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(New Mexico) PARENTS SUE EX-SOCIAL WOKER
http://www.currentargus.com/artman/p...icle_106.shtml
Parents sue ex-social worker By Dawn Bowen Jul 3, 2003, 09:40 ARTESIA — The parents of an Artesia girl are suing the social worker who they say falsely accused them of child abuse and took custody of their children in 2001. They say the social worker failed to have the girl treated for a serious medical condition, causing the child to be permanently handicapped. Jacinto Arredondo and Marisela Olivas filed a federal lawsuit in February seeking $1.5 million and an order declaring that Naomi Locklear, a former social worker for the Children, Youth and Families Department in Carlsbad, violated their parental rights. According to court records, CYFD was also initially included as a defendant in the suit, but was later dismissed when a federal judge determined that a U.S. constitutional amendment bars anyone from seeking a monetary award of damages that would be paid from public funds. Locklear filed a court pleading in June responding to the complaint against her, denying the allegations and stating that her actions were taken in good faith and were reasonable. Olivas said her family has endured “a tragedy and a nightmare” that began in February 2001 when her 10-month-old daughter, Jasmine Arredondo, accidentally fell off a bed in her home and injured her arm. Olivas took the child to the Artesia General Hospital emergency room to be treated for a possible injury. X-rays were taken and an emergency room practitioner determined the child had a fracture on her left arm, Olivas said. The child was referred to an orthopedic specialist in Carlsbad who put a cast on the arm the next day. Four days later, Olivas returned to the Artesia hospital when Jasmine appeared to be having trouble with her left hip. She said the child had been walking around tables and standing before the fall, but now she would not put any pressure on her left leg. X-rays were taken and the emergency room practitioner said she believed the hip had been fractured. She told Olivas that the X-ray would be read by a radiologist in Hobbs to obtain the official results. Olivas would later learn that the practitioner had contacted CYFD to report that she believed Jasmine was the victim of child abuse Within days after the second trip to the emergency room, CYFD took custody of the child and her older sibling, Ashley, 5. Olivas said Locklear denied her requests for another doctor to examine her daughter’s hip and issue a second opinion. Doctors would later determine that the hip did not have a hairline fracture as was first diagnosed, but was instead severely infected. Because the severe septic hip infection on Jasmine’s left hip was misdiagnosed as an injury, the infection went undiagnosed for several weeks and was allowed to worsen, Olivas said. Doctors now say that the delayed diagnosis caused a total destruction of the femoral head and neck in Jasmine’s hip, according to a doctor’s report dated A Surgery was performed to attempt to relocate the hip in March 2001. The child was in a body cast and later a brace for more than a year. Now at age 3, Jasmine walks with a limp and her left leg is about one centimeter shorter than the right leg. Olivas said the doctors have told her that Jasmine’s left leg will continue to grow at a slower pace than the right leg, resulting in a considerable difference in the length of her legs when she reaches adulthood and a pronounced limp. They also told her that Jasmine will suffer from severe arthritis in her left leg, she said. Doctors are planning procedures that may slow the growth of Jasmine’s right leg, Olivas said. They will perform a total hip replacement when Jasmine reaches age 10, or sooner if the pain in her hip becomes unbearable, she said “The bigger she gets, the worse she walks. Now when she falls, especially when she falls on her left side, she cries and cries, ” Olivas said Olivas places the blame for Jasmine’s condition entirely on CYFD and Locklear. “I believe a social worker should know more about children, how to take care of them and what kind of care they need. They ruined Jasmine’s life for the rest of her life,” she said. “I know what my daughter’s future is going to be like. When she goes to school, you know how kids are, they’re going to laugh at her.” She said Locklear’s actions in the days after the fall caused irreparable damage to her daughter that will last a lifetime “If she had left me alone and let me take her for a second opinion, my child would not have a leg like she has,” she said, adding that the child’s infection could have been treated with oral antibiotics and would not have caused irreparable damage to the child’s leg. Instead, Olivas said, CYFD took custody of Jasmine on Feb. 20, 2001, two days after the second visit to the hospital emergency room. Olivas said she arrived at her Artesia home that day after a trip to Roswell with Jasmine and Ashley to find Artesia Police Detective Rudy Arrey and Rebecca Garcia, a CYFD social worker, waiting outside her house. They told her that they wanted to talk to her about Jasmine’s injuries. “I told them they could come in, so they came inside my house,” she said. “They wanted me to show them the bed where Jasmine fell from, so I showed them