The story of three boys trapped in a torturous family circle of abuse, starvation and neglect was the impetus for immediate change in New Jersey’s foster care system.
The victims’ civil trial attorney, Eric Kahn, believes the overhaul of New Jersey’s Department of Youth and Family Services would have happened at some point — but not as swiftly if not for the attention this tragedy received.
“The media put a spotlight on a problem that had existed for a while but had never really been talked about or discovered,” Kahn said. “This highlighted the problems.”
In 2003, when the boys’ abuse was brought to light, New Jersey’s Department of Youth and Family Services was already embroiled in a class-action lawsuit filed by Children’s Rights, a nonprofit advocacy organization specializing in child-welfare-reform litigation.
Marcia Robinson Lowry, who led Children’s Rights, took the New Jersey case with her in 2014 when she founded a new watchdog group, A Better Childhood — the same organization that helped craft the class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of 10 children in Oregon’s foster care system.
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Robinson Lowry said there are lessons Oregon can learn from New Jersey and other states that have faced similar lawsuits.
Like Oregon, “New Jersey had terrible problems,” Robinson Lowry said. “The system was chaotic. There was a high rate of maltreatment.”
She said the New Jersey case broke “when a mummified body of a child was found in a basement. This was a child who had been reported to child protective services, and no one went to check on him. The state wasn’t on top of it.”
Seven-year-old Faheem Williams was under the care of his mother’s cousin, Sherry L. Murphy, when he was found dead in 2003 in her basement in Newark. Her teenage son admitted to causing Faheem’s death, saying he kneed the boy in the abdomen during a wrestling move. Murphy said she left Faheem’s body in a plastic bin for weeks.
The state investigated previous abuse complaints involving Faheem, but it closed the file 11 months before his body was found.
Faheem’s twin brother, Raheem, and his 4-year-old brother, Tyrone Hill Jr., also were found covered in urine and feces, scarred and emaciated — but alive — in an adjacent room in Murphy’s basement.
Her boyfriend found the boys while looking for his work boots.
“On their hospital admissions it says Raheem had scarring on his back and around his eyes,” Kahn said. “He had burns on his hands and feet. He was severely malnourished and showed signs of developmental delays, as well as emotional injuries: PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and other psychological issues.
“Tyrone had signs of being assaulted. He, too, had scarring on his back, nutritional neglect and at least a couple years of developmental delay.”
Kahn said Faheem’s body showed signs of physical abuse and malnourishment.
Shortly after the story appeared in the media, New Jersey agreed to settle the class-action lawsuit and overhaul its child welfare system.
“What we found out, after the fact, was the system was understaffed and social workers couldn’t get to everyone,” Kahn said. “Oftentimes, they would knock on the door of the foster home but wouldn’t see the children. They were told the children were fine, and they would just check off their box and move on.”
The caseworker in charge of checking on Faheem, Raheem and Tyrone was assigned more than 100 cases at the time.
The wrongful-death lawsuit filed on behalf of Faheem’s estate and a pain and suffering claim on behalf of Raheem and Tyrone resulted in New Jersey’s paying its reported second-largest settlement involving its child welfare department: $7.5 million. The two survivors divided the payout.
“I know I can’t help them from a medical point of view,” Kahn said, “but to know that money is never going to be a concern for them, and they can focus on their recovery … that’s what we do, and why we do it.”
New Jersey’s child welfare problems may sound extreme, but Oregon caseworkers will attest that they, too, are facing a similar crisis of overwhelming caseloads and a lack of adequate foster homes.
At this point, there’s been no settlement in a class-action lawsuit filed last year in Oregon, demanding the governor and child welfare leaders be held accountable for systemic problems within the state’s foster care system.
As Street Roots reported in April, 10 Oregon foster care children, represented by A Better Childhood, Disability Rights Oregon and Davis Wright Tremaine are demanding a transformation of the entire foster care system. The groups want to ensure Oregon children receive the care they’re afforded under the law, including safe placements, proper attention by caseworkers, and appropriate health care.
An attempt to settle the lawsuit broke down last year. Now, after learning the scope of Oregon’s problems, A Better Childhood is seeking to expand the plaintiff pool to all 8,000 foster children in Oregon.
“It’s truly not rocket science; the state wastes money when they defend something like this,” Robinson Lowry said. “Instead, they should be saying, OK, let’s really do this and not ignore the problems we’ve been ignoring for the past 10 years.”
This is where Oregon could take a lesson from New Jersey, Robinson Lowry said.
“New Jersey has had to shape the system as a whole by developing appropriate placements for kids, and enough placements, which Oregon does not have,” she said. “Oregon doesn’t pay attention to where these kids are going or what kinds of services they’re getting as they age through the system. New Jersey’s programs are sophisticated; they pay attention.”
