Mass. Officials Probe Child Agency
By Adam Gorlick, Associated Press Writer
Originally published by The Associated Press, August 23, 2002
WARREN, Mass. (AP) — An office of the state's child protection agency is under review after 10 children were left in a home where they were beaten and sexually abused for a decade, even though the caseworkers suspected abuse.
Department of Social Services Commissioner Harry Spence launched a probe of the office after inquiries by The Associated Press.
Records show that state social workers suspected as early 1993 that the 10 children in a home in Warren were being abused. The youngest children were not removed from the home until last year.
The probe prompted the departure of Diane Hendricken, who managed the office that covers 33 towns in south-central Massachusetts and works with about 1,300 children.
Hendricken, who supervised 73 employees, stepped down this month after being told there was a "significant probability" she'd be fired, Spence said. On Wednesday, however, she rescinded her resignation and was put on paid leave pending review of the case.
Hendricken has an unpublished telephone number and could not be reached for comment.
Some of the children moved out when they were old enough and have since described their home life to police. Five people a husband and wife, her ex-husband, her former brother-in-law and a family friend have pleaded innocent to abuse charges in the case. Police say other arrests are pending.
Police say the children were between 6 and 17 when they were abused from 1990 to 2001, and sexual assaults, beatings and humiliations were constant in the home.
"These perpetrators cultivated the children to the point where they could abuse them," said police Officer Stephen Granlund, the part-time sexual abuse investigator for this central Massachusetts town of 4,700. "For many of them, they didn't know it was wrong until they were well into their teens."
Some of the children told police pornography and torture videos were shown like home movies. Some said they had to submit to abuse if they wanted to play video games. One boy said candy, money, marijuana, alcohol and death threats bought their silence.
A friend of the children, 21-year-old Nicole Cabana, said she saw some of the children being punched and kicked.
"They'd come to school with bruises sometimes," she said. Her friends asked her not to tell anyone about the abuse because it would have led to more beatings.
A 200-page police report contains at least three references to state child protection agents being at the house before the children were removed. Bill Haggerty, superintendent of the local school system, said school officials reported their concerns to the state at least once.
One of the girls told police a state worker came to the house in 1998 after she told her school bus driver and a guidance counselor that she and other children were being abused.
Before the investigator arrived, the girl said, the adults told the children they would be split up and punished if they talked. So the girl, now 21, said the children recanted their stories.
The AP is not describing the relationships between the children and adults in order to protect the children's identities.
