April 26, 1999

NELVIN CEPEDA / Union-Tribune  License fight: Alfred Toomer, pictured with a grandson, lost his foster care license after he shot at his former son-in-law with a .357 Magnum. Toomer fought the decision, but the state revoked his license in March.

When Alfred Toomer applied for a license to become a foster parent, he told county officials he had a criminal record for manslaughter and assault with attempt to murder.

He had killed his sister-in-law with three shots to the chest and back during a family fight in 1957. A few years after his release from custody he again used a gun, almost killing a man in Macon, Ga.

But the Valencia Park man got his license anyway when state officials decided they could not legally deny Toomer.

In fact, he had two foster children in his care last June, when he pulled out his .357-Magnum revolver, walked out into his driveway and shot at his former son-in-law.

As a foster parent, Toomer' s criminal history was confidential. So the parents of foster children left in his care didn' t know about the manslaughter. They didn' t know about the assault with intent to murder.

But what they did know is that the state had endorsed Toomer, 76, as a man qualified to care for neglected children.

Destined for trouble

In San Diego County, and throughout California, almost anyone can become a foster parent.

Couple lax licensing regulations with a desperate need for foster homes and the combination becomes an equation for trouble. It opens the door to people who are among a significant minority of foster parents who should never be entrusted with young lives.

The need for foster homes is so overwhelming that convicted criminals are sometimes licensed. So are former drug addicts and people with psychological problems. People on welfare also have been licensed.

"There' s a saying that if you have a pulse and a smoke alarm you can get a license," said Patty Boles, president of the North County Foster Parents Association.

In fact, a foster home license doesn' t attest to a person' s ability to parent, it simply confirms that those licensed have a house that can safely accommodate foster children. Interviews with attorneys, psychologists, social workers and dedicated foster parents, plus an examination of licensing files and lawsuits involving foster parents, expose a seriously flawed licensing system.

It is a system that cannot guarantee whether the hundreds of children who enter it each month will land in a good foster home or in one so marginal the children would have been better off left in their own homes.

It' s impossible to say precisely how many of the 2,400 children now in San Diego County foster homes live in dreadful places because licensing records are closely guarded to protect foster parents' privacy.

Dorothy Sloan, director of foster home licensing for San Diego County until her retirement in March, thinks only about 5 percent of the county' s foster parents are below par.

But she can' t support that estimate with anything more than a gut feeling. The department doesn' t centralize information on bad foster parents, though she insists it knows who they are.

Sloan said she would like the state to institute more stringent licensing regulations.

So would her boss, Yvonne Campbell, deputy director of the county' s Health and Human Services Agency.

"The current (licensing) regulations are cumbersome and not in touch with the times we are dealing with," Campbell said.

The times they are dealing with have included a steady increase in the number of children needing foster care and a doubling of complaints against foster parents.

Most of the children in foster care bear physical and emotional scars inflicted by their natural parents. They come to foster homes as infants born to drug-addicted mothers, as youngsters taken from abusive parents, as teen-agers who have spent a lifetime bouncing from one place to another.

The county has about 1,500 foster homes. Sloan would like to see 500 more, enough to give social workers more choice in their efforts to match children with foster parents. But while the number of children has increased, the number of people willing to care for them has remained the same.

"Foster care people are needed so badly that there' s a rush to take a chance," said attorney Tom Gayton, who has represented hundreds of children placed in foster care. "You want to get a child into a better environment so badly that you hope this is it."

Laws favor foster parents

The people who are charged with making sure the county' s most vulnerable children end up in good homes say there' s not much they can do to remedy problems under the state' s system that dictates how foster homes are governed.

Regulations governing the licensing of foster parents are set by the state but left to county officials to enforce.

Sloan had a staff of 12 to keep tabs on the county' s 1,480 foster homes and process the hundreds of applications received each year. The four investigators on the staff look into as many as 480 complaints a year.

Those investigations result in less than 30 license revocations annually, because even when bad foster parents are identified, existing law makes it difficult to get rid of them.

It almost takes a child being savagely beaten or molested before a license can be legally revoked, Sloan acknowledged.

"There are black holes in the regulations that tie our hands when it comes to revocations," Campbell said.

The county knowingly licenses about 31 people each year who have a criminal past, Sloan said. The crimes can include everything from drug possession to drunken driving to shoplifting. A critical element, she said, is that the crimes are old and the people have demonstrated full rehabilitation.

By law, licensing inspectors can visit foster parents only once a year, and they have to call ahead for an appointment.

