One foster child’s DCS nightmare
It’s enough to turn your stomach (and then some):
A little girl, left to fend for herself in the home of a pedophile whose hobby was apparently child pornography.
Rescued eventually, then left to fend for herself in a home where she was burned so badly that her injuries will affect the rest of her life.
And the worst of it? This girl wasn’t born into such barbarism. No, she was put there by the Arizona Department of Child Safety, despite warnings that the foster homes were no place for kids.
This, according to an explosive lawsuit filed on behalf of the now 6-year-old.
A spokeswoman told me DCS can’t comment on a pending suit. Me? I can comment plenty. According to the lawsuit — filed recently in Pima County Superior Court against DCS and a pair of adoption agencies (Christian Family Care and St. Nicholas of Myra) — the toddler was taken from her mother in April 2013 “based on a fear of potential harm.”
This after a fight between her parents, who struggled with cocaine addictions. The girl’s father is a registered sex offender stemming from a 1999 crime involving an adult victim.
Cue the lawsuit: “Defendants took Jane Doe from her home where she had not been abused and placed her in homes where criminals ran pornographic rings, sexually abused children entrusted to their care, including Jane Doe.”
In June 2013, the child, then 2, was put in the Sierra Vista home of a couple who “had a pattern and practice of abusing their foster children, including but not limited to using the minor children entrusted in their care in a pornographic pedophile ring,” the complaint says.
The lawsuit says that DCS received multiple complaints about the foster home, including from one of the children consigned to living there, but didn’t take action.
The biological mother repeatedly complained that her daughter was suffering urinary-tract infections, had become scared of men and was afraid to return to the foster home after visits, the lawsuit says, and DCS took quick and decisive action.
The agency accused the mother of lying and began working to terminate her parental rights.
Meanwhile, in January 2015, a year and a half after the girl was placed with the foster family, her foster father, David Frodsham, showed up at a state office to collect his foster-care check while drunk. The girl and another child were in the car at the time he registered a 0.28 percent blood-alcohol level.
DCS immediately removed the children but never investigated the allegations of sexual assault, the lawsuit says.
So it must have been quite the shock when Frodsham was later arrested and accused of sexual misconduct with a minor.
“Law enforcement’s investigation revealed a video made by David Frodsham of a 3- or 4-year-old girl being penetrated by an adult male and screaming for her mommy,” the lawsuit says.
Sorry to put in that little detail, but it’s important to know what we’re talking about here. What kind of people DCS was (is?) using as foster parents.
Frodsham pleaded guilty to two
counts of sexual conduct with a minor and was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
“David was part of a pornography ring involving numerous children in his pornography and the procurement of sex for the ring,” the lawsuit says.
Several additional cases “involving this pedophile ring operated by David Frodsham” are expected to be filed, the lawsuit says.
But back to the little girl. After removing her in January 2015 from “a den of physical and sexual abuse and violence,” she was placed with a new foster family, who adopted her later that year after the mother’s rights were severed. (The state attributed the child’s temper tantrums, self-urination and crying not to the Frodshams but to her mother.)
Never mind, apparently, multiple family members’ warnings to the adoption agency, Christian Family Care, that the new adopted mother was mentally unstable and had long been abusive toward her husband.
Warnings that went unheeded until December, when Pima County Sheriff’s deputies were called to the couple’s Tucson home.
The girl had been submerged in a tub of scalding water.
“When police arrived, there was blood on the floor and pieces of Jane Doe’s skin was falling off of her body,” the lawsuit says. “There were bruises to her neck and arm(s) along with other signs of trauma.”
The child suffered burns over 80 percent of her body. Her organs were failing. Her toes had to be amputated. She’ll spend much of her life undergoing surgeries to replace most of her skin and will need “incredible amounts of care for the duration of her life.”
Doctors believe, based on the severity of her injuries, that she was in agony for hours before anyone called for help.
The mother, who faces two counts of abuse, claimed she didn’t realize the water was that hot. But according to investigators, there were signs that the child was held under the water, which was nearly 130 degrees. Can you imagine? Me neither. I wonder if DCS officials can imagine.
Clearly they couldn’t, or they wouldn’t have left her to suffer not one but two nightmares in her short life.
DCS officials have some major explaining to do — not to mention some soul searching over what happened here. I’d start with this: 1. Why didn’t caseworkers take the mother’s warnings about the first foster family seriously? Why assume she was lying when there never was evidence that she had abused her daughter?
2. Why didn’t they heed other relatives’ warnings about the second foster/ adoptive family seriously? Or were those warnings never relayed from the adoption agencies? And if that’s the case, is the state still contracting with those agencies?
3. What more is this agency going to do to ensure the foster families they are entrusting with vulnerable children are safe havens rather than horror shows?
What can they say today that will ensure us that there aren’t others out there like this little girl, brutalized not by her parents but, through its astonishing negligence, by the state of Arizona?