Report from Sen. Ossoff blasts DFCS over child deaths, sex trafficking

ATLANTA - U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff has released a scathing report on Georgia's child welfare agency, saying systemic failures have allowed kids to die and that hundreds of children have been sex trafficked while under state care.

The report also takes aim at Gov. Brian Kemp's appointed director of the Division of Family and Children Services, accusing her of trying to hide the extent of problems.

DFCS fired back Tuesday, releasing a point-by-point rebuttal and a statement accusing Ossoff of "political gamesmanship."

"Highlighting Senator Ossoff's staff's obvious lack of subject matter expertise regarding complex child welfare issues," the DFCS statement said, "the subcommittee's report omits key context, ignores relevant data that undermine the report's primary assertions, and takes great lengths to misrepresent DFCS actions, facts about various cases, and outcomes for many children in the state's care."

The Senate Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, which Ossoff chairs, conducted a yearlong, bipartisan investigation. Some of its findings had already trickled out, including an analysis that found nearly 1,800 in DFCS care were reported missing between 2018 and 2022.

DFCS had called the ongoing probe "political," engineered mainly by Democrats, and accused the subcommittee of "misstatements, omissions, and failure of the Subcommittee to request relevant 
information or responses from the Department in advance of its publicized hearings and press conferences," according to an October letter from its attorneys.

But Ossoff's subcommittee hasn't backed down, its investigation into abuse and neglect culminating Tuesday with the release of a searing, 64-page document that accused DFCS of failing in all the worst ways.

Ossoff's subcommittee said the agency fails to protect children from rape and sexual abuse, pointing to the 2023 arrests of Rainbow House employees who were accused of abusing residents of the Jonesboro youth shelter.

The report also accused DFCS of failing to protect children from over-medication on psychotropic drugs and failing to provide adequate health care for foster kids. 

And by failing to follow its own policies, the report said, DFCS has contributed to the deaths of children.

Without naming names because the subcommittee worked off redacted records, Ossoff's report says DFCS dropped the ball in a Fulton County case, whose description matches the case of Asia Calabrese-Lewis, who allegedly drowned her 1-year-old daughter in a Sandy Springs pond in May 2023.

The report also cited a DeKalb County case from July 2023 matching that of Alondra Hobbs, charged with killing her 7-year-old daughter, her mummified body found in a closet.

It also cites a Loganville case from April 2022, where a 15-year-old set fire to a home, killing his 10-year-old sister. According to the subcommittee report, the teen set the fire because of abuse by his parents.

In all of those cases, the report says, DFCS had received prior reports about the families, but failed to fully investigate or take steps that could have averted tragedies.

In another damning section, the report says that of 1,790 children who went missing from DFCS, "410 of those children were likely sex trafficked." 

DFCS has pointed out that other states have higher rates of children missing from foster care, including New York, Ohio, Tennessee and Alabama. In its 11-page rebuttal released Tuesday, DFCS said that the 410 figure reported by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is "based on national figures and projections, not evidence specific to any case from Georgia."

The subcommittee report also unleashed on Candice Broce, appointed DFCS director by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2021.

The report says that the following year, when the Georgia Office of the Child Advocate reported on systemic failures to protect children, Broce asked the department's Inspector General to "take each of these findings and refute them" in as "strong of a rebuttal as possible." According to the report, the inspector general for the Department of Human Services essentially did just that, publicly dismissing the concerns. Ossoff’s report called that an "inadequate, limited-scope review."

The report included in a footnote that Broce had also said in her email to the inspector general, "If your team finds that their conclusions are actually accurate and we need to fix them, I'd wholeheartedly accept those recommendations and put them into practice."

The agency’s rebuttal said that "at no time did (Broce) direct the investigation or ask for a particular outcome."

"The (inspector general) personnel who were interviewed by the Senate all testified that they undertook the investigation independently and did not feel any pressure to reach a particular result," the rebuttal says.

The accompanying statement from DFCS says that after taking months to finish its report, the subcommittee only gave the agency two days to respond to a heavily-redacted version.

"Not included in the subcommittee's report are DFCS's improvements in addressing the issue of hoteling, strengthening rigorous safeguards for the children in our care, and streamlining service delivery," the statement said. "Our staff and leadership take our responsibility to Georgia's at-risk youth with the utmost seriousness and will continue to identify and implement solutions that better serve those in our care."

Ossoff's report ends with a list of nine recommendations, including more federal funding for child welfare, possible changes to federal law, and DFCS beefing up safety protocols. 

Neither Congress nor DFCS are under any obligation to follow the subcommittee's recommendations.