[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 118 (Wednesday, September 18, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1599-E1600]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                    CONTINUING CRISIS IN FOSTER CARE

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                           HON. GEORGE MILLER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 18, 2002

  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, most of us favor 
federal spending to promote the safety, well-being, and stability of 
children in the child welfare system. Yet in too many states, federal 
funds are being used to finance dysfunctional child welfare systems, 
often operating in violation of federal laws. We cannot continue to 
perpetuate a system that fails to protect children or their families or 
provide necessary services and safeguards.
  In the following article, The Miami Herald reports that 183 employees 
of Florida's Department of Children and Families (DCF) had committed 
felonies, including child molestation, child abuse, sex crimes and drug 
dealing. In the report, a DCF official acknowledges that ``the most 
vulnerable people in our community are trusted to people in 
circumstances where there is a potential for these kinds of 
background.''
  In Florida and across the nation, state, county and local agencies 
are facing difficulties in recruiting, retaining, training and 
supervising child welfare workers. Having poorly trained, overworked, 
underpaid, caseworkers leads to massive turnovers, which, in turn, 
exacerbates the challenge of accountability in a system responsible for 
safety and well being of children.
  The child welfare system must be reformed to improve the delivery of 
mandated services, the efficient operation of accountability systems, 
and successful permanent placements for children. In addition, there 
must be immediate and sustained oversight of the child welfare programs 
by the Department of Health and Human Services, and by state 
governments.
  The article follows:

                 [From the Miami Herald, Sept. 8, 2002]

 State Child-Welfare Payroll Includes Employees Who Have Criminal Pasts

           (By David Kidwell, Jason Grotto and Tere Figueras)

       Florida's embattled child-welfare agency--the Department of 
     Children & Families--employs at least 183 people who have 
     been arrested and punished for an array of felonies including 
     child molestation, child abuse, sex crimes, drug dealing, 
     even welfare fraud against the agency itself, a Herald 
     investigation has found.
       For instance, the head of the agency's data-security team 
     in Tallahassee is listed on the state's list of sexual 
     predators for molesting a 5-year-old boy.
       In other cases, the crimes committed by DCF employees are 
     directly relevant to the positions of trust they now hold.
       In Miami, the director of rehabilitative services for a 
     mental hospital has twice been arrested for cocaine buys.
       In Chattahoochee, a man who supervises mental patients was 
     charged with attempted first-degree murder in 1986 for firing 
     a shot at his wife and racking a shotgun at her as she 
     cowered with their son in a closet. He pleaded no contest to 
     lesser charges.
       In Kissimmee, the DCF hired a child-abuse investigator who 
     two years earlier was convicted of violating a restraining 
     order issued after she threw a brick through her ex-
     boyfriend's living room window and smashed his car windshield 
     with a tire iron.
       In Gainesville, a night Supervisor at a home for the 
     developmentally disabled was convicted in 1994 in a string of 
     six burglaries at an apartment complex where her job as a 
     maid gave her access to a pass key.
       In Tampa, a family services counselor was allowed to keep 
     her job despite charges that she beat up her 68-year-old 
     mother in the front yard during an argument.
       Administrators of the DCF--already beleaguered by criticism 
     over the agency's handling of cases involving missing 
     children that led to the resignation of department Secretary 
     Kathleen Kearney--say they have worked hard to screen 
     employees.
       In most cases, they say, the agency was aware of the 
     charges and thoroughly reviewed the backgrounds of the 
     employees to make sure their lives were back on track and 
     that DCF clients would not be imperiled. ``In a perfect 
     world, none of our employees would have any kind of criminal 
     past,'' said Tim Bottcher, a DCF spokesman in Tallahassee. 
     ``But we just know that is unrealistic. In reality, we are no 
     different that any other large organization.'' He said the 
     183 employees found by The Herald should be considered in the 
     context of an enormous agency with 24,000 employees 
     statewide. ``When it comes to our attitude on employees who 
     have broken the law, we have considered the offenses and 
     acted accordingly.''
       The DCF, however, had not complied with Herald requests to 
     provide personnel files to verify many of the agency's 
     actions in these cases. DCF administrators acknowledged that 
     in some cases the agency did not know about the criminal 
     pasts of its employees.
       This week, three submitted their resignations after Herald 
     inquiries. They include the Miami rehabilitative services 
     director, a human-services worker at Florida State Hospital 
     in Chattahoochee who pleaded no contest to selling cocaine in 
     1994, and a human-services analyst in Miami caught in an 
     insurance-fraud scheme in 1997.


