers are generally overloaded, poorly trained and don't have the resources to do their jobs, she said.
``There are some very good ones out there,'' she said. ``But many of them don't have the background, education, cultural sensitivity to do what needs to be done.''
Cohen said DCF is not alone. She said flaws in the child welfare system extend to schools, mental health and substance abuse services and her own court system.
Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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DCF to pay $5 million in abuse case (Also see 20/20 above)
By Megan O'Matz
and Shana Gruskin Staff Writers
May 17, 2002
Florida's Department of Children & Families has agreed to pay $5 million to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of six siblings who were physically and sexually abused while in foster care.
The suit claimed that state workers "ignored clear signs of danger," and allowed the children to be adopted by foster parents who starved them, locked them up and beat them.
"This settlement will provide the money these children may need for care and treatment throughout the rest of their lives," said Broward County attorney Howard Talenfeld.
Ordinarily, damages in state negligence claims are capped at $100,000. But the suit filed by Talenfeld contends that DCF violated the children's civil rights, subjecting the state to a greater penalty.
"From what I understand, this is the largest settlement damage claim ever paid by the state of Florida for the abuse of a foster child," he said.
Named in the suit, filed in 1999, were DCF chief Kathleen Kearney, who took over the agency that year, and five DCF workers.
"We feel that the settlement was just," said DCF spokeswoman LaNedra Carroll. "Mr. Talenfeld will receive $1.3 million for his fees and the rest of the $5 million will be divided among the six children.
"I'm happy to tell you all of the children are together, and I understand they're doing well," she said.
The negotiated closure to the suit comes at a time when DCF is under intense criticism for its handling of the case of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson, a child under state supervision who was discovered missing from her caretaker's house in late April. The child's caseworker had not visited her for 15 months and did not know she was gone. A search for the child is under way.
The suit involving the six siblings evokes disturbing parallels to Rilya's case. It charges that caseworkers failed to regularly visit the children, and that various units within DCF overlooked problems in the foster parents' backgrounds and turned a blind eye to the children's distress.
"We hope this judgment will be a wake-up call that the state is responsible for the actions of its employees," said Talenfeld, an outspoken child welfare advocate who regularly sues DCF on behalf of foster children.
The suit involves five brothers and one sister, now ages 9 to 15, who were in the care of Frank and Jackie Lynch of Hollywood in the early and mid-1990s.
DCF began placing the children with the Lynches in 1990, even though Jackie Lynch's daughter from a prior marriage was removed from her care in 1987 for sexual and emotional abuse, according to court documents. Jackie Lynch's other three biological children were put under protective supervision by the court, but left in the home.
The suit also alleges that DCF was aware that the foster father, Frank Lynch, "had abandoned his biological children," been arrested for obstruction of justice and fell $16,000 behind in child support payments.
"By the department's own standards, rules and regulations, the Lynch foster home should never have been licensed and re-licensed as a foster home," the suit states.
Talenfeld said no DCF caseworker documented a visit to the Lynch home during the first 20 months of their care there.
"The ... children were placed in this home and largely forgotten by the department," the suit stated.
The suit contended that the department's licensing unit left the children in the home even after learning that Jackie Lynch's 15-year-old son was arrested for indecent assault and videotaping a 14-year-old girl having sex with him. Another teenage male also was connected to the incident and was living in the home, as well.
The suit claimed that DCF ignored other warning signs, too.
In 1992, a DCF caseworker was told by the children's day care operator that Jackie Lynch was "uncooperative" and refused to keep the children at home when they were sick.
The suit states that the caseworker did not investigate the allegation nor visit the children to see if they were well.
Sometime in February 1992, a volunteer guardian appointed by the court to monitor the children told DCF workers that the children were withdrawn and cried easily, the complaint states. The guardian claimed that the oldest boy had "changed dramatically" and was like a "whipped dog."
The suit stated that DCF workers did not investigate the guardian's concerns, and later acquiesced to Jackie Lynch's demands that the guardian be taken off the case. All six foster children were adopted by the Lynches in 1995. According to the initial complaint in the case, the children lived in one room that contained no furniture, were forced to sleep on the floor and had no access to bathrooms.
"As a result, they were forced to urinate and defecate in the room," the suit stated. It contends that the foster parents yelled slurs at the children, gave them Nyquil to force them to sleep, and videotaped them being physically and sexually abused.
In August 1997, the children were taken from the Lynches "because of the pervasive abuse they suffered while at their home," according to the court record. Earlier this month, all six children were placed with a new adoptive family.
Megan O'Matz can be reached at momatz@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4518.
Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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Child agencies not being heard, advocate says
By Lona O'Connor
Education Writer
May 18, 2002
The relationship between the Department of Children & Families and private agencies that provide services to children has deteriorated since Kathleen Kearney took over the department, a child advocate told a state panel on Friday.
"You're not going to hear from private providers. They are afraid to say what they feel," said Berta Blecke, a long-time child advocate in Miami-Dade County. "They've given up. They don't feel their voices are being heard. They are never brought to the table."
Blecke, who co-founded the guardian ad litem program for Miami-Dade 20 years ago, told the panel that the relationship of DCF, courts and private providers had been bad but deteriorated even more during the past two years.
"On all levels it's a breakdown," said Blecke.
Responding to Blecke after the hearing, Kearney said, "That's the voice of one person, and that is not indicative of the state." She added, "I'm very much a believer this shouldn't be a Tallahassee-driven system."
Kearney has described the case of missing 5-year-old Rilya Wilson as "an isolated incident." She places blame on caseworker DeBorah Muskelly, who quit under pressure for unrelated reasons in March.
Blecke was not scheduled to speak at the public hearing, but panel leader David Lawrence summoned her to the microphone. The panel meets again Monday and must produce a report by the end of the month.
There are a number of private agencies that operate foster homes and provide other foster care services for DCF. In 2004, the state is to switch over to a completely privatized foster care system.
Blecke said that in dealing with DCF, "it's an environment of: `This is the way it's going to be, and this is what you're going to do.'" Blecke said she has heard complaints about the change in attitude from private social service agencies statewide as Gov. Jeb Bush pushes for increasing privatization of traditional welfare services.
State Rep. Nan Rich, D-Weston, said at the hearing that complaints also can be heard across the state about HomeSafenet, the state's over-budget, Web-based case-tracking system, which is three years away from completion. Originally priced at $30 million and expected to be finished in 1998, HomeSafenet's cost has ballooned to $230 million and it has been described as already out of date.
Those who are using HomeSafenet describe the case-tracking system as hostile, cumbersome, inflexible and time-consuming, Rich said. "You don't see a lot of providers here," Rich told the panel. "The providers are not coming forward because they do fear retribution."
Sun-Sentinel wire services contributed to this report.
Lona O'Connor can be reached at lo'connor@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4604.
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