Man Testifies DCF Failed To Warn Him About Abusive Past Of Child He Took Into Home

By Jane Musgrave
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
WEST PALM BEACH —

In the weeks before 10-year-old Jerald came to live with a Wellington couple, he had been repeatedly raped by a 19-year-old in a house where state officials sent him after they rescued him from his neglectful mother.


Testifying for the first time Tuesday in a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against the Florida Department of Children & Families and another child welfare agency, the man who welcomed the filthy, malnourished neighborhood kid into his home said he and his wife weren’t told about those assaults nor the years of torture the boy had endured.
“Were you told by anyone that based on his history there was a likelihood that an animal or a child would be in danger around him?” attorney Stephan LeClainche asked his client, reading from reports the father said were kept secret from him. “Did you know that when rated on the issue of whether he posed a risk of violence to others he scored 4 out of 5?”
The father shook his head.
Instead, not knowing about the physical and sexual abuse heaped on Jerald beginning when he was 18 months old, the man moved the boy into his son’s bedroom. As many psychologists predicted, Jerald became a predator, ultimately sexually assaulting the couple’s then 9-year-old son, leaving the youngster with emotional scars that refuse to heal 10 years later, the father claims.
“He wouldn’t have been allowed to play with (Junior) period,” he testified of what he would have done had he known about Jerald’s tumultuous background.

The parade of horribles that Jerald experienced have been a focal part of the trial that began last week. Worried that the jury may punish them for not doing more to help Jerald, attorneys representing DCF and Camelot Community Care asked Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Meenu Sasser to tell the eight jurors that they can’t hold the two agencies responsible for any services they failed to provide Jerald, who is now in state prison on larceny convictions.
“Jerald is not a party to this case,” Sasser told the jury. Instead jurors are being asked to decide whether DCF and Camelot caseworkers failed to warn Junior’s mother and father about Jerald’s background and, if so, how much money Junior deserves for the emotional wounds the now 19-year-old youth suffered as a result. Another agency, Boys & Girls Town, also known as Father Flanagan’s, reached a confidential settlement with the family.
The Palm Beach Post is not reporting the full names of the parents, Junior or Jerald due to the nature of the allegations. It is the paper’s policy not to identify victims of sexual assault.
While Jerald isn’t a part to the case, his horrific young life is center stage.
According to testimony during the trial, although state law requires child welfare workers to immediately report allegations of abuse, a DCF caseworker didn’t do so when she learned that 19-year-old Reggie Cruz had sexually assaulted Jerald during the month they lived under the same roof. In fact, LeClainche said, because Cruz’s mother and Jerald’s mother were friends, the abuse had been going on for years.
“They moved (Jerald) into the home of his abuser,” he said.
But, the father testified, DCF caseworker Suzie Parchment didn’t tell him or his wife about the assaults. Eventually, Jerald did.
About a month after Jerald came to live with them in September 2002, he made sexual overtures to a 4-year-old girl who was visiting. Horrified, the mother confronted Jerald and the story spilled out. She called authorities. Cruz was eventually convicted of sexual battery on a juvenile and sent to prison for 18 months.
Days after the mother learned of the assault, Parchment sent a letter to DCF higher-ups, saying she had removed Jerald from the Cruz home after learning of rape allegations.
Parchment, the father testified, never told him or his wife why she had removed Jerald from the Cruz home. And, he said, it wasn’t the only information that was withheld even though he repeatedly asked them for background information.
He said he and his wife, who died in 2006 after a nearly two-year battle with cancer, weren’t told that Jerald had been diagnosed as suicidal when he was 3 and found wandering in traffic. They weren’t told he had tried to slit his sleeping father’s throat with a knife or that he told a teacher he planned to bring a gun to school and kill her and himself. They didn’t know he had been diagnosed as both suicidal and homicidal or that he heard voices.

He testified that had he known of even some of Jerald’s demons, he would have realized the outbursts he dismissed as harmless were troubling warning signs and his son was in danger. For instance, he said, he wasn’t alarmed when Jerald threatened his son with a butter knife because he had no idea the boy had tried to kill his father.
“Of course it would have taken on more significance,” he said. “But if I had known (about his past) he would have never been there in the first place.”
His testimony is to continue.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/crime-law/man-testifies-dcf-failed-to-warn-him-about-abusive/nbJp6/

Child-Protection Worker Accused Of Falsifying Reports

October 10, 2013|By Erika Pesantes, Sun Sentinel, By Erika Pesantes, Sun Sentinel

A Broward sheriff’s employee entrusted to help shield kids from harm didn’t even bother to meet five children she needed to watch over, possibly compromising their safety, authorities say.