                            DIDN'T DISCLOSE

       DCF administrators said each of them failed to disclose 
     their arrests to the DCF as required by the agency.
       Among the 183 employees charged were three who have been 
     punished for child abuse, 22 for grand theft, seven for 
     aggravated battery, two for DUI manslaughter, three for 
     dealing drugs, 10 for aggravated assault with a weapon and 
     nine for welfare fraud.
       The Herald also found one man, a $61,446-per-year 
     supervisor in the DCF's data-processing center in 
     Tallahassee, on Florida's registry of sexual predators.
       Carl Avery Anderson, 43, was hired in 1988 while he was 
     still on house arrest for molesting a 5-year old boy in his 
     care. According to police records, he admitted to the charges 
     and pleaded no contest to lewd and lascivious assault on a 
     child in 1987. The charges cost Anderson his data job at the 
     Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Anderson now insists 
     he is innocent and that police tricked him into a confession. 
     ``I have never been in trouble in my life,'' he told The 
     Herald. ``If I had tried to fight that . . . maybe I could 
     have gotten off. I pleaded because I was ignorant. People who 
     know me know I didn't do this.''


                             DATA SECURITY

       He is now head of the DCF's data-security team, where he 
     supervises three others and is responsible for making sure 
     the agency's enormous stockpile of sensitive and private 
     information remains that way.
       ``He has been an excellent employee who has been promoted 
     during his career here,'' Bottcher said. ``It would be a 
     concern of ours

[[Page E1600]]

     if he had direct contact with clients, but we don't feel his 
     job is relevant to the crimes.
       ``He does have security clearance that would allow him to 
     access client information,'' Bottcher said. ``We did not 
     consider him to be a risk.''
       Some of the names on The Herald's list entered pretrial 
     diversion programs in which prosecutors agreed to drop the 
     cases after the charges were filed and the people completed a 
     program of probation, counseling or specialized classes.
       Among them: Bart Harrell, 40, who was hired as a patient-
     activities coordinator at the Chattahoochee mental hospital 
     less than seven months after he was charged in 1989 with 
     sexual battery on a person younger than 18 in Alabama, 
     according to records and interviews.


                              NOT REQUIRED

       Employees were not required to disclose arrests to the DCF 
     before a policy change in 1994, said Walt Cook, the DCF's 
     assistant director of human resources.
       Harrell declined to speak about the case but said: ``Those 
     records are supposed to be sealed and expunged. You are about 
     to ruin my life again over something that didn't happen 13 
     years ago.''
       Among others who were hired or kept their jobs after 
     agreeing to pretrial intervention: Sabrina Barnes, 32, a 
     child-protective investigator in Kissimmee. In 1996, police 
     reports say, she smashed an ex-boyfriend's windshield and 
     threw a brick through his window. Barnes was later convicted 
     of violating a domestic violence injunction after another 
     confrontation with the same man.
       Susan Arnick Alston, 55, a family services counselor in 
     Tampa. According to police, she beat up her 68-year-old 
     mother in the front yard in 1993.
       In both cases, DCF administrators say they were aware of 
     the charges. ``People make mistakes in their lives, and 
     there's such a thing as rehabilitation,'' said Yvonne Vassel, 
     a DCF spokeswoman in Barnes' district. ``The process was 
     followed, and she was truthful with her disclosures to the 
     state.'' Alston, who licenses foster homes, was put on 
     administrative duties until the completion of her court case. 
     ``Had she pleaded guilty or no contest, she Would have been 
     disqualified from her employment,'' said Shauna Donovan, 
     spokeswoman for the agency's Tampa district. ``But since the 
     charges were dismissed, she was allowed to return to her 
     normal duties.''
       In Miami, two employees resigned Friday amid The Herald 
     investigation.
       Calvin Eugene Dandy, 54, the $45,000-per-year Miami 
     director of rehabilitative services at the South Florida 
     Evaluation and Treatment Center. He resigned after being 
     confronted by district administrators about a 1999 arrest for 
     buying cocaine that he failed to disclose.
       All employees are required to disclose any arrests 
     immediately, and employees in sensitive ``caretaker'' 
     positions--those who spend more than 15 hours a week in 
     direct contact with DCF clients--are reassigned until the 
     criminal case is closed.
       If employees in caretaker positions are convicted or plead 
     no contest to most felonies and first-degree misdemeanors, 
     they will be fired unless they apply for and are granted an 
     exemption.
       Lucian Bledsoe, the agency's human resources director in 
     Miami, said Dandy failed to disclose his 1999 arrest, which 
     came 14 months after the agency granted him an exemption for 
     a similar charge from 1993. He was sentenced to probation in 
     1993. In 1999, the charges were dropped because lab reports 
     on the drugs did not come back in time for a crucial court 
     date, according to Miami-Dade state attorney's office 
     records.
       Dandy did not return repeated messages left at his home and 
     office.
       ``The bottom line is he knew his responsibility to disclose 
     that arrest, and he didn't do it,'' Bledsoe said.
       Also resigning Friday: Mercedes Medina, 52, a $28,000-a-
     year human-services analyst in Miami, failed to disclose a 
     1998 arrest for insurance fraud. She pleaded no contest to a 
     string of staged auto accidents, court records show. ``I was 
     trying to help some people out,'' Medina told The Herald. 
     ``But it was so stupid. The stupidest thing I have ever done 
     in my whole life.'' Medina acknowledged she never told the 
     DCF about the insurance-fraud allegations or 1997 arrests for 
     drunken driving. She said she didn't think it was required.
       The Herald found two DCF employees in caretaker positions 
     who have been charged and punished for child abuse, including 
     Jennie Arnett Barkley, now 54, another supervisor who 
     oversees mental patients at Chattahoochee, She pleaded no 
     contest and served two years' probation on 1986 charges of 
     grand theft and child abuse after she took her 15-year-old 
     daughter on a shoplifting spree at Gayfer's, court records 
     show. Barkley declined to be interviewed.
       The Herald also found nine current employees who were 
     charged and punished for defrauding the agency itself out of 
     welfare money, including one woman who was hired in June 
     while still on probation for the charge.