With such limits, Sloan said, they rely on complaints from neighbors, anonymous tips to the county' s child abuse hotline and, most importantly, social workers to be their eyes and ears.

And Sloan is quick to point out that the ultimate responsibility for safeguarding the children rests with the social workers from the county Department of Health and Human Services.

County social service figures show each social worker is responsible for monitoring, on average, 40 children, though some foster parents say their social workers have confided that caseloads have sometimes reached 70.

But with such onerous workloads, social workers sometimes fail to visit the children monthly as the law requires.

Social workers may immediately take a child out of a foster home if they suspect something is wrong. But it' s easy to miss the signs that children are in trouble.

Only after Alfred Toomer' s temper flared last summer, and he again grabbed a gun in anger -- aiming three shots at his son-in-law -- did the county have a good enough reason to persuade the state to revoke his license.

Toomer told police he was just trying to protect his family because he thought his son-in-law was going to get a gun from his car, insisting that the foster children weren' t in the house and never in danger. Nevertheless he pleaded guilty in December to discharging a firearm in a grossly negligent manner.

Toomer was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered not to own guns.

During the first six months of 1998, the county received 942 applications from people wishing to become foster parents; 46 were denied. The county issued 686 licenses and talked the rest out of becoming foster parents who otherwise would legally have to have been given a license, Sloan said.

The state' s only firm requirements are that foster parents must know CPR and first aid. They must also have a house that is free of safety hazards and is "reasonably clean."

Even a social worker' s reservations about an applicant' s ability to care for emotionally fragile children can' t legally stop the process.

Sloan laments the system' s shortcomings.

"I would like to be more a factor in these children' s lives, but we are not," she said.

California demands more of its barbers and cosmetologists than it does of its foster parents. To cut hair and do facials, people must have 1,500 hours of training. To become a foster parent requires only 18 hours.

Horror stories

The county' s former supervisor of foster home licensing praises foster parents whose homes offer a haven. "It' s a tremendous gift they give," said Sloan, making sure to emphasize that the sacrifices foster parents make are extraordinary.

Yet, with some foster parents, where the incentive is supposed to be generosity, there is greed. Where the sentiment is supposed to be compassion, there is callous indifference. Where the motive is supposed to be love, there are broken bones, split lips and black eyes.

The horror stories are recounted in foster home licensing files, in criminal cases, in million-dollar lawsuits, in state insurance claims and in headlines.

These records reveal the atrocities: the 1993 death of a 21-month-old girl whose body was covered with dozens of deep purplish-blue bruises. A 15-year-old girl who endured repeated rapes by her longtime foster father, a 73-year-old retiree who would give the girl a little bit more in her allowance after each attack.

There' s the 2-month-old baby girl manhandled so roughly that the tiny bones in her arm snapped in half, and a teen-age boy belted so hard that an eye swelled shut.

Even in the face of these horrors, Sloan defends the county licensing department' s record, insisting that it takes every precaution it can to identify people who will not make good foster parents.

"Nobody wants to put children in harm' s way," Sloan said. "But we can' t predict human behavior."

A state insurance fund has paid $1.1 million in San Diego County since 1986 for claims by foster children or their natural parents arising out of improper foster care. Physical and sexual abuse are the most frequent reasons the state pays off, accounting for half of the 24 claims settled. Throughout California, the state has paid $4.3 million for claims of improper foster care since 1986.

Insurance claim records, edited by the state for confidentiality and turned over after The San Diego Union-Tribune filed a Public Records Act request, indicate the state payments have included:

  $70,000 because Mira Mesa foster parents subjected children to such cruel acts as being forced to sleep in a garage or bathtub, being made to eat hot peppers as punishment, being given excessive enemas and being given unnecessary drugs.

  $25,000 because a 13-year-old girl left in the care of an Escondido family was sexually molested by her foster father and his son.

  $160,000 because a 13-year-old boy was accidentally killed by a single shot to his chest. The semiautomatic rifle was fired by another boy who found the loaded gun in the home of the 13-year-old' s foster parents.

  $30,000 because a 2-year-old Flinn Springs boy died of strangulation after being left unattended in a car seat.

In addition to the state insurance settlements, more than a dozen lawsuits filed in San Diego County in the past five years have resulted in settlements also reaching into the millions. Although the District Attorney' s Office doesn' t keep track of cases involving foster children, it has prosecuted at least two foster parents during the past year.

