Foster dad found the ‘perfect prey’

Foster dad found the ‘perfect prey’
In a Waldport home, according to Lincoln County Circuit Judge Thomas Branford, foster children were given not love but “rape and sodomy and sexual abuse”
By Mark Baker
The Register-Guard
Published: Sunday, Nov 21, 2010 05:01AM

Editor’s note: In the wake of high-profile child abuse cases in Lane County during the past year, The Register-Guard begins an occasional series looking at challenges facing Oregon’s child welfare and foster care systems. Today: The abuser. Monday: The state’s process for reviewing the most severe abuse cases.

....But another horrifying abuse case that concluded last year not far from Lane County also has roots in the foster care system overseen by DHS. However, despite the prosecution and conviction of a longtime state-approved foster father, the case garnered scant state scrutiny or media attention.

Kirk Garrison Sr., a 48-year-old Waldport man to whose home the state sent more than 100 foster children between 1996 and 2006, was sentenced this summer to 44½ years in state prison.

A Lincoln County jury convicted Garrison of repeatedly raping, sodomizing and sexually abusing two of his adopted foster children — a developmentally disabled daughter and a son — and sexually abusing two of his other foster children.

Garrison’s trial in Newport lasted 11 weeks, from March to June, one of the longest trials in Lincoln County history. At least a dozen DHS employees — caseworkers, supervisors and others — were called to testify. The disturbing facts brought tears and sobs from many who crowded the courtroom on the day of Garrison’s sentencing.

Yet so severe are the worst abuse cases in Oregon that the Garrison case doesn’t stand out in the minds of top officials at the DHS Children, Adults and Families Division, which oversees foster care. The state did not designate the Garrison case for CIRT review.

Four months after Garrison was sentenced, Erinn Kelley-Siel, who heads the Children, Adults and Families Division, and two of her top assistants, Lois Day and Jerry Waybrant, said in an interview with The Register-Guard that they were not familiar with the criminal case against Garrison. They noted that the abuse itself occurred before all were in their current jobs and before Kelley-Siel joined the DHS in 2008.

After checking to see how DHS handled the Garrison abuse investigation, DHS spokesman Gene Evans said the case was dealt with as a “sensitive case review” by DHS staff in Lincoln County.

On learning of the criminal case from The Register-Guard, Kelley-Siel said that if she had been in her current position when allegations against Garrison surfaced in fall 2007, she would have recommended DHS conduct a discretionary CIRT on the case.

CIRT review is only mandatory when children in state care — or those for whom a child welfare assessment has been done in the past year — die from suspected abuse or neglect. State officials also have the option of launching CIRTs in other cases.

Many involved in the Garrison case said it was as bad an example of foster care gone wrong as they had ever seen.

“This is kind of a poster child for bad decisions,” said Lincoln County Deputy District Attorney Michelle Branam, who prosecuted Garrison.

As he pronounced sentence on Garrison, Lincoln County Circuit Judge Thomas Branford said: “This case will go down as one of the most tragic I’ve ever heard. It makes you wonder how pervasive this problem is.” 
A lack of foster homes

Statistics provided by DHS say incidents of abuse in foster care have decreased in recent years. There were 100 abuse incidents in 2007, 83 in 2008 and 55 last year, according to the agency. Garrison, a former school bus driver for the Lincoln County School District, committed his crimes from 2002 to 2006, according to court records.

However, it is difficult for DHS caseworkers to detect sexual abuse, said DHS official Waybrant, a deputy assistant director in the Children, Adults and Families Division. “There’s not a definitive outward indicator (as with physical abuse or neglect),”* said Day, administrator of the DHS’ Office of Safety and Permanency for Children.

“Primarily, we have to rely on a disclosure of some sort by a child that then is investigated,” she said. “So it’s significantly different than physical abuse, where you would see an injury.”

Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va., asserts there is much more foster care abuse nationally than official statistics show. “There is enormous incentive to hear no evil and see no evil when it comes to abuse in foster care,” he said.   FULL STORY

* There sure is when it's an accused parent