A group of former foster care children have won a $7 million settlement from the state of Massachusetts after authorities allegedly turned a blind eye to their abuse at the hands of carers.
The lawsuit was filed by the four former foster children against the Department of Children and Family Services (DCF) and 17 officials from the agency. It alleged that defendants violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights “by ignoring repeated reports of abuse and exposing the children to ongoing sexual, physical, and emotional torture in the foster home of Raymond and Susan Blouin in Oxford, Massachusetts,” according to an Aug. 11 press release by BHPK, the law firm representing the abuse survivors.
The lawsuit also claimed that reports of child abuse were shredded by the DCF. The abuse is said to have happened when plaintiffs lived in the Blouins’ home, dubbed the “house of horrors,” at various times from the late 1990s to 2004.
Survivors claim they were submerged in ice baths to the point of drowning, made to perform sex acts, and locked up in dog crates while under foster care. The Blouins also allegedly threatened the children with death in case they reported the abuse.
DCF “ignored fourteen reports of abuse and were deliberately indifferent” to what was happening to the children at the Blouins’ home, the release said.
On Friday afternoon, the four former foster children reached a $7 million settlement with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The plaintiffs filed their case in the Middlesex Superior Court in 2019 as adults. Erica L. Brody, attorney for the plaintiffs, pointed out that one of her clients overdosed and died during the litigation. Another one is incarcerated.
“This was a complete failure of the foster care system,” Ms. Brody said. “No amount of money can compensate our clients for what they have suffered. But by reaching this settlement, the state is acknowledging its culpability in allowing foster children to be tortured for years in the Blouin home.”
“Until now, it has been nearly impossible to hold state employees liable for ignoring the safety of foster children. This case is precedent-setting in Massachusetts and across the country: state social workers who turn a blind eye to the suffering of foster children will be held liable for violating the United States Constitution.”
The Blouins and Susan Blouin’s boyfriend Philip Paquette were charged with child abuse in the early 2000s. Ms. Blouin’s case was dismissed within a year following pre-trial probation. Mr. Blouin, meanwhile, pleaded guilty and got two years of probation.
Social Workers Shielded By State Laws
Though the DCF acknowledged that what happened to the former foster care children was “horrific” abuse, agency lawyers denied that social workers were at fault.“Even good social work will sometimes fall short of DCF’s critical goal of keeping children in the commonwealth safe from harm. It removed the children remaining in the home as soon as it became lawfully possible to do so.”
According to Carmen Durso, a lawyer who specializes in representing survivors of sexual abuse, lawsuits against state officials that charge them with failing to protect children are difficult to win as state laws shield employees from any culpability.
Reforming DCF
In a statement to Worcester Telegram & Gazette, the DCF said that the agency is committed to updating its policies and that it has instituted reforms aimed at strengthening the safety of children in foster care.A new DCF policy restructures the roles of social workers “so that each [foster] family has one dedicated support worker at their Area Office,” the agency said. The new policy will ensure that officials check court, agency, and sex offender records of foster parents on an annual basis.
John Williams, one of the plaintiffs, blames the DCF for what happened to him, saying that he lost his “whole childhood” after the agency placed him in the Blouin foster home.
“DCF took me out of my home and was supposed to put me in a nurturing one. Instead, DCF put me and my precious little brother into a home that had a well-known history of abusing children,” he said, according to the BHPK press release.
“DCF was created to protect kids like me from being endangered. It turned out DCF did just the opposite. It is an agency desperately in need of reform. It is a horrible weight to carry around with you to know that what happened to us was 100 percent preventable.”
The Epoch Times has contacted the DCF for comment.
