State Rep. Justin Harris
(R-Arkansas)
By Elaine Magliaro
David Ferguson of Raw Story reported on a truly troubling tale out of Arkansas yesterday. Justin Harris, a Republican state representative, is said to be “facing serious scrutiny after he apparently ‘rehomed’ his adopted daughters to a household where one of the girls, age 6, was sexually abused by the father.” The father–a 38-year-old resident of Bella Vista named Eric Cameron Francis–was arrested by State Police on April 4, 2014, for the rape of the 6-year-old girl who was in his temporary care. The rape occurred in January of 2014, when Francis’s wife was out of state. Francis, who confessed to the sexual assault, is currently serving a 40-year sentence.
Rep. Harris and his wife Marsha run Growing God’s Kingdom Preschool–the Christian pre-school where Francis had been employed for a short period of time.
According to the Arkansas Times, Harris and his wife adopted the young girls through the state Department of Human Services in March 2013. The two girls ended up in the care of Francis who sexually abused the six-year-old just six months later. Harris said he was “devastated and sickened” by news of the abuse. Last April, the state lawmaker told the Arkansas Times that Francis had been in his employ for approximately three months, from November 2013 to January 2014, before being fired for poor work attendance. Harris’s adopted daughters “were in Francis’ custody at the time, and it is apparent that Harris left the girls with Francis even after he fired him.”
Harris claimed that Francis “came with a pristine record.” He noted that “Francis was also a youth pastor at a church and had worked previously in early childhood education for the Bentonville School District and with a Head Start program.” Harris added that he was confident that “nothing had happened to any of the children at Growing God’s Kingdom Preschool, because of strict security protocols (the classroom contains a continuously operating camera that generates a permanent record).” The Arkansas Times reported that no “further charges against Francis resulted from subsequent State Police interviews of families at the preschool, although investigators uncovered at least two other incidents of sexual abuse of children in the community outside of the school.”
Ferguson:
When the Times asked Harris why he handed over his adopted daughter to a sexual predator without ever consulting state authorities or the foster care system, the legislator quoted the Christian Bible’s Book of Isaiah, saying, “No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.”
He then said, “You don’t know what we’ve been through this past year. You have no idea what my family has been through. I don’t care what the people of Arkansas think about me. I don’t care if I lose my position. I care what my wife thinks about me, and I care what my three sons think about me.”
Arkansas Times:
What Harris did not publicly disclose last spring, however, is how Francis came into contact with the 6-year-old victim. In prosecutor documents recently obtained by the Arkansas Times, state police investigators and multiple witnesses concur that the child was in fact the legally adopted daughter of Justin and Marsha Harris.
…The couple also has three biological sons who are older than the girls.
The Times reported that the “sexual abuse of the 6-year-old girl came to light only because of a call placed to the state’s child maltreatment hotline on Friday, March 28, from an unidentified caller who said the Harrises ‘gave their adoptive children to a family’ and ‘that family in turn gave the children to another family’ and that they had ‘continued to accept adoption subsidy money even after giving the children away.'”
The Francis family gave the two girls up to a third family. It was in the third family’s household that the “Arkansas Department of Human Services (DHS) finally found the girls in 2014 and learned that Francis had sexually abused the older girl.”
Ferguson said that the situation had “reopened scrutiny of the Harris family’s Christian daycare center…” He noted that the pre-kindergarten had “run afoul of authorities in the past for taking state and federal subsidies intended for non-religious institutions.”
SOURCES
Arkansas horror story: Republican lawmaker gave up adopted 6-year-old to man who then raped her (Raw Story)
Arkansas State Rep Probably Had Good Reason For Giving Adopted Daughter To Guy Who Raped Her (Wonkette)
FURTHER READING
Let’s Meet Justin Harris, The Arkansas House’s Godly Child-Abandoner (Wonkette)
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
You gotta have the perspective of ISIS to have these family values.
The hypocrisy of those who use their religious beliefs as a career choice is seemingly boundless.The two Wonkette pieces were brilliant.
That’s sad. I wonder why in the world they adopted them in the first place if they weren’t going to love them and keep them as their own.
Emily,
Why they adopted them in the first place is a good question? That was my first thought as well after I had read all the links. The reasons were never given. My guess is possibly the adoption subsidy which they continued to collect, or because the adoption had political benefit. What do you think?
