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CYS steps up criminal background checks
Wednesday, March 11, 1998 By Barbara White Stack, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
A judge's decision to allow a 5-year-old foster child to remain with a man who once impregnated his 13-year-old daughter has prompted Allegheny County Children and Youth Services to perform more extensive criminal background checks on potential foster parents.
Marc Cherna, county Human Services Director, yesterday ordered CYS to use its sophisticated criminal record research computers to check the backgrounds of all foster parent applicants, which for the first time would include the 75 percent of foster parents who are recruited by outside agencies under contract with CYS.
CYS also has appealed Common Pleas Judge Max Baer's January ruling, which allowed the 74-year-old Fayette County man to keep the 5-year-old girl in his home in preparation for adopting her.
In 1960, the man pleaded guilty to incest, sodomy, corrupting the morals of a minor, adultery, fornication and bastardy, and was sentenced to 11 to 23 months in jail.
Because the current case has been appealed, Baer, the administrative judge for the Family Division of Common Pleas Court, said he could not discuss the reason he twice rebuffed CYS requests that he move the child.
But at a Jan. 14 hearing, he told CYS he would not move the foster child because the foster father is now elderly, had raised a stepdaughter without assaulting her, has a 12-year-old son who is doing well in school and has been in a stable marriage for 18 years.
The 5-year-old girl was placed in the man's home by Three Rivers Adoption Council. The council made a criminal records check with the state police, but the man's conviction was not listed there. Even after the Three Rivers caseworker in this matter found out about the man's criminal record, she supported leaving the child with him.
A Three Rivers official acknowledged yesterday that the caseworker's actions violated the organization's policy and said the agency was moving to ensure it didn't happen again.
CYS last week asked Superior Court to give priority to its appeal of Baer's decision to leave the girl in the custody of the man and his current wife, saying "the risk to the child is grave."
CYS attorney Barbara Hanley asked Superior Court to speed the hearing of the case because "the (past incest) charges involved are so heinous that the child is in jeopardy in this placement."
There is no indication that the child has been mistreated since she was placed with the foster family on Aug. 1.
Several experts on child molestation said it is possible for a man who has committed incest to reform.
But they also said it's a risk to place a foster child in the care of such a person, especially when that person has received no treatment. When asked at a previous court hearing if he'd undergone counseling, the foster father said only that he'd served his time in jail.
The man declined comment for this story. The Post-Gazette is not naming him in order to protect the identity of his now-grown daughter and other family members.
Dr. Mary Carrasco, director of the clinic at Children's Hospital that evaluates and treats abused and neglected children, said the question caseworkers and judges should ask in matters like this one is:
"Would you leave your 5-year-old with him?"
The man's 26-year-old stepdaughter testified at the Jan. 14 hearing that she does exactly that -- leaves her 7-year-old daughter with him every summer. She said he was a wonderful father to her after he married her mother in 1979.
"He has raised me and has never touched me nor done anything to me," she testified.
Carol W. Hughes, a psychiatric social worker at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, who specializes in the treatment of incest victims, said her experience is that perpetrators do not get too old to commit such crimes.
"I have treated too many people sexually molested by grandfathers that it seems age does not . . . make a whole lot of difference," she said.
The 5-year-old foster child is a distant relative of the foster mother, who is 42, and that's why the family was selected to care for her.
When a Three Rivers caseworker originally asked the man during a routine check last spring if he had a criminal record, he said he did not.
The conviction turned up when a CYS adoption caseworker checked the foster family's criminal background with the agency's computerized system. This check is much more extensive than the state police search alone. It also provides information on outstanding local warrants, city arrests and convictions within Allegheny County.
Cherna, the county human services director, said he did not learn until this week that the more complete criminal records check that CYS carries out was not being used on the cases handled by outside contract agencies like Three Rivers.
That means that three-quarters of the county's current foster parents have escaped the scrutiny of CYS' more comprehensive background checks.
Cherna said he has asked the CYS investigative unit to immediately begin determining how it can perform the checks on all new foster parents, not just those recruited directly by CYS. However, Cherna said he wasn't sure it was possible to do the full checks on current foster parents.
State regulations prohibit counties from placing foster children in the homes of people who have been convicted of certain crimes, including incest and corrupting the morals of a minor, but a judge can waive the criminal record and allow a child to stay with such a person, which is what Baer did in this case.
At the January hearing, Three Rivers officials said they favored leaving the girl with the family, not only because the man apparently had never harmed his stepdaughter, but because there was no evidence that his 12-year-old son, now living with him and his wife, had been abused in any way.
Martha Ross, Three Rivers executive director, said yesterday that its caseworker's support for the foster father violated its policies of not placing children with someone who has that kind of criminal record. "Steps have been taken to ensure full compliance by all employees of Three Rivers Adoption Council" in the future, she said.
While the foster father is being paid to care for the 5-year-old, he never provided a home for his daughter after the incest, nor their son, nor that son's child. His granddaughter, also a 5-year-old girl, is in CYS foster care and is awaiting adoption by another family.
The incest occurred while the man's first wife was at work and he was alone with the 13-year-old.
At the January hearing, when CYS attorney Hanley asked the man if he was ever alone with the 5-year-old foster child, he responded:
"My son and I are home all the time, and he bathes her. And my son, we get her to bed around 8:30 in the evening because my wife works at night. We have her in bed at 8:30 and she bathes herself and goes to bed."
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