Robinson Lowry said New Jersey’s Department of Children and Families (formerly Youth and Family Services) was able to make significant changes because it received, and continues to receive, millions of dollars in appropriations from its Legislature. It also worked to develop a well-functioning computer system to allow more information about case plans and services to be publicly assessible. The department began solving problems one by one, with oversight by a neutral consultant, the Center for the Study of Social Policy.
“What we’re learning as we go forward with discovery is that Oregon’s computer information system is not great,” Robinson Lowry said. “Also, workers don’t have caseload limits; the state delegates that to counties. There have to be caseload limits.”
Robinson Lowry said Oregon leaders don’t have a clear vision for what the child welfare department needs to do — or how to accomplish its goals.
A federal judge in Newark receives a progress report every six months detailing how well New Jersey’s Department of Children and Families is meeting the provisions of the Sustainability and Exit Plan in the class-action lawsuit, Charlie and Nadine H. v. Murphy. A court-appointed monitor from the Center for the Study of Social Policy, Judith Meltzer, reports on the child welfare system’s ongoing problems and successes.
“This work is not often smooth and easy at first,” said Meltzer, president of CSSP. “They have to be willing to get started, assess and reassess and make adjustments as they go forward.”
In the latest report released in January 2020, for the first six months of 2019, Meltzer reported that New Jersey’s Department of Children and Families had finalized its new strategic plan, which includes increasing kinship placements, promoting staff health and wellness, and integrating health and behavior health into the child welfare department’s scope of services.
She noted the agency’s “keen attention to continuous quality improvement, its dedication to staff development and well-being and new methods for improved case planning.”
When asked how Oregon might improve its system, Meltzer fired off a list of recommendations:
• Start with values and principles. What do you want to achieve for youth and families?
• Create a practice model. Clarify the work, expectations, and how employees should interact with families and partner agencies.
• Hire leadership that communicates a vision. Development management and accountability structures to support that vision.
• Get the support you need from the governor, legislature and beyond.
• Focus on your workforce. Lower caseloads and emphasize qualifications and training.
• Create a data system that tracks outcomes and processes for children and families.
• Conduct resource development to ensure families have services they need beyond the child welfare system.
• Develop quality assurance systems. Require constant internal quality improvements and tracking.
“Basically, you need to get the resources, then spend them wisely, so you can demonstrate to the Legislature and the community that you’re making progress,” Meltzer said.
Meltzer said class-action lawsuits are a reform tool of last resort, but she’s seen incredible success in states like Tennessee.
“If you look at the system in Tennessee today from where it began, it is now a system producing much better outcomes and results for children and families — and serving them more appropriately,” Meltzer said. The same thing is true for New Jersey and the District of Columbia. Systems can improve.”
In Tennessee, the Department of Children’s Services agreed to meet 141 provisions in its settlement agreement. It devoted significant resources to hiring, training and supporting its workforce and prioritized family placements near children’s families and current schools. It reduced its use of emergency shelters and temporary facilities for foster placements.
Meltzer said most child welfare systems are moving toward better support for families to reduce the number of children who need to be moved into foster care or need to stay in care for extended periods.
“Child welfare policy in general has recognized that we do better if we invest resources in helping families maintain children in their own homes, or at least with relatives,” Meltzer said.
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In the case of Raheem and Tyrone, they never returned to the care of their biological mother. The boys spent 10 weeks in the hospital and were placed in foster care. Their biological mother fought for possession of Faheem’s $1 million settlement payment but instead had her parental rights terminated based on allegations of past abuse.
Today, Raheem and Tyrone are living on their own. Their post-settlement court appointed trustor, Dennis Drasco, said the young men, who are now in their early 20s, continue to struggle with the traumatic effects of their abuse. However, they each earned a high school equivalency and attended community college classes. Over the years, both have had girlfriends and now have separate apartments.
Following the media coverage surrounding their case, their lawyer, Kahn, made a name for himself representing victims of child sex abuse.
“I was a young lawyer at the time, and it was the first type of this case I’d handled,” he said. “Now I understand how abuse can affect children and have a lifetime effect. I’ve also learned more about how the system works and its many deficiencies.”
Seventeen years after authorities found Faheem’s body jammed into that plastic bin in Murphy’s locked basement, New Jersey’s Department of Children and Families has satisfied 42 of the 48 provisions set forth in the class-action settlement and is addressing the final six. In Tennessee, it took nearly two decades, but the Department of Children’s Services has successfully exited from its settlement agreement and federal court supervision. Robinson Lowry hopes Oregon’s leaders will have the same stamina.
“There are good ideas in other places,” she said. “However, it really requires being candid and dealing with the issues you have. You can’t get anywhere if you are hiding numbers and trying to say you don’t have significant problems.”
The Next Generation is a Street Roots series that focuses on the well-being and housing stability of children and young adults, locally and nationally, and explores the work being done to prevent another generation from becoming homeless. Street Roots received funding from Meyer Memorial Trust's Housing Advocacy Portfolio to develop dedicated reporting for The Next Generation series.