Male Staffers Have Sex with Girls At DSS Home

Opinion
Male Staffers Have Sex
with Girls At DSS Home

By Nev Moore
January 29, 2001

Last Friday’s edition of the Boston Herald carried two interesting articles side-by-side on page 21.

The first article carries the headline: “Workers probed for trysts at home for troubled kids.” It tells about allegations of sexual relations between male staff members at the Wayside Home in Marlboro with underage teenage girls who are placed there while in the “protective” custody of DSS. Wayside is one of the typical residential “homes” where DSS places children who may be too old or too problematic to stay in a foster home. By the time these kids get to Wayside, or any of the other 258 residentials contracted by DSS, they have usually been in many (if not dozens) of foster homes and are often chronic runaways.

The accused Wayside staffers claimed that the sex was “consensual,” an argument that didn’t work for Mary Kay Latorneau or anyone else caught in that predicament (unless they’re a Kennedy). DSS spokesperson, Carol Yelverton, said that DSS would investigate. He declined further comment.

Wayside is the facility that gained brief media attention three years ago when Mark Soares, a 16-year-old boy in their care, died from blunt-force trauma to the neck while being restrained by staff members. When the boy cried out that he couldn’t breathe and begged them to let him go, the workers ignored him. When his body was limp and unresponsive, they claimed they thought he was faking. The workers were cleared of any wrongdoing by Westboro District Judge John S. McCann who stated that the boy’s death was “an unfortunate accident” - the exact phrase they always use when another child dies in State “care.” I can’t help but wonder how differently this case would have played out had it been the boy’s parents who were restraining him when he died. I imagine that the media coverage would have been entirely different as well. There certainly would have been no talk of “unfortunate accidents!”

Beacon Hill Concerned with Nursing
Homes but Not DSS Homes
The article featured next to this in last Friday’s Herald showed a blindspot in our legislators’ perceptions. It’s titled, “Lawmakers call for tighter scrutiny of nursing homes.” The article begins: “Bay State lawmakers - stunned by state inspections revealing abuse and neglect in nursing homes - yesterday called for tighter scrutiny and efforts to stop high staff turnover at the troubled facilities. ‘There should be more spot checks at random 24-hours-a-day all over Massachusetts,’ said Sen. Mark Montigny (D- New Bedford), the chairman of the ways and Means committee. ‘An industry that cares for people must be sternly regulated by not only laws, but roving investigators.’”

The article goes on to quote Rep. David Sullivan (D- Fall River) and Sen. Therese Murray (D- Plymouth), the consensus being (surprise!) that more funding and more attractive employee benefit packages would solve the problems. I can’t agree that modest wages and lack of benefits causes cruelty and abuse. I believe it is perpetrated by sadistic, ignorant people with psychological problems. It is interesting to note, though, the diametrically opposed attitude our legislators have towards elder abuse and the abuse of children in state care. While they are outraged and appalled at the abuse found in nursing homes, they have no interest whatsoever in investigating (let alone mobilizing against) the rapes and abuses perpetrated upon other peoples’ children who are trapped in DSS’ secretive care. The abuses referred to in the Wayside article are, after all, nothing extraordinary. They continue day after day, accepted as standard operating procedure, in the 258 DSS contracted residential homes (and God only knows how many foster homes) throughout the State of Massachusetts without so much as a raised eyebrow on Beacon Hill.