the bed. Then we went into the kitchen and they told me they were going to take Jasmine.” Olivas said she told them she did not want them to take Jasmine. They agreed to allow her to accompany them to the CYFD office. “I didn’t want to let go of her and I told them, ‘I’ll take her’,” she said. At the CYFD office, the social worker agreed to allow Olivas’ sister to take Jasmine to her home in Carlsbad pending an investigation. Olivas said she understood the authorities were following a standard procedure that occurs when a child is believed to have two consecutive injuries. “I didn’t mind their investigation, I just wanted them to do the right thing,” she said. The next day, Olivas took her older child to Artesia Head Start where she was a student. When she went to pick her up at 2 p.m. that afternoon, she was told she could not take the child. “I went to her room and her teacher pulled me to the side and told me Ashley was in the office with social services,” she said She went to the office and was met by the principal and detective Sgt. Michael Pitts of the Artesia Police Department. Ashley was playing in an adjoining room, she said. Olivas said Pitts told her to sign a document giving them permission to take the child. She said she initially refused to sign it and said she was not giving them permission to take her. “(Pitts) said if I didn’t sign it, it was going to be worse for me. So I signed it. I signed the paper,” she said Pitts told her that she and the children’s father were being charged with child abuse. She was told to leave the building, Olivas said, and she stopped at the door to the office to say goodbye to her daughter. She said the child had tears in her eyes and was beginning to cry. “I told her she had to go watch her sister,” she said. “They sent me out first and they told me I could not go near the school or they would arrest me. Not even around the block, nothing,” she said. Olivas said she went to Artesia General Hospital and picked up the X-rays that were to be back from Hobbs that day. The X-rays showed there was no fracture on the child’s hip, she said. Then she went home and called her sister in Carlsbad. “That’s when I found out they took Jasmine, too,” she said. Her sister told her that Locklear and another social worker came to her home and said they needed to take custody of Jasmine. She said her sister told Locklear she needed to give them Jasmine’s diaper bag because it contained two prescriptions — one for pain and the other for an ear infection — and a special formula that the child was on. She left the room to get the diaper bag and when she returned, Locklear, the other social worker and Jasmine were gone. “When she came back to the living room where they were standing, they were gone. They just took off and left her standing there with the bag in her hand,” she said. Three days later, Olivas was allowed to visit the children. During the visit, Locklear told her that Jasmine didn’t want to drink her bottle. “I asked her what she was giving her and she said, ‘fresh milk,’” Olivas said. Olivas said the child should never have been given fresh milk at 10 months old and should have been given the special formula to which she was accustomed. Two weeks after the children were placed in a foster home in Artesia, Ashley was hospitalized in Carlsbad Medical Center for five days due to dehydration. Jasmine underwent emergency surgery on March 5, 2001, after the severe septic hip infection was discovered. She was airlifted to Carrie Tingley Hospital in Albuquerque where doctors placed a tube into a vein that was used to administer antibiotics to the child for five weeks, Olivas said. Criminal charges were filed against Olivas and Jacinto Arredondo on Feb. 23, 2001. According to court documents, the charges were dismissed on March 20, 2001, after the state determined there was no evidence of child abuse. Olivas said when the children were returned to them, and the case had been dismissed, she was left with a “totally disabled child.” “When Jasmine was taken away from us she was a complete, healthy child with no defects in her life,” she stated in her federal complaint. Despite the child’s medical condition, and frequent trips to doctors, the family tried to return to normal, Olivas said. “Ashley went back to Head Start, but the teachers weren’t the same with me. They knew about the case, they knew it had been dismissed but they didn’t know why,” she said. Olivas said her children have suffered emotionally from the ordeal. Ashley, now age 7, continues to have trouble sleeping and is fearful, she said. “She’s afraid when she sees a cop. She’s afraid when Jasmine’s sick. She wants to make sure that Jasmine eats well and she watches to make sure Jasmine doesn’t fall of the bed,” she said. Olivas said she hopes the lawsuit will cause the CYFD to ensure that their employees are well trained and are capable of performing their job and caring for children. “My main decision to do this is I want the state to know the employees they have hired to do the job so it won’t happen to someone else,” she said. Locklear is represented by attorney Sean Olivas of the Keleher & McLeod law firm of Albuquerque. He could not immediately be reached for comment. Copyright © 2003 Carlsbad Current-Argus. |
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