County Failed to Act Against Foster Parents

Top officials at the Los Angeles County Department for Children’s Services permitted two foster homes to continue operating despite allegations that the parents--who were prominent in foster parent circles--had physically and sexually abused children, The Times has learned.

On Tuesday, several years after county investigators concluded the homes should be stripped of their licenses, the state Department of Social Services moved to do so.

In both cases, the parents were well-known leaders of support groups for foster parents. And in both cases, according to documents and interviews, county children’s services officials overruled the recommendations of their own investigators, who argued in 1986 and 1987 that the parents had endangered children in their care and that their licenses should be revoked.

In one instance, department Director Robert L. Chaffee was informed by Jean McIntosh, then an assistant director that a foster father had “a history of alleged child sexual abuse,” that he was arrested in 1984 for allegedly molesting three foster children and ordered by a judge to enter a diversion program for psychiatric counseling. Despite three investigations between 1980 and 1986, the home kept its license.

On another occasion, staff members sent a confidential investigative report to McIntosh saying a foster parent “has endangered the safety and well-being of children entrusted to her care” by beating them with electrical cords and sticks. They recommended that no children be placed in the home, but children were there as recently as two months ago, according to state officials.

Neither Chaffee nor McIntosh would be interviewed Wednesday. McIntosh has since left the department to become the western regional director of the Child Welfare League of America, an advocacy group for children.

But in a prepared statement issued through a spokesman, Chaffee said his staff “tried to correct the licensing behavioral problems (of the foster parents) through counseling” and by ordering the allegedly abusive foster father to leave the home. He further said the county is investigating whether the foster parents received special treatment because of their positions with foster parent groups and is trying to determine “if disciplinary action is appropriate.”

The foster parents are high-ranking officers of foster parents associations. They are Maxcine Knight, president of the Los Angeles County Foster Parent Assn.; her husband, James Knight, a former regional vice president of the National Foster Parent Assn.; and Ruth Kelly, president of the South-Central Foster Parent Assn. of Los Angeles. Kelly and Maxcine Knight denied wrongdoing; James Knight could not be reached.

Officials at the state Department for Social Services, which oversees foster home licensing in California, maintain that the county had more than enough evidence several years ago to shut the Knight and Kelly foster homes. Instead, the county continued to place children in both homes.

“It is pretty appalling,” said Loren Suter, deputy director of the state agency. “These children were removed from their parents and then individuals within the county put them in situations that seem to me are at least as bad or worse than the ones from which they were removed. . . . To perpetrate something like this on a foster child is, I think, unforgiveable.”

The accusations against these foster parents--as well as the disclosure that the county failed to take action against them--come at a time of mounting criticism of the county’s ability to protect its 50,000 abused and neglected children, 10,000 of whom are in foster care.

Last month, the Legislature declared it had “no confidence” in county children’s services officials and ordered the county to comply with state regulations or face a state takeover of the entire $457-million county child-welfare services program. Already, the county has given up its authority to license foster homes.

State investigators staged a raid last month on county offices, hauling away 15 file cabinets filled with foster care records. The state said the records show the county has repeatedly failed to take proper action against allegedly abusive foster parents, including the Knights and Kelly.

In the complaint filed this week, the state accused Kelly of physical and verbal abuse against six children at her Compton home between 1984 and 1986. According to the state’s complaint, Kelly threw a radio at one child, struck others with an extension cord and knocked a 2-year-old into a washing machine. In addition, the state complaint said Kelly refused to allow her foster daughter to take a cooking class because “she did not want to spend money to buy (the child) a hair net, a recipe box and an apron.”

County records show that the investigators saw a loop-shaped scar on one child’s body in 1986. The investigators told their superiors that Kelly was not “a salvageable prospect”--in other words, she could not be reformed. But rather than strip the woman of her license, county children’s services officials instructed her to take a parenting class and pledged to monitor the home.

In a brief interview Wednesday, Kelly said only that the charges are untrue.

In the Knight case, the state charges that James Knight molested at least three foster children between 1980 and 1986 at the home he shared with his wife in Compton. The state complaint cited instances in which he allegedly fondled children’s breasts and buttocks, kissed them and stuck his tongue in their mouths.

The state also charges that Maxcine Knight knew of the abuse and that, on at least one occasion, called a child “a liar” and “took no action to protect the child” when the youngster complained she had been molested.

County records show that the first complaint against the Knights surfaced in 1980, from a 16-year-old girl who said James Knight made sexual advances toward her. But county investigators discounted it, saying they could not substantiate the girl’s story.

Then, in 1984, James Knight was arrested on charges he sexually molested three of his foster children. But instead of revoking the Knight license, the county told the foster father to move out of the house. State officials say the license should have been revoked at this point, especially given Mrs. Knight’s denial that any abuse had occurred.

In 1986, the third and final county probe turned up evidence that the parents were still living together and another child had complained she was molested. McIntosh wrote to Chaffee, informing him of the investigation. A month later, a county investigative report sent to McIntosh said Maxcine Knight “has endangered the children in her care by exposing them to a known child molester, Mr. Knight.” But the Knight license remained intact.

Maxcine Knight denied the allegations and said her husband no longer lives in her house. He could not be reached for comment.

“These children tell all kinds of tales and things,” Maxcine Knight said. “It’s not true.”

Both the Knight and Kelly cases must now be heard by an administrative law judge, who will determine if there is enough evidence to revoke the licenses.

In the meantime, there are no children in either home. Maxcine Knight said she gave up caring for foster children a year ago in order to devote herself more fully to foster parent activities, and state officials said three foster children were removed from the Kelly home this spring, at the outset of their investigation.

According to Lawrence Bolton, assistant chief counsel for the state Department of Social Services, the two cases did not come to light until May, when he received an anonymous tip about them.

Several current and former workers in the county’s Foster Homes Investigation Unit, which probes allegations of serious abuse, said they were outraged at the way the Knight and Kelly cases were handled, and were overjoyed to hear that the cases were being reopened.

“For several days, people in the office were euphoric that this was finally coming to light, because we were all appalled,” said one worker, who declined to be identified. “We felt that we were the only ones who cared about children.”

Gloria Sparks, a retired supervisor of the unit, added: “We thought it was a pretty raw deal in terms of the kids.”

Sparks and other department personnel said they argued strenuously that the licenses be revoked, and county documents show that their superiors were advised of their feelings. In one case, a department source said, employees were so upset that an entire unit wrote a letter of complaint to McIntosh.

According to this source and others, the decisions not to revoke the licenses were made by McIntosh and Barbara Uchida, a department administrator who no longer has responsibility for foster home investigations. Uchida did not return a reporter’s phone calls.

In one memo dated April, 1987, Sparks told Uchida that she and her staff strongly disagreed with the decision to permit Kelly to continue caring for children. “Young children and pre-teen-age (youngsters) are at particular risk in (the Kelly) home,” she wrote.

In a recent interview, Sparks said no one at the county Department for Children’s Services ever gave her an explanation for the department’s inaction in either case. In the Kelly case, she said, she learned she had been overruled when she spotted a notice on an office bulletin board that the home had vacancies for young children.