Sandra Marti

Sheriff’s child investigative specialist Sandra Marti has been arrested, accused of falsifying reports that stated she had met with the children, according to a sheriff’s report. Instead, Marti simply arranged for parents to send her cellphone photos of the children, the report said.

Marti was jailed Wednesday on multiple counts of falsifying reports, records show.
“The falsification of official records, and the potential risks that any kind of falsification could pose for children, will not be tolerated,” said Dennis Miles, the regional managing director for the state’s Department of Children and Families’ Southeast Region.
Marti submitted the falsified records involving the five children between Dec. 1, 2011, and June 30 this year, the Sheriff’s Office said. Detectives found that those children are doing well, sheriff’s spokeswoman Keyla Concepcion said.
“We have gone back and made sure that all of those kids were safe, and the original allegations had been addressed,” she said.
An investigation into Marti’s actions began in June when a child’s mother phoned the Broward Sheriff’s Office. The mother said she planned to send Marti a photo of her son, but couldn’t because she had lost Marti’s phone number, an arrest report said.
That was a red flag for Marti’s supervisor, Concepcion said.
Detectives from the Broward Sheriff’s Public Corruption Unit reached out to several parents who each similarly detailed Marti’s instructions to send her photos of their children. They all said their sons and daughters did not meet with her on instances when she indicated they had, according to an arrest report.
Marti, a civilian employee, is currently suspended without pay, Concepcion said. Marti, 57, of Coral Springs, has been employed with the Sheriff’s Office for nine years.
She previously worked in pre-trial services and community control supervision of offenders, and later began working as a child investigative specialist.
Detectives have reviewed all of Marti’s cases since July 2010 — when she began working in the Child Protective Investigations Section — and only found five cases “in which she acted inappropriately,” Concepcion said.
Marti, who was freed from jail on a $5,000 bond, could not be reached for comment Thursday despite several attempts to contact her via a relative.
As part of their role, child protective investigators take a look at allegations of abuse, neglect or abandonment that come into the DCF hotline. Those cases range from neglecting to offer a child medical attention, to leaving minors who cannot care for themselves home alone, to sexual abuse, DCF spokeswoman Paige Patterson-Hughes said.
However, it was not known Thursday what circumstances led Marti to each of the cases for which she allegedly falsified reports.
“It’s important for there to be the appropriate contact with the potential victim and other people involved,” Patterson-Hughes said. “Not following through clearly is a problem.”
In the case that helped start the investigation, Marti filed a report indicating she met a child on June 13 this year, authorities said. But in a sworn statement, the boy’s mother said Marti did not meet her son and instead asked the mother for a cellphone photo.
According to the arrest report, investigators found that Marti filed a report in January 2012 stating that she had met with another child. But that boy’s mother also gave a sworn statement that said Marti didn’t see her son.
The scenario repeated itself in December 2012, when Marti said in a report she visited a 7-year-old girl at Croissant Park Elementary School in Fort Lauderdale, an arrest report said. But the school’s assistant vice principal said she had no record of an investigator visiting the child at the time, the report said.
Marti allegedly also asked that girl’s mother to send a cellphone snapshot of her other child, a 2-year-old girl. The mother, in a sworn statement, said she did as instructed.
In April 2013, Marti gave a 16-year-old boy’s mother her business card and asked that his photo be emailed to her, the report said. The boy told investigators that he never met Marti, but did take a photo of himself on his cellphone and emailed it to Marti.
Patterson-Hughes said meeting people is essential: It offers investigators clues to anything else that should be taken into account during their investigation.
“Clearly, when you’re talking to a person, you’re oftentimes taking in more than the words. You’re looking at other aspects, the behavior, the demeanor and the circumstances that brought you to the person in the first place,” Patterson-Hughes said.
Marti also is accused of falsifying a report that said she had met with a parent, authorities said.
In May this year, Marti allegedly filed a report stating she had met with the father of a child who had an open case, authorities said. The father told detectives that he had a telephone conversation with a child protective investigator, but did not meet the investigator in person, the arrest report said.
Miles called the allegations against Marti a “serious matter” and commended the Sheriff’s Office for investigating. In an emailed statement Thursday, he said that DCF “will work with [sheriff's] investigators to ensure the integrity of other cases which involved this investigator.”