Lawsuit: Mecklenburg put foster kids in danger, failed to get them education, therapy
One Mecklenburg County child was sexually abused after being placed with a grandmother who had faced previous allegations of abuse.
A second foster child was allegedly left to languish for months in hospitals ill-equipped to meet her mental health needs.
A third was reportedly placed with foster parents who told him he needed to sit in a soiled diaper to learn a lesson.
Those are among the foster children who were allegedly harmed by the actions and inactions of Mecklenburg County, according to a new class action lawsuit filed against the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services and the child welfare agencies in Mecklenburg and Gaston counties.
Departments of social services are supposed to take custody of children if they have evidence the kids are being neglected or abused. The new federal complaint, however, contends that the Mecklenburg County DSS put children in homes and institutions where — rather than being helped and protected — they were neglected and, in some cases, abused.
Mecklenburg County officials declined to speak to the allegations. They don’t comment on pending litigation, county spokesman Andrew Fair said.
Child placed in home where he faced sexual abuse
While the lawsuit says it was filed on behalf of thousands of North Carolina children, it describes three cases where it alleges that Mecklenburg County DSS badly failed children. One of them, a 16-year-old boy named Justin, was taken into custody in 2011 due to domestic abuse.
DSS initially placed Justin with his maternal grandmother, even though the agency knew Justin’s mother had previously been removed from his grandmother based on allegations of abuse, according to the lawsuit.
During his five years in his grandmother’s home, Justin was sexually abused, the lawsuit states.
DSS then removed Justin from the home, and in subsequent years placed him in more than 18 homes and facilities.
In one instance, he was placed in a “rapid response home” — a home designed to provide immediate short-term support for kids in crisis — for more than a year. During that time, he received no education or therapeutic services and his mental and emotional health deteriorated, the lawsuit alleges.
Mecklenburg DSS found an adoptive home for Justin in 2023. The prospective adoptive parents initially felt ready to adopt the boy based on the information that DSS officials had provided them, according to the lawsuit.
“But after learning about Justin’s full history, the adoptive parents believed that they could not adequately care for Justin and ended the adoption process,” the lawsuit states. “Justin was aware that the adoptive parents had rejected him. This caused even more trauma.”
Mecklenburg’s DSS “routinely withholds information about children from adoptive parents to persuade those parents to adopt foster children,” the complaint contends.
That practice disrupts potential adoptions, compounds children’s trauma and reduces the odds that they’ll be adopted in the future, the lawsuit maintains.
Child went years with no education, suit says
The lawsuit also tells the story of a 15-year-old boy named Morgan, who was removed from his parents in 2014 because of repeated physical abuse and domestic violence.
Over the past decade, Mecklenburg DSS moved him to different placements at least 30 times, the complaint states. In his first year in the county’s custody, DSS changed his placements 11 times, the suit contends.
So many changes led to “a severe deterioration in his mental and emotional state, exacerbating underlying emotional and behavioral issues,” the lawsuit asserts.
“Even worse, Morgan has gone years without any educational instruction at all,” the complaint states.
In 2019, Morgan was placed in a home where he faced physical and emotional abuse, according to the lawsuit. Although he was 12 at the time, his foster parents sent him to day treatment wearing a diaper.
He’d been wearing a diaper at night due to a medical condition — and to prevent him from digging into his rectum, a possible indication of sexual trauma that officials didn’t fully explore, according to the complaint.
“Morgan’s foster parent would not pack any additional diapers for Morgan at the facility, and stated that Morgan needed to sit in his soiled diaper to teach him a lesson because he ‘knew better,’ ” the lawsuit states.
After one failed placement, the suit says, Morgan was transferred to a hospital that had no children’s unit or psychiatric facility to treat his mental health problems.
“On multiple occasions, the hospital determined that it was no longer medically necessary for Morgan to remain in the hospital,” the lawsuit states. “Hospital staff contacted DSS, but DSS refused to pick up Morgan because DSS had no other placement for him.”
The suit maintains that Mecklenburg’s DSS routinely transports foster children to local hospitals with the expectation that the kids will remain at the hospital until an appropriate placement can be found. While in the hospital, those children don’t get their regular treatments or educational services.
Despite trauma, no mental health treatment
The suit also names the Gaston County DSS as a defendant, and says the county ranks among the worst jurisdictions statewide and nationally for “permanency outcomes” — meaning success in finding stable, long-term living arrangements for children removed from families and placed in protective care.
One 8-year-old boy from Gaston County, Jameson C, was removed from his home in 2019 because his parents sexually, physically and emotionally abused him, the lawsuit states.
In the two years after his removal, he was placed in five different foster homes. Although he was diagnosed with PTSD due to the abuse he suffered, he never received mental health treatment in the two years following his removal, the suit says.
“Jameson’s case was not well managed as Jameson’s caseworker was managing approximately 20 cases and even more individual children, and was attempting to manage these cases without a reliable case management system,” the complaint states.
Gaston County officials decline to speak about the allegations Thursday.
“We actually haven’t been served the lawsuit yet, so we’re declining comment for now,” county spokesman Adam Gaub said.
Observer reporters Mary Ramsey and Nora O’Neill contributed to this reporting.
This story was originally published August 29, 2024 at 1:50 PM with the headline "Lawsuit: Mecklenburg put foster kids in danger, failed to get them education, therapy."
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