Mike
You may be right. I know people who became foster parents to 2 girls simply for the subsidies.
Few actually do it ‘for goodwill alone, often it is mixture of both.
I don’t know what subsidies are available for adoption but that is the likely driving factor.
But yes, horror story indeed, And then he takes refuge in his faith?! No shame! Religious fundamentalists of all stripes are a danger to us all.
How in the hell is this man and woman not in jail for child abandonment, at the least? Sick.
Raff, my thought exactly.
Rafflaw & bettykath,
Excerpt fro my Raw Story source:
The practice of “rehoming” adopted children is not expressly illegal in Arkansas. There is no specific law against the practice, and the Times uncovered nine instances of the practice in the last two years.
Is there any law in Arkansas against stringing up child abandoners by there thumbs in the town square and leaving them there to swing in the wind?
“The practice of “rehoming” adopted children is not expressly illegal in Arkansas. There is no specific law against the practice, and the Times uncovered nine instances of the practice in the last two years.”
Never let it be said that those States with a Southern mindset would write laws that actually help those in need. The idea that “rehoming” is a practice in Arkansas, or any other venue is disgusting. The adoption process is supposed to provide stability to a child’s life, not have them shuttled about.
Arkansas Republican dodges blame for giving adopted daughters
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/arkansas-republican-dodges-blame-for-giving-adopted-daughters-to-rapist-im-a-victim-here/
Elaine,
I still can’t understand how a child of any parent can be just “given” away legally. If a biological child is abandoned, isn’t that parent or parents liable? Even in Arkansas?
Is there any law in Arkansas against stringing up child abandoners by there thumbs in the town square and leaving them there to swing in the wind?
===========================
littering?
===============================
He then said, “You don’t know what we’ve been through this past year. You have no idea what my family has been through. I don’t care what the people of Arkansas think about me. I don’t care if I lose my position. I care what my wife thinks about me, and I care what my three sons think about me.”
============
Poor little persecuted me. Maybe littering is a bit harsh.
Aren’t there some anti-abortion people with some time on their hands that can picket in front of this guys house.
Kid-Dumper AR Rep Justin Harris So SO Sorry … That DHS Screwed Him And His Family (Video)
by Rebecca Schoenkopf
http://wonkette.com/578793/kid-dumper-ar-rep-justin-harris-so-sorry-that-dhs-screwed-him-and-his-family-video
After the older of his two adopted daughters — at the mature age of six — was raped by the man to whom he had “rehomed” her, Arkansas state Rep. Justin Harris (R – “God’s Kingdom”) gave a press conference today to attempt to justify it. (He did not attempt to justify the rape, by family friend Eric Francis, to whom he had turned over his two adopted daughters in late 2013; he merely attempted to justify the rest of it.) Harris started by “clarifying” that “the victims here are the children,” since the country and the Internet did not take well to his sad claim yesterday that it was he and his wife who had “suffered a severe injustice.” While the girls were “the real victims,” he back-pedaled, he and his wife had been “failed” by the Department of Human Services, which is really to blame.
In this afternoon’s press conference (see video above), he began by thanking the reporters in attendance for their “support,” which was probably not their intention in attending. His voice soon breaking, he claimed that he and his wife, Marsha, had rehomed the 6- and 3-year-old — and more on the number of daughters in his custody in a moment — to Eric and Stacey Francis only after an unbroken streak of terror by the girls, who had been abused in their birth family, and for whom no kind of therapy, he said, was working. He claimed that he attempted to talk to DHS — the agency that had arranged and confirmed the Harrises’ adoption of the girls — about returning the girls “multiple times” but was met with “nothing with hostility.” If he attempted to return the girls, Harris says an unnamed worker at DHS told him, he would be charged with child abandonment, and his three birth sons could be taken away as well.
A statement to Wonkette from DHS’s communications director, Amy Webb, regarding Harris’s charge of threats by DHS to his family should he attempt to return the girls said, “I am prohibited by law from discussing specific cases, including that allegation. Here’s all I can say … We understand that in rare cases, a successful adoption is impossible to achieve. In those situations, there is always an option.”
Asked by reporters present who the unnamed DHS worker was, Harris declined to say. He was not as reticent in detailing the girls’ mental health issues, though — and said that DHS had not informed his family they were getting girls who were disturbed by the trauma of their upbringing in their birth family.
