The state of Oregon has paid $750,000 to three English-speaking foster kids who were placed in the Gresham home of Spanish-speaking foster parents and forced to wear filthy clothes smelling of urine and sleep in a windowless basement.
Two of the three brothers also were sexually abused by another, older male foster child — and they were unable to tell that to their foster parents because their foster parents didn’t speak English, said Portland attorney David Paul, who represented the brothers.
Paul said the brothers’ isolation was made even worse because child-protection workers with the Oregon Department of Human Services failed to regularly check on the boys. Department rules require workers to have at least one face-to-face interaction with each foster child every 30 days. But Paul said one of the boys didn’t have any in-person visits with a DHS caseworker in the entire eight months he lived in the home in 2012 and 2013.