WARNING – DISTRESSING CONTENT
A teenage boy raped a three-week-old baby girl at a foster care home where the responsible adults knew that he had sexually abused young children before, a lawsuit alleges.
Video cameras set up by the Kleins’ foster parents at the foster home in Florida’s Ocala area captured the 14-year-old boy assaulting the baby for more than 20 minutes, USA Today reported on Thursday.
In the March 2019 incident, the boy sexually assaulted the baby girl and medics reported she was sexually abused, a Florida Department of Children and Families investigation found.
“This tragedy never should have happened,” said Stacie Schmerling, a lawyer with Justice for Kids in Fort Lauderdale, which is suing Kids Central and The Centres, the agencies managing the foster home.
“The family never should have been licensed to care for these vulnerable, non-verbal children.”
When they were still young, the Kleins fostered the boy and his older sister and they officially adopted them in 2011. Two years later , at the age of nine, a boy sexually abused a five-year – old girl, according to a lawsuit filed last week at the Marion County Courthouse.
The biological mother of the teenager exposed him to pornography and sex in front of him and may have sexualized him, claims the suit.
According to the suit, Kids Central, the non-profit agency overseeing child protection in the city, failed to secure psychological tests for the teenage boy.
It also alleges that even though the girl had psychological difficulties, Kids Central and The Centres, which offers case management services, sent disadvantaged children to the Kleins’ house.
A Gainesville paediatric neuropsychologist, Thomas Dikel, told the newspaper that the baby girl possibly “suffered at least some pain, if not a tremendous amount, and 20 minutes is an awfully long time to an infant,””
“What she was going through was horrific, terrifying. For all she knew, she was going to die,” Dr Dikel said.