State Awards Rape Victim $7.6 Million
By Jim Ash, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Originally published in The Palm Beach Post, June 6, 2002
TALLAHASSEE — After agonizing for days, Gov. Jeb Bush on Wednesday signed a bill awarding $7.6 million to a profoundly retarded woman with the intellectual capacity of a 2-year-old who was abused, raped and impregnated in a state-approved Fort Pierce group home more than a decade ago.
"We made a mistake and the child deserves better," Bush said, choking back tears. "This money will go to the care of this precious person."
The award—the third-largest claim payment ever made by Florida—capped a heart-wrenching legal battle to make the state pay for the abuses suffered by Kimberly Godwin, now 31.
Godwin's father, Jimmy, a road construction worker who lives in a three-bedroom trailer in Telogia, about 35 miles west of Tallahassee, was ecstatic.
"I'm excited, there's no doubt about it," he said. "One thing it does is it releases her from the state. They will never be able to get their hands on her again."
Bush said he hesitated signing the bill because he objected to a process that allows attorneys and lobbyists to earn money from claims bills that are required when victims sue the state and win more than $100,000.
He later pledged to reform the claims process.
"When something gets lawyered up and lobbied up like this, it just gets ugly," Bush said.
Less than 4 feet tall and barely able to speak, Kimberly Godwin should receive about $250,000 a year for the rest of her life under the terms of a complicated agreement that requires the state to deposit $760,000 a year into an annuity for the next 10 years, said family attorney Lance Block of West Palm Beach.
"It's been a long 10 years to get justice for Kimberly Godwin, but it was worth it and we are grateful to the legislature," Block said.
Putting her on the right track
For Jimmy Godwin, who agreed to allow his daughter's name and picture to be published, it was a victory leavened by sadness.
Kimberly's mother, the driving force behind the lawsuit, had volunteered to help other children like her daughter. She died of lung cancer in 1997, when it looked like the full compensation would never come.
Jimmy Godwin, who at age 55 has had a heart bypass operation and heart valve replacement and has remarried, said he will stick with his $38,000-a-year job, but go to work each day with more assurance that Kimberly will receive the best care.
That means better speech therapy—she can say "mama"—special education teachers, behavioral and psychological training and a day-care program where she can interact with people who have the same disabilities.
"She can speak. We've just got to put her with the right person to put her on the right track. I've always said, we've just got to find the right person to turn the key."
Kimberly Godwin's nightmare is a chilling reminder of the problems that continue to plague Florida's attempts to care for thousands of children and people who can't care for themselves.
The payment comes at a time when the Department of Children and Families is under fire for losing track of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson of Miami, who was removed from the home of her crack-addicted mother but disappeared from a caregiver 15 months before caseworkers found out.
The department's predecessor, the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, oversaw the now shut-down private group home where Kimberly was neglected, abused and eventually raped by the 16-year-old son of the owner. The rapist eventually confessed and was sent to a youthful offender program.
In 1991, state workers told Kimberly's parents she was three months pregnant—two months after department workers discovered it.
While they could not afford the type of care she received from the state sponsored facilities, the Godwins moved Kimberly back home. The legal battles began, Block said, when there was a dispute about terminating the pregnancy, which threatened Kimberly's life. The abortion eventually was performed.
Block, who has a 13-year-old daughter with Down syndrome and is a past president of The Arc of Palm Beach County, an association for the developmentally disabled, eventually won the lawsuit using a law that legislators created in the 1970s giving the developmentally disabled a bill of rights.
Block said the bill is the third-largest such bill in state history, behind a $9.8 million bill approved two years ago and one in 1996 estimated to be worth $22 million.
Under the law, Block will be entitled to 25 percent of the award for his 10 years of work, which is smaller than the 40 percent fees personal injury attorneys normally charge in nonlegislative cases.
Meanwhile, Kimberly will have more of an opportunity to enjoy the new screened porch her father added to the house, where she can watch the squirrels and keep a close eye on the bird feeder without having to worry about biting flies, her father said.
"I want her to live her life to the fullest. However high she can go, I want her to reach that plateau."
