Tragedy Lurks in a System Meant to Heal : Safety for Foster-Care Children Can Go Amiss

An El Cajon man was charged with 26 separate counts of sexually molesting a minor. A Carlsbad woman was accused of denying a 15-year-old diabetic child her insulin medication. And a Poway man allegedly disciplined a child by angrily “swinging him through the air and throwing him” onto the top of a bunk bed.

They all are foster parents, and like the case this past week of Henri Dyson and her son, Harold, they all have lost their San Diego County foster-care home licenses during the last year.

The Dyson case is brutal in its possible ramifications, in that as many as 17 foster children were placed by county social workers in the Mira Mesa home where torture, abuse and harsh discipline allegedly ruled their lives. The Dysons were charged this past week with multiple counts of child abuse and, after pleading not guilty, jailed on bail of $200,000 each.

11 Other Cases in 1988

In 1988, 11 other abuse cases surfaced in the county’s foster child-care program.

In many of the cases, the victims were the foster parents’ natural children, or the licenses were stripped after authorities learned of past abuse by the foster parents.

While most of these cases do not approach the horror of the allegations surrounding the Dyson home, each in its own way vividly portrays the potential for child abuse in a program that is charged with protecting children but one that occasionally places them in an environment where abuse continues.

It is an agency that is understaffed. And agency officials are constantly concerned about the safety and welfare of children who are taken from abusive homes and placed under their supervision.

The Dyson case also has shocked San Diego police and child-protection service officials because the alleged abuse went unchecked for as long as the six years Henri Dyson held her foster-care license--a period in which the county Department of Social Services believed she was an ideal foster mother.

In fact, the Dyson case came to the attention of authorities only after Henri Dyson carried a 17-month-old boy who was in her care to a hospital, where doctors found him to be in a coma brought on by what appears to have been torture with a water enema.

None of the 11 foster-home license revocations and application denials that occurred in 1988 in San Diego County garnered the headlines of the Dyson case. None of them drew so much as a public whimper about the potential that exists for already abused children to suffer again.

That potential can surface in many forms.

Alfred Toomer of San Diego, for instance, was well on his way to being granted a foster-care license before authorities realized that he had been twice convicted in Georgia, in 1958 for voluntary manslaughter and in 1966 for assault with intent to murder.

In a September hearing that resulted in the license application being denied, the state said: “Mr. Toomer has failed to demonstrate that he has been rehabilitated and is presently of such good character to justify issuance of this license because the (crimes are) of a highly serious nature.”

Dr. David Chadwick, of the Center for Child Protection at Children’s Hospital, said no victim is more tragic than the child who is repeatedly abused.

“If you were to devise a method for making kids crazy, making them violent, you would abuse them first in their own home and then move them to another home and abuse them again,” he said.

‘Learn What They Live’

“It’s almost inevitably going to produce serious mental health problems in those kids. How can a child live with that and not come away with a learned feeling that the world is violent and abusive and, in the case of sexual abuse, that this is the way people relate to one another.

“It’s very true what the old motto says: ‘Children learn what they live.’ And when that stuff is around them all the time, that’s their world. That’s what they know.”

But Sondra Brinkley, chief of licensing for the county’s Department of Social Services, said it is rarely all that easy to identify and confirm specific allegations of abuse. Complaints are often anonymous and dated, and children are terribly afraid to admit that they have been abused. There is strong peer pressure, and abused children are constantly frightened they will be returned to the home.

“It all can be very hard to sort out,” she said. “Unless you see bruises on a child, it can be very difficult to get to the bottom of some complaints. Sometimes, it’s just one word against another.”

San Diego Police Department Detective Rick Carlson, who helped break the Dyson case, recalled that the foster children in the Dyson home refused to tell about their suffering until they had been out of that environment for more than 24 hours and had been repeatedly assured that they were not going back.

“They were regimented,” he said, in describing how the children looked and acted. “They were very well-behaved, almost to the point of standing at attention. They were scared and frightened. They were withdrawn.”

1,700 Foster-Care Homes

Brinkley said there are roughly 1,700 licensed foster-care homes in San Diego County, providing food, clothing and shelter to just under 3,000 foster children. These children stay in the foster homes anywhere from one day to 17 years, with the agency seeking to either return them safely to their natural parents, to new adoptive parents, or, lastly, into long-term foster care.

The children come from a battery of broken environments. Often they have been physically and sexually abused by their parents or others close to the family. Sometimes their parents end up in jail; sometimes dead. And sometimes the children are taken to foster homes in the first days of life, often born to mothers who are heroin addicts.

“These are what we call medically fragile infants,” she said.

To meet this demand for foster care, the county agency conducts weekly seminars geared at encouraging new families to open their doors to foster children. If, after attending these seminars, a couple decides to apply for a foster-care license, a lengthy background review begins.

