Roberts: One Arizona foster child's DCS nightmare

It’s enough to turn your stomach (and then some):

A little girl, left to fend for herself in the home of a pedophile whose hobby was apparently child pornography.

Rescued eventually, then left once again to fend for herself in a home where she was burned so badly that her injuries will affect the rest of her life.

And the worst of it? This girl wasn’t born into such barbarism. No, she was put there by the Arizona Department of Child Safety, despite warnings that the foster homes were no place for kids.

Agency thrust girl into abuse

This, according to an explosive lawsuit filed on behalf of the now 6-year-old child.

A DCS spokeswoman told me the agency can’t comment on a pending lawsuit.

Me? I can comment plenty.

According to the lawsuit, filed earlier this month in Pima County Superior Court against the Department of Child Safety and a pair of adoption agencies (Christian Family Care and St. Nicholas of Myra), the girl was taken from her biological mother in April 2013 “based on a fear of potential harm.”

The girl was removed following a fight between her parents, who struggled with cocaine addictions. The girl’s father is a registered sex offender stemming from a 1999 crime involving an adult victim.

Cue the lawsuit: “Defendants took Jane Doe from her home where she had not been abused and placed her in homes where criminals ran pornographic rings, sexually abused children entrusted to their care, including Jane Doe.”

Mom spoke up, DCS said she was lying

In June 2013, the girl, then 2, was placed in the Sierra Vista home of a foster couple who “had a pattern and practice of abusing their foster children, including but not limited to using the minor children entrusted in their care in a pornographic pedophile ring,” the complaint says.

The lawsuit says that DCS received multiple complaints about the foster home, including from one of the children consigned to living there, but didn’t take action.

The biological mother repeatedly complained that her daughter suffered multiple urinary-tract infections, had become scared of men and was afraid to return to the home after visits, the lawsuit says, and DCS took quick and decisive action.

The agency accused the mom of lying and began working to terminate her rights to her child, the lawsuit says.

Meanwhile, in January 2015, a year and a half after the girl was placed with the foster family, her foster father, David Frodsham, showed up at a state office to collect his foster care check while drunk. The girl and another child were in the car at the time he registered a .28 blood-alcohol level.

DCS immediately removed the children but never investigated the allegations of sexual assault, the lawsuit says.

Who is DCS using as foster parents?

So it must have been quite the shock when Frodsham was later arrested and accused of sexual misconduct with a minor.

“Law enforcement’s investigation revealed a video made by David Frodsham of a 3- or 4-year-old girl being penetrated by an adult male and screaming for her mommy,” the lawsuit says.

Sorry to put in that little detail, but it’s important to know what we’re talking about here. What kind of people DCS was (is?) using as foster parents.

MORE:DCS to foster families: Please do more. Families to DCS: We've been trying!

Frodsham pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual conduct and was sentenced to 17 years in prison.

“David was part of a pornography ring involving numerous children in his pornography and the procurement of sex for the ring,” the lawsuit says.

Several additional cases “involving this pedophile ring operated by David Frodsham” are expected to be filed, the lawsuit says.

Then, a second family scalded the girl

But back to the little girl. After removing her in January 2015 from “a den of physical and sexual abuse and violence,” she was placed with Samantha and Justin Osteraas, who adopted her later that year after the mother’s parental rights were severed. (The state attributed the child’s temper tantrums, self-urination and crying not to the Frodshams but to her mother.)

Never mind, apparently, family members’ warnings to the adoption agency, Christian Family Care, that Samantha Osteraas was mentally unstable and had long been abusive toward her husband.

Warnings that went unheeded until December, when Pima County Sheriff’s deputies were called to the couple’s Tucson home.

The girl had been submerged in a tub of scalding water.

“When police arrived, there was blood on the floor and pieces of Jane Doe’s skin was falling off of her body,” the lawsuit says. “There were bruises to her neck and arm(s) along with other signs of trauma.

The child suffered burns over 80 percent of her body. Her organs were failing. Her toes had to be amputated. She’ll spend much of her life undergoing surgeries to replace 80 percent of the skin on her body.

This poor girl is scarred for life

Doctors believe, based on the severity of her injuries, that she was in agony for hours before anyone called for help.

Samantha, who faces two counts of child abuse, claimed she didn’t realize the water was that hot. According to sheriff’s investigators, there were signs that the child was held under the water, which was nearly 130 degrees.

Can you imagine?

Me neither.

I wonder if DCS officials can imagine.

Clearly they couldn’t, or they wouldn’t have left her to suffer not one but two nightmares in her short life.

DCS officials have some major explaining to do – not to mention agency soul searching.

Someone, please, answer these questions

I'd start with this:

1. Why didn’t caseworkers take the mother’s warnings seriously? Why assume the mother was lying when there never was evidence that she had abused her child?

2. Why didn’t they heed other relatives’ warnings about the second foster/adoptive family seriously? Or were those warnings never relayed from the adoption agencies? And if that’s the case, is the state still contracting with those agencies?

3. What more is this agency going to do to ensure the foster families they are entrusting with vulnerable children are safe havens rather than horror shows?

What can they say today that will ensure us that there aren’t others like this little girl, brutalized not by her parents but, through its astonishing negligence, by the state of Arizona?

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