Miami Herald
Posted on Fri, Nov. 08, 2013
By Carol Marbin Miller
cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com
" ... A young Miami mom was stripped of the right to raise her four children.
The father of the youngest child was allowed to keep the girl.
Just another day in child-welfare court.
But
then a child welfare judge in Miami discovered information that
troubled him: A social worker who gave damaging testimony against the
woman — while lavishing praise on the father — had had sex with the
father, at least according to the man himself. Another case worker whose
testimony also was damaging to the mother had told colleagues she
wanted to adopt her children after the mother lost all rights to them.
Calling
the actions of the two child welfare workers — as well as their bosses
and lawyers — “reprehensible” and “manifestly unconscionable,” the judge
returned the four children to their mother this week. In a 40-page
order tinged with anger, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael A. Hanzman
said the reversal was necessary in order to undo a miscarriage of
justice.
Hanzman, who presides over child welfare cases in Miami’s
Allapattah juvenile courthouse, wrote that the woman could not have
received a fair trial because state child welfare “agents withheld
information that demonstrated bias on the part of two material
witnesses.”
The Department of Children & Families “and its
cadre of private sector agents are a collective prosecutorial arm of the
state, charged with a public trust,” Hanzman wrote in the order, signed
Tuesday. “The constitutional rights of the families brought into our
dependency courts depend upon the faithful and impartial exercise of
that trust. When it is betrayed — as it was in this case — due process
is denied.”
The mother, Hanzman added, “was entitled to a fair
trial. She instead received the ‘parental death penalty’ in a proceeding
infected by bias and conflict…The parties prosecuting her knew the
process was contaminated, but took no corrective action. The fact that
the lives of this family would be permanently altered — and the mother’s
constitutional rights severed — was of no moment. The state simply
trampled on those constitutional rights in its zeal to win at all
costs.”
Child welfare officials in Miami-Dade had some harsh words
in return for the judge. They said he had just recently ignored
warnings from them and left an infant in the care of a relative who
accidentally smothered him.
The woman at the center of the controversy, and her children, are not being named by the Miami Herald to protect their privacy.
Neither
of the caseworkers named in Hanzman’s order — “lead witness” Tatiana
Ashley and Michelle Sales, both of the CHARLEE foster care program —
remain with CHARLEE, said a spokeswoman for the Our Kids agency, which
oversees private child welfare programs in Miami under contract with
DCF. Ashley was fired for “performance” issues unrelated to Hanzman’s
order, and Sales resigned, the spokeswoman said.
Neither woman could be reached by the Herald for comment.
DCF’s ethics watchdog cleared the two women of wrongdoing in a lengthy report last August.
The
Inspector General was asked to investigate the mother’s claims in
January by an Our Kids’ regional manager. The IG, Christopher T. Hirst,
concluded the mother’s allegations regarding Ashley could not be
substantiated without a witness to the alleged affair. Likewise, Hirst
wrote that there was no proof that Sales lied on the witness stand, and
that her desire to foster or adopt the children did not create a
conflict of interest.
DCF’s interim secretary, Esther Jacobo, who
was leading DCF’s Miami district when much of the controversy unfolded,
said Friday her agency is most concerned with the future welfare of the
mother’s children — not with what has already occurred.
“The
claims of unethical behavior by these caseworkers were thoroughly
investigated by the DCF inspector general and not substantiated. Now,
two years later, our attention must be centered on these children —
their safety, security and emotional health. With all the information
and facts in hand, my sincere hope is that the judge will do what is
best for the safety and well-being of these children.”
Hanzman’s
return of the four children occurs at a time of deep animosity between
the judge and Miami child welfare administrators.
Earlier this
week, a Miami infant born with medical concerns owing to his mother’s
drug use died at the home of his adult half-sister in Broward. Hanzman,
records show, sent the boy to live with his half-sister over the
objections of DCF lawyers, an Our Kids foster care provider and the
Broward Sheriff’s Office, which had conducted a study of the woman’s
home and concluded she was not fit to care for the boy. Records suggest
the half-sister may have accidentally smothered the infant while
sleeping with him on a couch.
The mother at the center of
Hanzman’s order this week emerged from a troubled home herself, sources
told the Herald. Now 23, the woman “aged out” of foster care at age 19
with four small children, and sources say DCF continues to harbor
serious concerns about her ability to raise the kids.
In July
2010, the agency’s hotline received a report that the mom and the
youngest child’s father had an altercation. The children remained
“safely” in the mother’s care, the judge wrote, until March 2011, when a
relative complained that the father had pulled a gun on him.
When DCF was alerted to the incident by the mother, the agency placed
all four children in foster care. Two months after that — and after the
mom had mostly completed a laundry list of tasks designed to improve her
parenting skills — the woman was arrested on a shoplifting charge. DCF
abruptly reversed course, filing a petition to terminate the woman’s
parental rights.
The mother, a petition said, had been “unable to gain the necessary insight required” to safely parent her children.
At
trial in August 2011, Ashley, the case worker, testified that, while
the mom had completed parenting, domestic violence and anger classes,
and although she was “bonded” with her children, Ashley had “concerns as
to her parenting,” the judge wrote.
As to the youngest girl’s
father, the one who had allegedly wielded a gun, Ashley was far more
complimentary. She testified that he was always “appropriate” in his
visits with the little girl, and that she had no concerns about his
parenting skills. Ashley recommended that he retain rights to the
now-4-year-old daughter.
Sales, the order said, worked with the
mother and her kids from October 2010 through the following January.
Sales dropped the case, she testified, because she became fearful of the
mother following a fight she witnessed between the mother and another
woman. The mother insists that no such incident occurred, the judge
wrote.
At a hearing on the mother’s concerns over the fairness of
her trial, and in comments to the inspector general, Ashley strongly
denied having a sexual relationship with the father. The father himself
acknowledged the affair. The caseworker had begun “flirting” with him
“while the two were in her car discussing what he had to do to get his
daughter back,” the man testified. “They eventually wound up in the back
seat having intercourse,” Hanzman wrote.
And, although the
inspector general wrote that there were no witnesses, the father’s
brother testified that he was at his mother’s house when the father and
Ashley were in a bedroom having sex.
The mother of the children
arrived at the father’s house in August 2011 while he and Ashley were
“fooling around” in a back bedroom, the father testified. The father’s
brother alerted him that
the mother
was walking up the stairs to see him. She confronted the couple and hit the father with a mop stick, the judge’s order said.
The
caseworker, the father testified, told him that neither she nor CHARLEE
were eager to sever his rights to the youngest child. He said he failed
to disclose the sexual relationship out of fear that it would interfere
with his custody rights.
As to Sales, numerous people — including several employees of CHARLEE — testified that she wanted to adopt the children.
So concerned were CHARLEE administrators about Sales’ desire to adopt
the kids that they asked an Our Kids boss if it made sense to transfer
the case to another foster care agency “to avoid any kind of conflict of
interest.” The administrator, Hanzman wrote, refused the transfer
request. Another judge who was presiding over the case was never told
about the alleged conflict.
That omission, Hanzman wrote, “can only be charitably characterized as blatant incompetency.”... "
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/08/v-print/3740811/mom-gets-children-dcf-gets-skewered.html#storylink=cpy
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