Jeffrey Stevens pleaded guilty to charges of sexually assaulting two young foster sons, ages 6 and 7, who were placed in his home in 1996 and 1997. He was sentenced to three years in prison on April 7.

On his license application, the single 32-year-old North Park man said he preferred taking in boys no older than 10. "I want to give love and understanding to a foster child and help build family and friendship in a positive setting," Stevens said on his application.

The state revoked his license in October 1997.

Elizabeth Concha said she wanted to be a foster mom so she could help children.

"I want to do what is best for the child," Concha wrote in her 1993 application for a foster home license.

But what she did to her 4-year-old foster son amounted to "cruel and inhuman" punishment, stated charges filed in court. According to the two felony charges, Concha, 44, twisted the boy' s penis. Her license was revoked in October. Her trial is set to begin May 4.

Not every abusive foster parent faces criminal charges. Most don' t. Proving the allegations is just too hard, prosecutors say.

The standard of proof to obtain a criminal conviction is much higher than what the state needs to revoke a license.

Bad parents fall through gaps

People such as Boles, of the North County Foster Parents Association, credited Sloan for trying to crack down on bad foster parents. But they say the system is still too lax and too burdened to adequately weed out the people who should never be licensed as foster parents.

Such is the case of Ed and Linda Svercauski. A 1991 Department of Social Services evaluation described the Svercauskis as "unacceptable" foster parents who couldn' t cope with their foster children' s problems or give them the emotional warmth they so desperately needed.

A county social worker wrote in their file, in capital letters: "DO NOT THINK THEY SHOULD BE FOSTER PARENTS PERIOD." She even noted that she would never again send children to the Svercauskis.

She further concluded that no children could benefit from being placed with them, and the couple had no special qualities to qualify them as foster parents.

Yet for four years the county continued to relicense the Svercauskis as foster parents. It had no choice, because they hadn' t done anything egregious enough to warrant having their license revoked.

All the while, authorities continued placing children in the couple' s Otay Mesa home.

And almost predictably the results were terrible.

In 1995, a 14-year-old foster daughter alleged that Ed Svercauski had been forcing her to have sex with him for two years, according to a lawsuit filed against the Svercauskis.

Svercauski denied it, and he never faced criminal charges because prosecutors couldn' t find any corroborating evidence and didn' t think the girl would make a credible witness.

But licensing officials finally had a legal reason to close a foster home they had suspected for years was not a good place. The couple' s license was revoked in June 1996 after state social service officials concluded that the girl' s allegations of sexual abuse were "true and correct," according to the lawsuit.

And state and county officials settled a civil lawsuit in September paying the girl $260,000, court records state.

Ed Svercauski declined to talk about the allegations. However, in the lawsuit his attorney said the case was nothing but blackmail by a girl who wanted someone to pay for her promiscuity.

Little things hurt too

The truly abhorrent stories of abuse are exceptions. More common are the stories that generate little attention but devastate the children just as much.

There' s the foster mother who would lock her children out of the house on Sunday mornings while she attended church, and another who would let her foster babies sit in wet pants because she alloted them only so many diapers a day.

One foster parent' s idea of punishment was to force children to stand in a garage with their arms outstretched until she thought they had learned a lesson.

Still another mother limited children to one bowl of breakfast cereal before school, while another made her foster children pay for sodas they took from the refrigerator.

Then there are the people who pack their home with as many as six foster children, hoping to make a profit from the monthly payment of up to $528 they receive for each child.

Complaints against foster parents such as these documented in licensing files more than doubled between 1994 and 1997, the last year figures were available.

It' s these kinds of cases that make Sloan, former director of foster home licensing, wonder whether a child is better left with their natural parents or entrusted to someone only marginally qualified to be a foster parent.

"It' s a moral dilemma," Sloan said. "Should a child be removed from their own inadequate home to be placed in a borderline home? It' s a very difficult question."

In the end, foster care can be a game of chance: Most children end up in good homes. But there are the few who don' t.

"It' s such a terribly tragic thing to have a child who has had such a horrible life experience that it gets them put in foster care," said attorney James McElroy, who has represented a number of children in lawsuits claiming abuse at the hands of foster parents.

"And what do they do to this damaged child? They hurt them even moe."

Maria Williams believes that' s what happened to her two children.

They were taken out of a Chula Vista foster home in late 1997 after allegations surfaced that the 9-year-old girl and 4-year-old boy had been abused.

"They say, ' Don' t worry they are in good hands,' " Williams said.

"Well, my kids weren' t in good hands. The county had no idea what kind of place my kids were going to."