Last November, Mesa Family Services, a company that licensed and operated foster homes in the Dallas area, lost its permit because two children had died violently in separate incidents in their homes in the last four years. A company called Therapeutic Family Life took over one hundred of their homes. Apparently, there was little improvement in supervision and conditions.
A five year old girl has been violently murdered in one of those homes and her foster mother has been arrested. Apparently, her teenaged son, who has been arrested for murder, had been beating the little girl and her siblings. Police report that the 15 year old boy had repeatedly picked the girl up and violently thrown her down. The child had brain and skull injuries as well as internal bleeding and bruising over her torso.
The foster mother was not at home to supervise what had been going on. When she discovered the badly beaten girl, she first took the blanket that she had been beaten on to a laundromat and washed it. Then, over three hours later, she took the girl to the hospital. Medical personnel have stated that the girl would have survived had she been taken to the hospital in a timely manner.
A few months ago, the same girl and one of her sisters, were taken to the hospital after they had been seriously beaten in the same home. The foster mother and each of the girls told authorities that the girls had gotten into a fight and inflicted the injuries on each other. CPS took the girls out of the home, but Therapeutic Family Life returned them to the same home a week later.
CPS has now inspected all of the homes managed by Therapeutic and taken fifteen children out of those homes, citing that some of the homes lacked proper supervision and some were not safe. They have also discovered that some of the new foster parents had criminal records. Over two hundred children are still in homes that they manage.
These children have been taken from their own homes because of serious abuse and / or neglect. The foster homes that were provided for their well being were just as bad, or worse, than the homes that they were removed from. These children have not had a chance.
Also in Dallas, the woman who birthed a nine pound boy who was later found dead in a dumpster has been charged with capital murder. If found guilty, she could be sentenced to death or given a 99 year sentence. The newborn had received brain trauma and could have been suffocated. In Texas, it is legal to abandon an uninjured baby up to sixty days old at fire stations, police stations, or hospitals. Why didn’t she just do that?
When will all this violence against our nation’s children end?
Related Blogs:
Child Neglect: A Growing National Problem