Second girl alleges rape at DCF girls shelter: ‘permanent psychological and emotional harm’

A second teenage girl has sued the Bridge Family Center claiming that she was raped by a worker at its scandal-plagued Harwinton shelter for troubled adolescent girls.

In the suit filed Wednesday at Hartford Superior Court, the then-14-year-old girl says that during her time at the shelter from March to May of 2023 she “was raped and sexually assaulted by a facility employee and has suffered significant physical and emotional harm.”

The state-funded shelter was shut down last fall, but had been part of a statewide network of so-called STAR homes for children and adolescents who need temporary shelter, usually after neglect or abuse at home.

The Harwinton facility operated on a contract from the state Department of Children and Families for more than a decade, but its final two years were marked by frequent fights, thefts, vandalism and a series of girls simply walking away from the remote property, according to police reports.

The mayhem became so bad that local officials publicly complained that ambulances and state troopers in the small semi-rural town were frequently pulled out of service to handle emergencies there.

On Thursday the Department of Children and Families assured state lawmakers that it had overhauled its system for monitoring temporary shelters in the STAR program.

But state Child Advocate Sarah Eagan offered a more grim assessment.

“The STAR homes are not working. It’s an old model, it doesn’t work,” Eagan told the General Assembly’s committee on children, which is considering a bill to require DCF issue a detailed report this year on how well STAR homes work for youngers with significant behavioral health troubles.

The report would also cover how well DCF retains qualified staff for the homes, how well it trains them and how much they actually provide therapeutic care to residents.

The Short-Term Assessment and Respite homes are run by private contractors for DCF, and are intended to provide 30- to 90-day safe housing with some treatment while DCF finds a foster home or longer-term clinical care facility for them.

But critics say the STAR homes have become holding centers for profoundly troubled adolescents when DCF can’t find long-term solutions.

“The only deliverable is: Is it a place where children can go when there’s an emergency?,’ ” Eagan told the committee. “It is a place that will take children coming out of an emergency room, out of detention, who have no place else to go, who are coming into DCF care at the last minute. But it’s not a treatment setting, it’s a shelter model of care.

“It isn’t working, and that’s why we have the kinds of problems that have been reported,” she said.

Eagan told the story of a few recent STAR home residents: One has been in DCF custody since 2021 and has a severe child abuse history.

“She is diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, depression, reactive attachment disorder. She has a history of concerns for sexual trafficking. She has a history of hospitalizations and suicidality,” Eagan said. “She has had 23 placements since entering DCF care.”

Jodi Hill-Lilly, commissioner-designate for DCF, said her agency recently reassigned oversight of STAR homes to a different division, its community behavioral health services unit.

Deputy Commissioner Michael Williams said reviewing STAR home contracts now would be done by a unit free from any pressure to maximize available shelter space for the agency. The previous system put oversight under control of the transition and support success unit.

“It was conflictual because also in that division was our licensing department, so they had oversight of licensing of homes and utilization of homes and program management of homes, which could create a conflict if we had a licensing issue but we also had a need for the beds,” he said.

The nonprofit Bridge Family Center still operates STAR shelters in Hartford, Wolcott and West Hartford. It has cited pending lawsuits when declining to comment or answer questions.

The suit filed Wednesday is the third against the Bridge Family Center over its former Harwinton operation.

Last year, the mother of a 14-year-old girl who’d been at the Harwinton shelter in the spring sued, claiming her daughter was physically assaulted and exposed to sexual assaults and other misconduct there. Last week, the grandmother sued, saying her then-14-year-old daughter was raped by a worker in February 2023.

All three suits are being pursued by Hartford attorney Timothy O’Keefe.

“The child protection professionals failed these children,” O’Keefe said in a statement this week. “This case is another sad reminder of that. Thankfully, we have a system of civil justice that will allow each of these girls to have an opportunity to seek accountability from the people and institutions that are responsible for the harm caused.”

The Bridge Family Center’s website gives a vastly more optimistic view of STAR homes than critics describe.

“We offer high-quality care for every resident by providing for every need that a child has when she/he enters our program,” according to the Bridge Family Center. “Basic needs include shelter, food, clothing, medical and dental care, counseling and family reconciliation support, primary education, life skills training, drug and sex education, and recreational and social activities.”