Jacksonville, FL

Jacksonville, FL: (Jul-07-07) A 32-year-old woman, identified in court documents by the initials S.A.P., filed a child abuse lawsuit, alleging that she was horribly abused in her Orange Park foster home in 1979 while state child welfare workers looked the other way. The case had been scheduled for a jury trial in Jacksonville mid July after the Florida Supreme Court allowed it to proceed despite a four-year statute of limitations on abuse claims. The court ruled 5-2 in 2002 that the statute of limitations shouldn't apply when the state is accused of negligently monitoring a child and concealing the abuse. The Department of Children and Families, then known as the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, were notified in 1979 by neighbors, who called Clay County deputies after hearing 4-year-old S.A.P. and her sister screaming. Deputies said they found the girls severely physically abused and malnourished and living in a different foster home than the one they'd been assigned. In a settlement reached, the state agreed to pay S.A.P. $100,000 as compensation. [FLORIDA TIMES UNION: FOSTER ABUSE]

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Published on Jul-9-07