                              RECENT HIRE

       Another recent DCF hire was 27-year-old Amy Curtis, who in 
     May became a night supervisor at Tocachale in Gainesville, an 
     institution of group homes for the developmentally disabled. 
     Curtis was convicted in 1994 in a series of six burglaries at 
     an apartment complex where her job as a maid gave her a pass 
     key, court records show. She had twice been denied the job 
     because of her past, but in May the agency relented, Tom 
     Barnes, the DCF's district spokesman, said ``there was a 
     feeling she had moved from blaming her crimes on her 
     circumstances. She was now taking responsibility.'' Barnes 
     said such demanding jobs that pay so little sometimes force 
     the agency to ``strike a balance.''
       ``We are very aware that the most vulnerable people in our 
     community are trusted to people in circumstances where there 
     is a potential for these kinds of backgrounds,'' he said. 
     It's a constant battle to keep these positions filled.''
       Another institution with a concentration of employees with 
     past criminal charges is the mental hospital at 
     Chattahoochee.
       The Herald found 46 hospital employees with felony charges 
     in their backgrounds including aggravated battery, robbery, 
     fraud, burglary, arson and trafficking in stolen property.


                            LONGTIME WORKER

       Among them is Frank Dickens, 55, who for 36 years has 
     supervised mental patients at the facility. In 1986, Dickens 
     was charged with attempted first-degree murder and battery 
     after his wife called police and told them he fired a shot at 
     her head in a drunken rage. According to police reports, he 
     shot at her with a pistol in the kitchen after she tried to 
     stop him from whipping their son with a belt. Dickens pleaded 
     no contest to shooting within a building and aggravated 
     assault. He served 90 days in Gadsden County Jail and was 
     placed on probation for five years. But he was not convicted 
     because a judge agreed to withhold an adjudication of guilt. 
     Dickens told The Herald the gun went off accidentally and 
     that his wife fabricated most of her allegations. ``Your wife 
     can tell on you tomorrow, and the police could pick you up 
     for it,'' he said.
       Dickens was granted an exemption as a caretaker employee in 
     1997, spokesman Bottcher said, in large part because of his 
     long career of service at Chattahoochee.
       Dickens said his crimes are minor compared with what he has 
     seen inside the walls of the mental hospital in his 36 years 
     as an employee there.
       ``We've had women killed in that place, strangled. We've 
     had people shot,'' Dickens said. ``I've been beat up, 
     threatened at knife point. It's a disaster up there, and 
     You're asking me whether I should be working there?''
       ``Some of these people have committed the worst crimes you 
     can imagine,'' Dickens said. ``And they're worse than I am, 
     because they've been convicted.''

     

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