The individual responsible for adoption fraud in Michigan is none other than the Superintendent of the Michigan Children's Institute, Bill Johnson.
Michigan Children's Institute need to be dismantled. I am hoping someone will send me the complaint so I can post it. I sincerely hope Bill Johnson was named as a defendant.
What really has alluded me in logic of Children's Rights settlement with Michigan is there is no where to be found in any of the court proceedings, mention of MCI or Bill Johnson. Situations of children under state care are absolutely horrific and no one is really telling it like it is.
As an original source, I can attest that what is in this complaint is completely true, not having read it. Why, one may ask? Because I live with the irreparable harm every single day.
Even though the case highlights the lack of mental health assistance of these children, more needs to be done to expose and end the fraud schemes created to maximize revenue at the expense of all children of Bill Johnson.
If DHS falsified records for adoption, then you can bet your bottom dollar DHS lied about removals, placements, cost reimbursements and its federal audits.
8 families in Ingham, Clinton counties expected to sue DHS for adoption fraud
Child welfare offices in Ingham and Clinton counties are among several public and private agencies named in a lawsuit expected to be filed Thursday alleging social workers lied to adoptive parents of special needs children about their kids’ disabilities and denied them funding available for parents of disabled children.
Eight families with 17 adopted children and two biological children said Wednesday they are planning to sue the Department of Human Services, alleging deceit and violation of federal law going back 20 years. They are seeking more than $13 million in back Social Security assistance and other damages, said David Kallman, the Lansing attorney representing the families.
“The parents in this case were assured that the children they were adopting were physically and mentally healthy,” Kallman said in a statement. “DHS workers knew and documented that this was not the case. As a result, these families were, and continue to be, irreparably harmed.”
Some of the parents specifically stated they would not be willing to adopt children with significant mental, emotional or physical disabilities, according to the complaint.
The suit names Gov. Rick Snyder, DHS Director Maura Corrigan and several other DHS officials.
DHS spokesman Dave Akerly released the following statement today.
“DHS has already prevailed in the majority of cases referenced by this attorney at the administrative level, and Michigan courts on review have repeatedly ruled in DHS’ favor in most of these cases. Because DHS takes all issues of child safety seriously, the state Attorney General’s office — on behalf of DHS — met with Mr. Kallman regarding his allegations this past August. Subsequently, the Attorney General’s Office has requested information from Mr. Kallman to assist with this matter, thus far to no avail."
Ingham County DHS could not be reached for comment. Clinton County DHS referred questions to the state.
Kallman alleges adoption agencies and social workers in seven cases covered up or lied about the level of abuse and neglect the children endured before being removed from their birth parents. Kallman also accuses DHS of denying all eight families access to Social Security funds through an adoption assistance program called Title IV-E, designed to support families who adopt children with special needs.
“These families love their kids,” Kallman said. “They want to care for their kids. But one family, for example, is literally destitute. They’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for help and psychologists, things that state should have been paying for.”
Supporting documents for the lawsuit include disturbing descriptions of the conditions in which the children allegedly lived and the abuse they suffered prior to their placement in the foster care system.
In the Ingham County case, for example, the complaint alleges workers documented extreme neglect of three siblings in 1994, including an infant sleeping beneath bags of garbage, dead rodents throughout the home and children walking around in nothing but urine-soaked diapers.
“Mushrooms grew in the toilet and nails stuck up from the bathroom floor,” according to the documents. “They sucked spoiled milk from bottles. While the workers were there, the garbage in the crib moved and an infant was discovered in the crib.”
Despite the conditions in the home, the workers left the children with their birth parents for another six months, according to the lawsuit, then falsified documents to cover up the children’s history of abuse and neglect before they were adopted.
The lawsuit alleges the abuse caused severe emotional and behavioral disorders in the children, including violence disorders, fetal alcohol syndrome and reactive attachment disorder — which is a rare but severe psychiatric illness often caused by abuse that limits a child’s ability to bond with others or to feel empathy. The children all displayed signs of sexual abuse. One of the children was deemed “legally incapacitated” as a teenager and will never be able to care for herself, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit is another hit for DHS, which is still under federal oversight following a lawsuit by a group called Children’s Rights. That lawsuit accused the state of neglecting children in its child welfare system, including failure to adequately assess and treat psychological, behavioral and emotional issues.
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