Teen was abused in Kansas foster home. Now she’s suing the state’s biggest contractor

A Kansas child welfare contractor is accused of placing a teen in an unsafe home where she was molested in 2017, according to a lawsuit filed earlier this month in Wyandotte County District Court.

The lawsuit, filed Feb. 15 by the now 22-year-old woman, alleges that at 16 years old she was repeatedly sexually abused and then assaulted by her foster parent, a 37-year-old man recruited to provide foster care services for KVC Behavioral Healthcare Inc, the state’s largest foster care provider.

The organization placed her with the foster parent in November 2016. In June of the following year, the foster parent called KVC to confess that he sexually abused the teen, but it took five months for state officials to revoke his foster care license, according to the lawsuit.

The foster parent had “acted inappropriately in a sexual manner toward female children on more than one occasion,” the lawsuit said. A criminal charge filed against the man in Wyandotte County in 2018 was later dropped.

The Star generally does not name victims of sexual assault without their permission. It is not naming the man because he is not currently charged with a crime.

KVC spokeswoman Jenny Kutz said the foster care provider is aware of the case but will not comment on ongoing litigation.

“I can tell you that as a nonprofit child and family-serving organization, our highest priority is the safety and well-being of every child we serve,” she said in an email.

This is the second lawsuit in the last two weeks to accuse KVC of contributing to the harm of a child by placing them in an ill-fitting foster home.

In the previous case, an infant suffered a severe head injury in 2018 at a KVC foster home, according to a Feb. 6 lawsuit. The child’s family alleges that KVC brought the months-old baby into a “dangerously overcrowded” foster home and failed to provide any safety planning services.

The plaintiff’s attorney for both cases did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

‘A severe lack of judgment’

The 37-year-old Kansas City Kansas, man applied for a foster care license, sponsored by KVC. The Kansas Department for Children and Families (DCF) approved his application by April 2014, according to the Feb. 15 lawsuit.

KVC monitored his license over the next three years. But in that time period, KVC learned that he repeatedly acted in an inappropriate, sexual manner and exercised “a severe lack of judgment toward female children,” the lawsuit said.

The state contractor placed a 16-year-old girl in the care of his Wyandotte County foster home on Nov. 21, 2016.

He sexually abused her multiple times, in a variety of locations around Kansas City, Kansas. Then, he sexually assaulted her within the foster home on June 15, 2017, according to the lawsuit.

The man allegedly called a KVC employee and confessed to sexually abusing the teen four days later.

DCF revoked his license around Nov. 26, 2017, after discovering he had committed “acts that were sexual in nature to the foster youth placed in his home.”

There are legal procedures to remove a foster parent’s license and a person can appeal or choose to take the case to court, according to child welfare attorney Lori Burns-Bucklew.

“But I would be very concerned if I were to hear that there were foster children in that home as due process was being pursued,” she said.

It is unclear why his license was not revoked earlier and whether he still had foster children. A DCF spokesman was not immediately available to comment on the case.

A 2018 criminal case in Wyandotte County accused the foster parent of misdemeanor sexual battery. The charges were dismissed shortly after. He cannot be found on any sex offender registry.

The teenager is now a 22-year-old woman who no longer resides in Kansas City, Kansas. She says the abuse left her suffering from injuries that she is still trying to understand through therapy. She did not recognize the severity of the abuse. As a teen, she had already been “subjected to extreme housing disruption… and other factors beyond [her] control.”

Her lawsuit is seeking $75,000 in damages from the foster care provider.

Accountability

Burns-Bucklew filed a class action lawsuit in 2018 on behalf of many foster care kids who were being shuttled from foster home to foster home and in need of mental health services.

The federal court filing alleged that some children had been treated so poorly in foster care that they ran away from their foster homes or suffered mentally. In certain cases, children were trafficked for sex, sexually abused inside adoptive homes or in one instance reportedly raped inside a KVC child welfare office.

A lack of foster homes even led to some children sleeping in welfare offices.

“I have concerns in general on whether or not the contractors are being held sufficiently accountable by the state,” Burns-Bucklew said.

Kansas was first in the country to privatize their foster care system, allowing different providers, like KVC Kansas, to compete with other organizations for state contracts.

KVC Kansas spokeswoman Jenny Kutz explained in a prior interview that the group has come a long way in prioritizing mental health services and recruiting foster families since the “unprecedented surge” of foster children between 2017 and 2019.

“Due to multiple factors including state policy changes and juvenile justice reform, a record number of Kansas children were in foster care,” Kutz said of the time.

But the lack of foster homes has been a problem in Kansas for a long time, according to Burns-Bucklew.

“There have not been enough foster homes in Kansas for over a decade,” she said.