Lawsuit faults state - Cottage Grove, Oregon
Lawsuit faults state for failing to detect abuse of foster child
By David Steves
The Register-Guard
Appeared in print: Friday, Oct 23, 2009
source:
http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/si ... /story.cspFoster parents from Cottage Grove, a Springfield-based state caseworker and the state Department of Human Services are being sued for $1.6 million after a foster child suffered injuries from a beating so severe that he required hospitalization, according to court papers filed this week.
The lawsuit was filed in Multnomah County on Tuesday by lawyers representing the 4-year-old boy, who is identified in the complaint as “B.C.”
The suit contends that in November 2008, while in the care of foster parents Keith and Nelly Burr, the boy, then 3, suffered a severe brain injury that involved internal bleeding, as well as a lacerated spleen. By the time he arrived at a hospital emergency room, the child’s body temperature was dangerously below normal, according to the lawsuit. Medical personnel there reported bruises in various stages of healing on his knees, thighs, buttocks, back, ankle, forehead and penis, the court papers said.
The lawsuit also alleges that state Department of Human Services child welfare caseworker Joann Turner failed to document previous injuries or to investigate their cause.
The boy’s attorney, Erin Olson, said the state’s child abuse incident report following his hospitalization led to an investigation by the Lane County Sheriff’s Office and that the county district attorney’s office is interested in the case but has yet to determine whether one or both parents physically inflicted harm to the boy. Neither county offices returned calls to The Register-Guard on Thursday seeking information on their involvement in the case.
Attempts by the newspaper to locate the Burrs for comment were unsuccessful. Olson said they have moved from their Cottage Grove address. She said she has been unable to locate them so that legal papers could be served.
Turner, when reached by telephone, declined to comment, saying she was not at liberty to do so.
According to the lawsuit, the Burrs’ alleged abuse of the child in episodes prior to the one that resulted in his hospitalization went undetected by the state, which was his legal custodian. Those incidents of abuse included hitting him with spoons, forcing him into cold showers — both methods of discipline — and duct-taping his hands to his bed at night, according to the lawsuit.
Olson said the boy is now in the care of a foster family in Yamhill County that wishes to adopt him.
“By all accounts, they are wonderful people doing the utmost to help him overcome what he experienced with the Burrs,” she said.
The $1.6 million award sought by the lawsuit would compensate for the boy’s continued suffering of physical and emotional pain and other damages and for the costs of continued counseling and psychological treatment.
The lawsuit is the second major suit this year on behalf of a Lane County foster child.
The legal guardian of a 14-year-old boy filed a complaint June 30 against the state and a local couple who were his foster parents from 2003 to 2007.
That suit alleges that the foster child, then age 8 to 11, was sexually abused by the couple’s older, adopted son. It alleges negligence, sexual battery of a child and intentional infliction of emotional distress. It seeks unspecified economic damages for psychological counseling and $2.5 million in noneconomic damages.