Jury Finds DCF At Fault In North Florida Girl's Death

STARKE, Fla. -- A Bradford County jury found the state Department of Children & Families 100 percent at fault Wednesday in the death of a 3-year-old girl left in an abusive home.
Ciara Floyd was beaten to death by her mother's boyfriend in 1996, a month after the girl's father took her to Shands Hospital in Gainesville with bruises on her chest and back. A state child abuse investigator said there was not enough evidence to remove the child from her mother's home. The boyfriend, Larry Christopher Noegel, had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Jurors awarded $250,000 to Ciara's father, William Floyd.

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Jury's Ruling Bittersweet For William Floyd

"I'm glad my story could finally come out and everybody else could finally see they had more than enough; they could have prevented her death," Floyd said. DCF officials did not immediately say whether they would appeal the verdict. "We are reviewing the jury's decision and are exploring our legal options," DCF spokesman Tim Bottcher said in a statement. DCF's lawyer said in closing arguments that the investigator, Janice Joiner, had no recourse under the law but to leave Ciara with her mother. Deputy Attorney General Denis Dean said in defending DCF that there were no doctor's reports from Shands indicating abuse. "Without that, there were no reasonable grounds to justify the removal of Ciara," Dean said. "Whether she'd like to do something, whether she has a feeling, she has to follow the law. It'd be great if she had a crystal ball." But Floyd's lawyer said the bruises on the child's chest and back, an admitted domestic battery by her mother's boyfriend and a verified abuse report involving another child should have prompted Ciara's removal from the home, attorney Val Bates said. "Would you have to have more information than that?" Bates asked jurors. "Ms. Joiner, she wants to see a knife sticking out of your neck." "I did everything I knew everything I could legally do and it didn't do any good," Floyd said he told Ciara as he held her unconscious body just before she died. Bates asked jurors to award Ciara's father $250,000, more than twice the state cap of $100,000, for negligence claims against state agencies. Bates said no amount of money could ever compensate Floyd for losing his daughter, who would now be 11 years old. Dean called Floyd's death a "tragedy" but urged jurors not to "let the tragedy of her death be compounded by blaming Janice Joiner."

http://www.news4jax.com/news/4054296/detail.html

DCF Lawsuit State Settles DCF Case For $14 Million

For 10 years, agents with Florida’s Department of Children and Families placed children with foster mother Nellie Johnson, despite multiple reports that she abused kids in her care.
Now, the agency has agreed to pay more than $14 million to the 20 children placed in Johnson’s home. She was convicted of child abuse and neglect in 2003 and sentenced to 60 years in prison.

The payouts will resolve a federal lawsuit filed against nine DCF case workers and investigators. It also disposes of a state case filed against DCF in Alachua Circuit Court. 


The federal suit brought on behalf of 20 children alleged the DCF workers violated the children’s civil rights by depriving them of their rights to life, liberty or property provided in the 14th Amendment’s due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.

By suing the DCF agents under a federal civil rights act, the plaintiffs did not have to endure a protracted claims bill procedure in the Legislature to collect damages above the Florida’s sovereign immunity caps of $100,000 per person and $200,000 per incident. State law protects governmental entities such as the DCF from paying the full amount of claims unless lawmakers approve an exemption.

Filing a federal civil rights claim sidesteps the sovereign immunity limits, but it requires a higher burden of proof. The lawsuit, filed by child advocate and Fort Lauderdale attorney Howard Talenfeld, outlines each instance that a case worker failed to act upon a tip or a report of abuse.

"This is one of the most egregious set of facts you’ve seen anywhere and obviously the state agreed," Talenfeld said. He applauded DCF and its secretary, Bob Butterworth, for not forcing the plaintiffs to go to trial to seek the money they needed for treatment.

Butterworth, a former Florida attorney general, Broward judge and law school dean at St. Thomas University, said the outcome demonstrates the department’s commitment to settling cases involving clear wrongdoing on the part of DCF and its agents.

"The state can’t have it both ways," Butterworth said, adding that Florida cannot prosecute the foster mother for abuse and simultaneously take the position in civil court that the children must prove they were abused. 

