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The grandparents of two children are suing the state’s Department for Children and Families for ignoring what they say are dozens of reports of the children’s abuse and for failing to step in and protect them.
The suit alleges that the department ignored more than 30 reports from multiple people about the children’s abuse, failed to make 26 required visits and carelessly performed its required risk assessments. It argues all of this drastically increased the children’s risk of harm.
Beginning in 2008, the children in question began living with their father and stepmother in a three-bedroom mobile home in Ludlow, according to court documents. They were approximately 8 and 10 years old at that time. The suit alleges that they endured “almost daily physical and emotional abuse” for the next four years, until they were taken into custody by the state in 2012.
“This is not a case where one lone action determined the children’s fate,” the suit states. “This is a case of grossly negligent and repeated failures to follow DCF policies, rules and statutes enacted to protect vulnerable children.”
It argues that DCF is liable for all of the “injurious consequences” that stemmed from its negligent acts, even though there were acts by others that also injured the children.
The grandparents who filed the suit are not being named by VTDigger in order to safeguard the identities of the children they say were harmed.
The suit was originally filed in Windsor County Superior Court in 2014, and has been pending for more than five years. Now, a jury trial in the case has been scheduled for December.
However, the case was filed by the children’s grandparents, who have suffered serious health problems in the intermittent time period. Their grandfather died in 2018, and their grandmother is currently suffering from advanced lung cancer.
The state has filed three different appeals, on various procedural grounds, all of which have been denied by the court. A decision from the Vermont Supreme Court as to whether the state has permission to file a motion for interlocutory appeal is currently pending.
The children were allegedly essentially locked in their rooms, and would be hit, beaten and threatened with violence on a regular basis.
“Despite all of this, DCF basically failed to take any action,” said Sharon Gentry, the lawyer representing the family in the case. “At one point even the grandparents were coming to DCF to make reports, and they told the grandmother to go home.”
A spokeperson for DCF said the agency does not comment on specific cases but provided what she described as a general statement. “The hardworking social workers of DCF do their best every day to help protect Vermont’s children. DCF strives to provide these workers with the resources and tools to accomplish that important goal.”
Concurrent with the alleged abuse of the children, the lawsuit alleges, the children’s father and stepmother were also acting as quasi-landlords for vulnerable adults in their three-room home, exploiting the adults for financial gain.
Court documents allege that the couple would lure the vulnerable adults into residing in their home, and then take their money, and physically and emotionally abuse them.
The adults were allegedly not allowed to leave the house, and if they did, the parents would force one of the children to tackle them and bring them back. If the vulnerable adults did not comply with the couple’s demands, the couple would threaten them with a hammer.
There were several suicide attempts at that house that required police intervention, according to court documents.
Several of the vulnerable adults who lived at the home testified about the kind of conditions that both they and the children endured.
One woman testified that in the mornings, if either of the parents were awakened, even by one of their many dogs, then the children would inevitably be beaten and thrown out the door, according to court documents. She said the couple’s favorite things to do were to smack the son on the back of the head and throw objects at the daughter.
Another adult testified that the parents would regularly slap the children in the face, and hit them with backscratchers, belts and shoes. They said the stepmother would also threaten the children with violence, saying things like “I’ll knock you out” or that she would “beat the (stuff)” out of them.
The case alleges that the children’s father would masturbate to pornography on the computer in front of the children, and that their stepmother put pictures of the 10-year-old girl online in an attempt to entice men to have sex with her.
The son was also called names such as “bitch, bastard, retard, dummy and idiot” daily, and hit “four to five to 10 times a day,” the suit alleges.
The children were also put into living conditions alongside many adults with criminal records, including several with charges of inappropriate contact with minors. One of the adults who lived in the family’s home had 169 previous contacts with police, and two investigations into allegations of aggravated sexual assault on minors.
The children’s father himself had 17 contacts with Ludlow Police, while their stepmother had 46 contacts.
In 2012, a recently hired DCF worker was assigned to the family’s case, and quickly informed her supervisor that the children should be removed from the home, according to court documents. Her boss allegedly told her that she was new to the job and that she should just be following the plan that DCF already had in place. That plan was “just to offer support,” according to court documents.
The DCF worker, frustrated with that answer, went over her boss’ head, informing police of the case. The officer she worked with ultimately drafted an affidavit to remove the children from the home.
At that time, the officer allegedly apologized to the grandparents for DCF’s failure to protect the children and said she didn’t understand why the children had not been removed from the home sooner.
When they were removed from the three-bedroom mobile home, there were nine people and 10 dogs living in the home, court documents say.
Both parents were criminally charged for their abuse of the children, and have served time in jail. Gentry, who filed the lawsuit, said that’s one thing that has been hard for the clients — watching the state charge the parents with multiple counts of domestic assault, while at the same time, spending $100,000 on experts who will say that the children didn’t experience abuse.
“I think it’s been really hard for the kids to have to hear that coming from the state,” she said. “To hear ‘nothing really happened to you.’”
Gentry said that’s really what the family wants to get out of this suit — acknowledgement of what happened to the children, and acknowledgement of how DCF failed them.
“For years, the kids’ family, and even people living in their house were saying these kids are being abused,” Gentry said. “They want someone to say that what DCF did was wrong. The kids themselves even want to go through this process, even though it’s so hard — they want to make sure it doesn’t happen to any other kids. They’re very clear on that.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Suit claims DCF failed to protect children from years of abuse.