TX Child Welfare Agency Hit With Class Action Lawsuit: Former "Client" Claims Rape And Assaults (picture, Video)

Crystal Bentley, age twenty-three, spent sixteen years in the Texas foster care system. Her testimony in a federal civil trial being held in Corpus Christi casts even more shadows on the embattled Texas Children’s Protective Services agency (CPS). The agency, formally known as the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (TDFPS), is the subject of a civil rights class-action lawsuit.

Bentley testified earlier this week that she was shuffled from home to home from the time she was two years of age, until she “aged-out” at the age of eighteen. She claimed she was repeatedly beaten and sexually assaulted while she was under the watch of CPS case workers who frequently didn’t show up for monthly visits. Bentley claims that the assaults came from adults who were supposed to be caring for her, the children of foster parents and other foster children, and even her own relatives according to an article in the Houston Chronicle. When case workers did show up for monthly visits, her abuse would go unreported because they failed to speak with her privately.

The class-action lawsuit was filed by a New York advocacy group called Children’s Rights. About 12,000 children are included in the class-action suit. These children are in long-term care in Texas.

The group seeks to have U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack order the State of Texas to enact reforms for its children’s services.

The group has been successful in fifteen of its nineteen previously filed lawsuits.

Another former foster child, Jordan Arce, age 19, told his story about how he was placed in a facility with children who exhibited behavioral or emotional problems. Despite multiple placements and even a group home, Arce was able to maintain his straight-A record in schools. “I would lock myself in the closet, just so I could study, read, talk to myself,” he said. “After I left, I struggled a lot with just connecting to other people.”

Frequent turnover of caseworkers and management problems are to be blamed according to a series of articles in a San Antonio Express-News investigation. MOREHERE

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