Butterworth DCF

Coral Gables attorney Sheridan Weissenborn, a partner at Papy Weissenborn Vraspir Paterno & Puga, who represented the state agents named in the federal lawsuit, did not return call for comment by deadline Thursday.

From 1991 to 2001, Johnson, a single mother, took in more than two dozen children, according to the federal lawsuit filed by Talenfeld. During that time, 17 reports of physical and emotional abuse were filed with DCF and 30 calls were received by the department’s hotline indicating that Johnson was abusing children in her care, the lawsuit alleged.
Despite the complaints and the need for the removal of some abused children from Johnson’s homes in the Gainesville area, DCF continued to place children with her.

The children said that Johnson would beat them with pipes, belts, shoes, sticks and paddles. She would also force them to eat until they vomited.

In 2001, state officials terminated Johnson’s parental rights and removed the 17 children who were then in her care.

In 2003, Johnson and one of her adult adoptive daughters were convicted of child abuse and neglect.

In 2005, Talenfeld sued on the children’s behalf in Broward Circuit Court. The case was removed to U.S. District Court in Miami. Ten of the children in the suit were older than 18 at the time the lawsuit was filed.

 The lawsuit alleged that DCF "utilized the Johnson home as an inexpensive means to warehouse special needs children in order to avoid providing necessary and appropriate foster care and adoption services to those children."

Talenfeld recounted one instance when a child risked bringing a paddle to school that Johnson used to beat her with so she could give it to a DCF agent. The agent returned the paddle to Johnson without acting on the child’s complaint.

"Obviously the whole system plain did not work," Butterworth said in an interview. He added the state should not have left the children in Johnson’s home.

"When Nellie Johnson receives 60 years in prison for abusing the children that she had placed with her, you know pretty well that you’re not going to win that case," Butterworth said.

 

He said DCF decided it was in the best interest of the state and the children to settle and not delay justice for the children who were guaranteed to win anyway.

"Butterworth’s position makes sense: Why should we waste state resources on defending indefensible claims when we could be getting treatment for these children?" Talenfeld said.



Howard Talenfeld 

http://www.judicialaccountability.org/articles/dcflawsuit.htm


By Jordana Mishory
Daily Business Review
September 28, 2007 

Lawsuit Filed Against Florida Department Of Children And Families

Lawsuit Filed Against Florida Department Of Children And Families (DCF) Arises Out Of The Death Of A 15-Month-Old Boy - Law Offices Of Spicer And Miller, P.L.

GAINESVILLE, Fla., Jan. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Blake Rupe, 15 months old, passed away on December 16, 2008 as the result of horrific child abuse, which unfortunately could have been prevented. The Personal Representative of the Estate of Blake Rupe and Brian Fore, the father of the child and his 4-year-old surviving sister, have now filed a lawsuit against DCF and other involved agencies and named David Spicer and Stephen K. Miller as case attorneys.

The errors by DCF unfortunately did not end after this tragedy. Coincidentally, months after Blake's death on the same day that David Tatara, the live in boyfriend of Blake's mother, was charged with 2nd degree murder and aggravated child abuse, DCF mailed Tatara a letter stating that "the Department determined that there are no indications of bone fracture, failure to protect, physical injury, death or inadequate supervision."

DCF Stupid People

"It is very concerning to me that a DCF letter is mailed out almost four months after a child in its care has already passed away," Miller said. "It makes you wonder if anyone is really monitoring these files closely, or if computers are entrusted to track children and generate form letters."
DCF admitted fault through Spokesperson Carol Hoeppner, in several interviews shortly after the tragedy.  "We know we could have done more. We know we have an obligation to do more," said Hoeppner. In January 2009, a case manager and supervisor with a contracted agency were also fired.

Attorneys Miller and Spicer are determined to do everything possible to ensure that all those involved in the negligent handling of this case that resulted in this tragedy are held accountable. "Nothing anyone can do will ever bring that baby boy back, but we are going to do all we can to ensure that DCF and its contracted agencies never let this happen again to any other child," said Miller

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