“His voice soon breaking, he claimed that he and his wife, Marsha, had rehomed the 6- and 3-year-old — and more on the number of daughters in his custody in a moment — to Eric and Stacey Francis only after an unbroken streak of terror by the girls, who had been abused in their birth family, and for whom no kind of therapy, he said, was working.”
So now this couple’s story is that they were terrorized by these children, for whom no kind of therapy was working, so they felt the solution was to turn them over to their friend the pedophile to do what. Was he qualified to provide them with the recuperative therapy they needed? He claims that DHS was hostile to his attempts to return these girls to their Agency. Perhaps their hostility was from a DHS belief that this “return” was capricious? He also continued to collect the adoption allowance from the Agency, was this to turn the funds over to his friend the pedophile?
There are situations where children who were previously abused, act out in a new home. I am not trying to deny there are problems at times. However, in this instance the story doesn’t ring true to me for the following reasons:
This couple ran a pre-school and so one would assume they were professionally equipped to handle these girls.
This man was a State Representative and one would assume he had the political clout to ensure that DHS would treat him fairly.
I suspect the adoption was one done for cosmetic, perhaps political reasons and didn’t work out the way it was planned. No evidence of that of course, but it was the first thing I thought about when reading this story.
Arkansas rep who gave his adopted six-year-old to rapist is lying: former foster family
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/arkansas-rep-who-gave-his-adopted-six-year-old-to-rapist-is-lying-former-foster-family/
Excerpt:
The previous foster parents of two girls who were adopted by an Arkansas GOP lawmaker and his wife, only to “rehome” them to a household where one of the girls, age 6, was raped, is disputing his statements blaming social service workers, reports Arkansas Times.
Craig and Cheryl Hart, who provided foster care for the girls prior to their adoption by Rep. Justin Harris and his wife Marsha, say they, along with local DHS staff, objected to the Harrises adopting the girls only to have their concerns overridden by the head of the Division of Children and Family Services, Cecile Blucker.
In a statement to the press on Friday, Harris blamed DHS staffers saying, “We were misled by DHS to believe that the youngest two [sisters] did not have any severe issues.”
According to Cheryl Hart, DHS employees attempted to talk Harris and his wife out of adopting the girls, citing their emotional needs, only to have their concerns dismissed.
“DHS attempted to talk to them about the girls’ issues, but I feel like they were in denial,” Hart said. “They were very defensive about it. They repeatedly told us they had degrees in Early Childhood Development, they had therapists there at their preschool, and they had God to help them through this.”
“In one meeting in particular, we each went around the room and tried to sort of put all our cards on the table and say why this was a bad idea,” she continued. “Everybody used strong terminology and tried to deter them, and [the Harrises] kept saying, ‘Yes we know, yes we know.’ I asked them point blank, ‘Why would you put your sons through that?’ Because the oldest one at the time was aggressive — that’s how she learned to get things in her life. And they knew [the middle girl] had been sexually assaulted, and she would have some anger issues.”
I know of families that have “re-homed” one or more more children. I was “rehomed” for several months when I was very young. I was a receiver of much younger sister. It wasn’t an adoption, it was putting her in a place that was better for her while our mother got her life back on track. I have also had various nieces and nephews stay with me for months at time when the single parent (and the child) needed a break for one reason or another. In another instance, four children were placed with extended families b/c the biological parents couldn’t afford to care for them. (Why did they have more children that they couldn’t afford? Don’t go there.) In each case the biological parents were in touch with the children and there were no secrets about who was who. In each instance, there were other children who acknowledged their siblings. None of the children in this paragraph were abandoned by their families who stayed in touch with them.
The question is how do we let extended families help those who need it, while stopping the kind of “rehoming” that’s going on where unwanted children are just moved on.
Bettykath,
There are a few different takes on the question you ask.
1. In the case of an extended family, with no prior/ current abuse/ negleect in the picture, then it is merely a family matter and CPS needn’t be involved.
2. If it is aremoval due to abuse/neglect and CPS places the child with a relative child’s treatment should be monitored.
3. If the child in foster care is put up to adoption then the progress of the child’s care needs to be monitored for a period of years.
Keeping a child within the structure of a family is a good thing, as long as the family is functional.
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