Monkey Bites at Oklahoma Foster Home
Children in an Oklahoma foster home were forced to live in a trailer with 10 monkeys, which was just part of the collection of animals the foster parents kept. The Matthews family moved into the trailer after their house burned down in 2011. Eight to eleven children and two to five adults lived in the resident at a given time. The property also had twenty to fifty animals including lemurs, raccoons, dogs, cats, horses, donkeys, and others. The guardians of the children say that Human Services got over 17 reports of abuse over ten years including mental and physical abuse, neglect, dangerous living conditions, failure to protect, failure to provide adequate health care, failure to educate minor children, and unsanitary living conditions.
The lead plaintiff is suing the Oklahoma Department of Human Services. The complaint against the Department of Human Services is saying that DHS failed to protect the children and left them with the family. The complaint accuses DHS employees of tipping off the parents about investigations and questioning the children in the presence of the parents, which is a violation of agency policy.
A spokesperson from DHS has said that the family used to be a host to foster children from 2003-2006, but their house was closed as a foster house when they adopted two of the children and didn't have any more room for more children. Also the children involved were not foster children and the agency doesn't know where they came from.
There are pending child abuse and neglect charges pending against the foster parents in Delaware County Court. The complaint mentions that the plaintiffs were taken into emergency custody in April 2014 after DHS employees reported excessive child neglect and abuse. The allegations of abuse included forcing one of the children to kill her own pet by slamming its head into a tree, forcibly locking another child into a dog cage, and parading the children around the outside of the house naked.
Comments from Allen:
This is a very strange case, in which a child adopted by two people, after initially being placed with them in a foster care program, decided to sue the parents and the Oklahoma Department of Human Services on behalf of herself and her siblings. She claims her adoptive parents abused her and her siblings and housed the children in abusive, unsafe and unsanitary conditions for years, and the Department of Human Services allowed this to happen.
The Department claims its involvement with this family actually ended possibly as long as nine years ago, and that when the Department was involved, the horrendous conditions cited by Plaintiff Rachel Matthews, caused by her adoptive parents, did not exist.
Rachel Matthews counters that the Department should have known since the beginning that the Matthews family lived in unsanitary and unsafe conditions, and that when complaints were made, they were improperly or negligently investigated, in a way that was designed to keep the parents out of trouble by allowing them to clean things up before investigators arrived.
I predict this will be a very tangled lawsuit, involving complex factual issues (can the plaintiffs prove what happened 5-7 years ago, when they were children?) and legal issues, e.g., when suing the state, there are many, many immunities that apply, and there are questions concerning whether proper investigations were done, and what information was discovered when those investigations were completed.
It is standard operating procedure for a state agency to defend such allegations by claiming there was nothing illegal or improper going on when they investigated, and that the state is not a guarantor of what will happen to any child once that child is placed in foster care or adopted.
I predict it will be much easier for these plaintiffs to obtain a meaningless judgment against their adoptive parents, who have no money to pay a judgment, than it will be to obtain a judgment against the State of Oklahoma, which does have insurance to pay a judgment. Once a suit like this is filed, the Plaintiffs and the Defendants will have a time to gather evidence (the "discovery" phase of litigation), and the State will always file a "summary judgment" motion when this is accomplished. When a party files a summary judgment motion, it is asking the court to dismiss the case before trial, on the basis the plaintiff cannot win under the applicable law, viewing the facts in a light favoring the plaintiff. Only in the event this case survives a summary judgment motion will the plaintiffs have a possibility of obtaining any money judgment against the State of Oklahoma.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/12/03/bitten-by-monkeys-in-a-foster-home.htm
The lead plaintiff is suing the Oklahoma Department of Human Services. The complaint against the Department of Human Services is saying that DHS failed to protect the children and left them with the family. The complaint accuses DHS employees of tipping off the parents about investigations and questioning the children in the presence of the parents, which is a violation of agency policy.
A spokesperson from DHS has said that the family used to be a host to foster children from 2003-2006, but their house was closed as a foster house when they adopted two of the children and didn't have any more room for more children. Also the children involved were not foster children and the agency doesn't know where they came from.
There are pending child abuse and neglect charges pending against the foster parents in Delaware County Court. The complaint mentions that the plaintiffs were taken into emergency custody in April 2014 after DHS employees reported excessive child neglect and abuse. The allegations of abuse included forcing one of the children to kill her own pet by slamming its head into a tree, forcibly locking another child into a dog cage, and parading the children around the outside of the house naked.
Comments from Allen:
This is a very strange case, in which a child adopted by two people, after initially being placed with them in a foster care program, decided to sue the parents and the Oklahoma Department of Human Services on behalf of herself and her siblings. She claims her adoptive parents abused her and her siblings and housed the children in abusive, unsafe and unsanitary conditions for years, and the Department of Human Services allowed this to happen.
The Department claims its involvement with this family actually ended possibly as long as nine years ago, and that when the Department was involved, the horrendous conditions cited by Plaintiff Rachel Matthews, caused by her adoptive parents, did not exist.
Rachel Matthews counters that the Department should have known since the beginning that the Matthews family lived in unsanitary and unsafe conditions, and that when complaints were made, they were improperly or negligently investigated, in a way that was designed to keep the parents out of trouble by allowing them to clean things up before investigators arrived.
I predict this will be a very tangled lawsuit, involving complex factual issues (can the plaintiffs prove what happened 5-7 years ago, when they were children?) and legal issues, e.g., when suing the state, there are many, many immunities that apply, and there are questions concerning whether proper investigations were done, and what information was discovered when those investigations were completed.
It is standard operating procedure for a state agency to defend such allegations by claiming there was nothing illegal or improper going on when they investigated, and that the state is not a guarantor of what will happen to any child once that child is placed in foster care or adopted.
I predict it will be much easier for these plaintiffs to obtain a meaningless judgment against their adoptive parents, who have no money to pay a judgment, than it will be to obtain a judgment against the State of Oklahoma, which does have insurance to pay a judgment. Once a suit like this is filed, the Plaintiffs and the Defendants will have a time to gather evidence (the "discovery" phase of litigation), and the State will always file a "summary judgment" motion when this is accomplished. When a party files a summary judgment motion, it is asking the court to dismiss the case before trial, on the basis the plaintiff cannot win under the applicable law, viewing the facts in a light favoring the plaintiff. Only in the event this case survives a summary judgment motion will the plaintiffs have a possibility of obtaining any money judgment against the State of Oklahoma.
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Sources for more information:http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/12/03/bitten-by-monkeys-in-a-foster-home.htm
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