The Calizaire sisters lived with countless families, and say they were abused by some of their foster care parents
Sophia and Princess Calizaire were introduced to
foster care when they were seen wandering the streets looking for their
mother, who had left them alone in a South Florida motel.
“We heard this big bang at the door,” said Sophia Calizaire. “We were trying to figure out who it was.”
Sophia
The Calizaire sisters lived with countless families
and were moved from one school to another. They say they were abused
while staying with some of those foster care parents.
“She took a belt, she started beating me with the
belt, picked up a hanger, she started beating me with the hanger,
picked up a heel and started beating me with the heel,” said Sophia.
Her sister, Princess, was outside the room and could
hear everything. “I couldn’t do anything about it,” Princess said,
with tears coming down her face.
The Calizaire sisters remember one foster care
parent making them sleep in a dog house and eat dog food. They say some
foster care parents wouldn’t feed them, would keep locks on the
refrigerator and would sometimes starve them as a form of punishment.
“She told me to eat in front of my sister while she
watched and my sister is hungry. I took out the chewed up piece of
chicken from my mouth and gave it to her,” said Sophia, who said she
was caught by her foster care mother. “She filled up the bathroom sink
and she took my head and started drowning me. She kept drowning me
until she felt she was ready to stop.”
Princess says the
abuse not only came from the parents. “I stayed in a foster home down
south where this boy used to try to rape me every night before I would
go to sleep,” she said. “I used to be scared to go to sleep at night. I
ran away from there.”
Mez Pierre, now 24, had a similar experience in
foster care when he was a little boy. He says he was sexually abused by
one of the teen foster kids staying in the same home.
“I was a little kid, they knew they could take
advantage of me and I couldn’t fight back,” said Pierre. “But I did
tell, I did tell someone and she didn’t do anything, she didn’t do
anything.”
In 2005, DCF completed privatizing foster care.
They contracted with 20 lead agencies throughout the state to oversee
the care and needs of children in foster care.
Our Kids manages Miami-Dade and Monroe counties,
while Child Net handles Broward County. The abuse endured by Pierre and
the Calizaire sisters happened before the agencies took over, but they
still say the system is far from perfect.
Some child advocate attorneys say the current
privatized system does not work because lead agencies like Our Kids
sub-contracted other organizations to monitor foster care children.
“So you have multiple corporations and agencies who
supposedly are in charge and responsible for the lives of the children
but tragically these children, real human beings, fall through the
cracks in the system,” said attorney Howard Talenfeld.
DCF disagrees and says when it was a statewide agency it became quite unmanageable.
“Out of the one or two cases that you hear which
are horrible cases and we need to learn from, there are thousands of
children and families that DCF and Our Kids helps on a yearly and daily
basis,” said DCF’s southern regional director, Esther Jacobo, who
added that DCF is taking steps to improve the system.
Esther Jacobo
Jacobo said case managers have to see a child in
care every 30 days and must have private conversations with that child
so they feel comfortable opening up. She says there is an electronic
monitoring system in place for case workers, which snaps a picture of
the child with a time, date and location.
“It’s kind of like a GPS and statewide Tallahassee
monitors that so you know what is happening in terms of the child
visit,” Jacobo said.
Currently, there are just fewer than 20,000
children in foster care statewide, according to DCF. During a two-month
span between August and October, there were 127 verified abuse cases
across the state, 17 of them in the South Florida area.
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Foster-Care-System-Through-The-Eyes-of-The-Ones-Who-Lived-It-140874593.html
