Protect them
In the case of ‘Dion’ and ‘Darius,’ CPS created a wrong out of something right.
Texas’ battered and beleaguered foster care system needs foster parents like Angela Sugarek and Carol Jeffery. Thousands of Texas’ children in the system need foster parents like Sugarek and Jeffery. For a few blessed months, two of those children, Dion and Darius, had them.
But then the state of Texas foolishly and cruelly removed them from the Houston couple’s care.
Care is the essential word. Our state’s foster care system is infamous in the lack of care fostered for the children to whom it is obligated. In December, U.S. District Judge Janis Jack issued a scorching, detailed and, appropriately, morally indignant ruling calling the system a broken place where rape, abuse and instability are the norm.
Jack wrote that the system violates children’s 14th Amendment rights to be free from harm while in the state’s care and that foster children “almost uniformly leave state custody more damaged than when they entered.”
A foster care system that routinely violates the constitutional rights of children who it irreparably damages should cherish a couple like Sugarek and Jeffery, whose care and love is what these children need most.
That’s not what happened as reported Sunday by Chronicle metro columnist Lisa Falkenberg.
Last September, Sugarek and her wife, Jeffery, became the foster parents of a 3-year-old boy, “Dion.” This is how Falkenberg described him: “He was obese, his brown saucer eyes shellshocked, his chocolate skin pocked with a rash the CPS caseworker dismissed as eczema but a doctor later said was likely mites burrowing below. His shoes were two sizes too small, and he possessed one toy: a miniature motorcycle, broken.”
One month later, they took in his 4-year-old brother “Darius.” With Sugarek and Jeffery, they found a home. The four became a family who celebrated holidays, took vacations and whose increasing number of photos became albums.
The boys flourished. They also had a teenage half-brother, “Bobby.”
Sugarek and Jeffery asked Child Protective Services to increase the number of children they’d accept to three. Their minds were changed by several signs that Bobby was sexually abusing one of his little brothers.
CPS dismissed their reports. One supervisor advised them to not report abuse unless they’d seen it themselves, the wrong message yet emblematic of a state that doesn’t track child-on-child abuse of the wards in their care.
Still, the foster moms reported incidents as they arose. CPS continued to ignore the allegations and, because it was clear Sugarek and Jeffery would not adopt Bobby, began showcasing the brothers — all three of them — to other families.
CPS notified Sugarek and Jeffery that Darius and Dion would be taken to a “respite” placement. On April 7, the brothers left a home that had been called exemplary and where their progress was described as amazing.
Two little boys who have experienced horrors we don’t want to imagine had finally found a home where they could receive the love and nurturing that should be every child’s birthright. CPS made the right decision in placing Dion and Darius with Sugarek and Jeffery. Every child in Texas’ foster care system should be so fortunate.
Why create a wrong out of something right?
We know that CPS workers are overburdened and underpaid, but these aren’t excuses in this case where the exercise of common sense would have come at no energy or cost.
CPS also erred in ignoring signs that their older brother is a sexual predator. He’s also a ward of the state and has probably been preyed upon in the course of his young life. CPS has a chance to stop this cycle of abuse by providing him the help he needs.
As for Dion and Darius, a judge must intervene quickly to stop the cycle of disruption in their lives and reunite them with the couple who have become their parents. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday. As Falkenberg wrote, “Bring the boys back, CPS. Protect them, finally.”