A lawsuit filed Tuesday on behalf of a 5-year-old boy alleges the state failed to adequately screen and supervise the couple who fostered and then adopted him in a Wahiawa home where he suffered malnutrition and abuse and witnessed the violent death of another child.
The couple, Thomas and Brandy Blas, are facing second-degree murder charges, along with Brandy’s mother, Debra Geron, in the death of 10-year-old Geanna Bradley in January. The Blases were Geanna’s legal guardians.
When authorities discovered Geanna’s lifeless body, five other children were removed from the household — the Blases’ four biological children and a boy, then 4, they had adopted.
It took five days for authorities to recognize that this child, too, had been severely abused.
The lawsuit lays out the sequence of events and argues that the state was negligent in failing to adequately screen the Blas household and oversee the boy’s placement there.
“Coming from a health care background, this case and others in the news rack my conscience,” said Laura Ozak, the attorney who filed the suit and has worked as a registered nurse. “I would ask the public to flood the governor’s office and their state representatives with letters and emails demanding scrutiny of what’s going on in” the Department of Human Services, which oversees the foster system.
“Nobody goes into this kind of work for the money. They do it because they care about children. I blame our government for not giving our workers and others the support they need to take care of these children. This is shameful.”
The boy, referred to in the lawsuit as A.B., was born prematurely in February 2019. Child Welfare Services, a division of DHS, got emergency custody of him right after his birth because of suspected illicit drug exposure in the womb, according to the lawsuit.
A.B. was discharged two weeks later to his birth mother, but shortly afterwards was removed again and placed with the Blases as foster parents. A year or so later, the birth mother’s parental rights were terminated and the state recommended that A.B. be adopted by the Blases.
The lawsuit alleges that CWS and its contractor, Catholic Charities Hawaii, failed to ensure that A.B. got recommended early intervention services or well-baby exams.
“Catholic Charities Hawaii has yet to be served and given an opportunity to review the lawsuit; therefore, we cannot comment at this time,” a spokesman for the organization said in an email.
CWS did not respond to a request for comment.
Geanna’s body was discovered at the Wahiawa home in January. The girl showed signs of malnutrition, as well as wounds and scars indicative of child abuse.
According to the lawsuit, first responders noted that A.B. was malnourished, unable to walk normally and had multiple bruises while the Blases’ four biological children appeared to be fine.
But instead of seeking medical attention, state social workers placed A.B., along with the other children, with Brandy Blas’ sister, the lawsuit alleges. It was only five days after Geanna’s death, after the sister said she did not want A.B. and the staff at a shelter that took him in reported the signs of abuse to CWS, that he was taken to the hospital for medical care.
A social worker at Kapiolani Child Advocacy and Protection Center reviewed A.B.’s medical record and found no evidence of care between 2019 and 2022. A pediatrician found that the boy was “very small for age, very, very thin” and had “well healed scars, too numerous to count, on neck, arms, legs, back, hands and feet,” the lawsuit states.
He suffered from malnutrition, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, failure to thrive and severe language delays. The boy was kept in the hospital for three weeks before being placed with a medically trained foster parent.
“A.B. is in a safe and nurturing environment,” Ozak said.
But the boy “witnessed the Blas’ shocking cruelty” of Geanna, “while at the same time … was himself subject to severe physical and emotional abuse and neglect,” the lawsuit alleges.
The state has paid out large settlements recently over cases in which children that entered the foster system died.
In April, the state agreed to pay $750,000 in a lawsuit filed by the biological parents of a 3-year-old boy, Fabian Garett-Garcia, who died in foster care on the Big Island in 2017.
The foster parents said he fell from a bench while wearing virtual reality goggles, and the foster mother was found not guilty of second-degree murder.
The lawsuit alleged that CWS and Catholic Charities workers saw evidence that Fabian had been injured and received reports of suspected child abuse a dozen times. Catholic Charities also settled for a confidential amount.
In another case, the state agreed to pay $1.8 million to three plaintiffs who said they were victimized by their foster sibling, a known sex abuser, HNN reported.
Yet another lawsuit was brought by the estate of Isabella Kalua, also known as Ariel Sellers, the 6-year-old Waimanalo girl whose adoptive parents, after initially taking her in as a foster child, are alleged to have kept her in a dog cage and covered her mouth with duct tape and denied her food. Ariel’s body was never found, but she was declared dead by a court and her adoptive parents, Isaac and Lehua Kalua, are facing murder charges.
The lawsuit on behalf of A.B. was brought by Steve Lane, who was appointed as “next friend” to represent the boy’s interests.
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