The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has come under fire once again after a 16-year-old girl was placed with a convicted felon, who is now accused of forcing her into prostitution. The man was licensed as a foster parent despite having a lengthy criminal record, and was found to be a pimp who had trafficked the girl in his care. CBS 2 Investigator Dave Savini has been uncovering failures in the state child welfare system for years, and this case is just the latest in a series of disturbing patterns of behavior. The DCFS has been found to be bouncing children from home to home without providing the necessary specialized care, and in this instance, they placed a girl who had already been a victim of sex trafficking with someone who should never have been given a license to be a foster parent.
According to Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert, the teenage girl needed a secure residential placement that was highly structured and had an intensive program for victims of sex trafficking. However, the DCFS failed to provide her with the care and placement she needed and instead, “they bounced her around from hospital to shelter to foster home.” A court order reveals that while the teenage girl waited to receive the care she needed, she was trafficked, sexually assaulted, shot, and ultimately, placed in the care of a pimp.
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The licensed foster parent was a 24-year-old man, Erick Johnson, who was released from federal prison after serving a 24-month sentence on a firearms charge. He had also spent three years in state prison for two robbery convictions. Despite Johnson’s lengthy criminal record, he was still approved by the DCFS to become a foster parent. This raises questions about the background-checking system at DCFS, and Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert believes that the system is broken and dysfunctional.
DCFS released a statement saying that the teenage girl was placed with a friend of the family, but this was found to be disingenuous and dishonest. The girl had expressed an interest in living with Johnson, and DCFS represented that Johnson had passed DCFS’s placement clearance and had been approved as a paid fictive kin placement for her. Under DCFS’s regulations, DCFS must perform a criminal background check on an individual before he or she can pass DCFS’s placement clearance. DCFS either never did this required background check on Johnson, or if they did, they failed to act on the information they discovered.
The DCFS has once again failed a vulnerable child in their care. The case of the 16-year-old girl highlights the need for significant changes in the DCFS’s policies and procedures. The welfare of children should be the top priority of the DCFS, and they need to take steps to ensure that vulnerable children are not placed in the care of convicted felons or other unsuitable individuals. The failure of the DCFS to do so is unacceptable, and there must be accountability for these failures.
