ACS ‘ignored’ horror house
Never checked on kids it sent there – report
SIXTY FOSTER kids were placed in an accused pedophile’s Long Island lair by ACS despite 18 separate child abuse allegations against him — and child welfare workers never once checked on them.
The latest blast at the city’s Administration for Children’s Services came Wednesday in a scathing 83-page report from a special Suffolk County grand jury investigating the case of alleged molester Cesar GonzalesMugaburu.
“They washed their hands of the children entirely and never looked back,” said Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota. “Not once did anyone from ACS ever visit the house to check on the children. I find that outrageous.”
So did Christopher Couret, 31, who says he endured years of abuse at the hands of his notorious foster dad.
“I always felt like there was something wrong with the agencies,” Couret told the Daily News. “I kept thinking, ‘How can this man keep getting away with this?’
“I remember going to social workers to report my abuse and they would tell me, ‘You have to go back to the house or the hospital.’ I had no choice but to return.”
Gonzales-Mugaburu faces trial next month for sexually abusing eight of his foster kids. After his arrest in March 2016, he was also accused of sexually assaulting the family dog.
The accused child molester collected a staggering $1,543,559.03 in tax-free money for his work as a foster parent, according to the report.
The report’s recommendations included eliminating the New York State statute of limitations on child abuse cases, a cause advocated by the Daily News.
Couret, whose allegations against Gonzales-Mugaburu went unprosecuted because of the statute of limitations, hopes the report will persuade lawmakers to change the law.
“This is no good,” he said of the statute of limitations restriction. “Him and people like him should be put in jail. No one listened to me, but he will see me in court and know he has to pay for what he did.”
Suffolk prosecutors said the current law prevented them from bringing additional abuse charges against GonzalesMugaburu.
Victims must come forward by the age of 23 — or else their attackers can dodge prosecution,
Spota said ACS deleted language from its contract with the nonprofit SCO Family of Services that would require oversight by the city agency.
ACS completely ceded its responsibilities to the other agency rather than keep an eye on the kids.
“There was virtually no contact with these children or the foster parent,” said Spota. “They basically delegated every single responsibility they had to these nonprofit agencies and said to them, ‘They’re yours. Goodbye.’ And that is so wrong.”
There was no response from ACS to a request for comment on the new report. The grand jury heard from 29 witnesses after first assembling in August.
According to the report, a lack of communications between five bureaucracies allowed Gonzales-Mugaburu to keep bringing kids into his Suffolk County home despite the red flags.
In 2002, the Suffolk County Department of Social Services became so worried about the number of abuse reports against GonzalesMugaburu that it called for an end to placing kids in his home.
But the Long Island agency never put its concerns in writing or shared them with other agencies that were steering kids to the suspect, according to the report.
Such failures led to the placement of more than 140 boys with the accused pedophile across the two decades before his arrest. Authorities finally moved on the suspect after two brothers accused Gonzales-Mugaburu of abusing them.
“Even with multiple levels of supervision in place, the children placed in (his) home were overlooked, resulting in abuse that spanned two decades,” the Suffolk report found.
The complaints against Gonzales-Mugaburu dated to 1998, nearly two decades before his arrest. At least one accused him of sexual abuse and another of physical abuse. All the complaints against the foster father were ruled unfounded and the agencies continued to funnel boys into his home.