A criminal background check is conducted, including fingerprinting adults in the home. The names are checked with the state child-abuse index to make sure none of the applicants or their dependents are past abusers. Health tests are made.

Then there are site visits, in which inspectors tour the home to determine if it complies with health and safety codes. Applicants are also asked to complete a home-study questionnaire that measures their skill in dealing with children. And there are 16 hours of formal training, both in a classroom setting and in sessions with experienced foster-care parents, focusing on how to handle problem children.

Once a home is licensed, foster parents are paid $300 to $400 a month per child. License workers monitor the environment through annual home visits.

But Brinkley, complaining of understaffing, said that San Diego County foster-care inspectors are carrying about 150 cases at any given time. The statewide caseload average is only 89, she said.

In addition, every time a complaint is filed, a license worker must show up unannounced at the door.

“We do an investigation, and, if it’s a serious complaint, it frequently would involve discussions with the children and could involve the police,” Brinkley said.

She said thousands of complaints are received each year, many anonymous, many dealing with minor violations, through the Child Abuse Hotline, 560-2191. About two-thirds of them are unsubstantiated.

“Say a child was left alone. Well, by the the time you get out there and ask the foster parent, she says of course she didn’t leave a child alone,” Brinkley said.

“And sometimes we will not know about this kind of thing for years. And generally, when we find out about these allegations, it can take months before the state is willing to move and revoke the license. And the state is making more and more demands on our caseworkers.”

Aggressive Stance

Kathleen Norris, a spokeswoman for the state Social Services Department in Sacramento, said government inspectors have become more aggressive in seeking out abuse in the last few years, particularly since the sensational McMartin Preschool child-abuse case in Manhattan Beach.

She said 329 child- or foster-care licenses were revoked in the state in 1987, up from 242 just two years earlier.

“The most common thread for all revocations is some sort of abuse, whether it’s neglect or physical or sexual or mental abuse,” she said.

But, even with heightened public awareness of child abuse, more reporting of child abuse and more revocations of license holders, some cases still get by the system. Every time that happens, the consequences are tragic.

Brinkley said police are notified of all serious allegations, but that criminal prosecutions seldom follow. Often, she said, simply removing the children from the home solves the problem.

Only one of the 11 cases in 1988 in San Diego County led to criminal charges.

George M. Hale of El Cajon was charged with 26 counts of molesting a male under age 14 in a series of offenses that began in August, 1982. The victim was a youngster that Hale had met through his church.

In 1986, Hale and his wife, Susan, were licensed as both foster-care and day-care providers. But the license was revoked in October of last year, the same month he was given five years’ probation after plea-bargaining to four counts of oral copulation with a minor.

The state foster-care licensing agency, in removing him from its rolls, said Hale’s conduct was “inimical to the health, morals, welfare and safety of the people of California.”

Court records show that Hale, in admitting his past conduct, said: “I consider it a great tragedy. If there were a button to push to rewind life or erase it, I would.”

Other Cases

Some of the 1988 cases involved physical abuse, agency records show.

William and Jacque Burrow of Poway lost the foster-care license they had held since 1983.

Officials alleged that “William Burrow physically disciplined (a child) by swinging him through the air and throwing him onto a top bunk in anger.” And Jacque Burrow allegedly “physically and verbally abused (a child) after she became sick and vomited in (the Burrows’) automobile.”

Hazel Farmer, who ran a combined foster-care and day-care operation in the South Bay, lost her license in June. Authorities contended that she choked a 3-year-old child so viciously that he suffered bruises and other injuries to his neck, and that she also “yelled at and struck a 6-year-old.”

Nathaniel and Deidra Brooks of San Diego, licensed foster-care and day-care operators since 1984, were dropped from the program in December.

Authorities alleged that a 3-year-old handicapped child was placed in a tub of scalding water, causing third-degree burns to the child’s right leg and foot; that a child was hit “with various objects, including hands, a belt and an electrical cord,” and that one child was punished “for wetting his bed by making him sleep on a plastic mat on the floor.”

Other foster-home licenses were terminated, government records show, because the parents allegedly did not provide adequate medical care for the children.

Judith Mariner of Carlsbad, licensed for six foster children since 1986, was dismissed from the program in November.

She failed to provide insulin shots for a 15-year-old diabetic child, who later was admitted to the Hillcrest Receiving Home “with an elevated blood glucose level,” records show.

She also reportedly canceled a child’s appointments for a hearing aid and left children unattended at home.

And Lorena May of La Mesa lost her 3-year-old license in December after a girl in her care suffered a severe yeast infection and, later, a “severe rash on her back, buttocks and genital area,” according to the records.