Some might call it friendly fire.
The New Mexico Department of Justice calls it accountability.
Attorney General Raúl Torrez’s office filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the state Children, Youth and Families Department, alleging it used an overly broad reading of state statute in refusing to disclose key records during an investigation into systemic issues. The child welfare agency abuses those state laws to intimidate and punish critical foster parents, the complaint also alleges.
“The era of CYFD stonewalling, of hiding behind confidentiality, of threatening and intimidating people and retaliating against people is over,” Torrez said during a news conference Wednesday in Albuquerque. “This agency will not tolerate it, and we will do everything in our power to put an end to it.”
Torrez’s legal action, filed in the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe, came after a yearlong investigation launched in the wake of a 16-year-old boy’s death by suicide at a group home contracted by CYFD to house foster children. The investigation yielded a searing 224-page report by the Justice Department, published Wednesday in tandem with the filing of the lawsuit.
The complaint calls for a judge to find CYFD’s practices violate state law, and to prohibit the agency from retaliating against people for lawfully discussing child abuse and neglect cases.
The lawsuit is likely to represent an escalation in tensions between Torrez’s office and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration, especially on the issue of New Mexico’s child welfare system.
The Governor’s Office did not directly answer a question about whether it had concerns about Torrez’s office suing another state agency, though Lujan Grisham did appear to take a jab at Torrez in a statement.
“The Attorney General’s report is shocking but shock value doesn’t solve the problems, and our response is to keep doing the important daily work of keeping New Mexico’s children safe,” Lujan Grisham wrote.
CYFD spokesperson Jake Thompson also did not address the lawsuit, though he did write in a statement that Cabinet Secretary Valerie Sandoval “has said on numerous occasions that CYFD has zero tolerance for retribution or retaliation.”
Torrez defended his authority as attorney general to sue CYFD, arguing it is his office’s duty to “uphold the rule of law, uphold the Constitution and protect the people.”
“I have no doubt that the department will try to challenge my authority to take this action,” he said. “My advice to the leaders of that agency and to the future leaders of that agency is, rather than trying to fight accountability, maybe that’s time and energy that’s better spent protecting kids.”
Torrez’s office submitted over 10 formal requests to CYFD for records related to child abuse and neglect cases over a six-month period, according to the lawsuit. Many of those requests, though, were “outright rejected,” while CYFD’s responses to others went through months of delays and were incomplete when they finally arrived, the Justice Department alleges.
CYFD is obligated by state law to preserve children’s right to privacy, especially during abuse and neglect cases. However, state law also allows the agency to disclose confidential information in full to some people and organizations, such as law enforcement agencies, the Justice Department states in its lawsuit.
But CYFD instead has put into practice an overly broad interpretation of state law, effectively treating all requests for information the same in rejecting them, the Justice Department alleges. Torrez’s office says that was an effort by CYFD to maintain a “shroud of secrecy” in child abuse and neglect cases in which the agency has failed to protect children.
The agency also uses confidentiality laws to intimidate and punish foster parents who publicly criticize CYFD, the Justice Department alleges.
For example, the Justice Department cites a separate lawsuit filed against CYFD in the death of 5-year-old Xaqueline “Xaquie” Bynum, who died from carbon monoxide poisoning. The suit alleges Silver City CYFD workers failed to intervene, despite multiple investigations into allegations Xaquie and her brother were neglected by their parents.
After the girl was found dead, the suit states, Xaquie’s brother stayed with the children’s grandmother, who was the first person to coordinate care for the boy’s “severe dental decay” and who, at the request of the local sheriff’s office, sent over a recording of a recent Children’s Court hearing.
CYFD, in response, took the boy away from his grandmother because she was “cooperating with the prosecution in the criminal cases” against the children’s parents, and placed him with a foster family, according to the complaint. The agency also barred the grandmother from visiting him, the lawsuit alleges.
The Justice Department alleges in its lawsuit the move was “purely punitive, in retaliation for a grandmother expressing concern about the child’s reunification with parents charged with child abuse resulting in death, and for assisting in a prosecution that necessarily uncovered significant and inexcusable failures by CYFD.”
CYFD’s treatment of foster parents has pushed some away, depleting the state’s supply of caring and supportive homes for vulnerable children, the Justice Department alleges. It says the child welfare agency’s behavior also blocks important information and valid criticism about child welfare cases from being shared in public.
“This blanket prohibition on disclosing any and all information from lawfully-obtained abuse and neglect records … only compounds the State’s failure to protect its most vulnerable children,” the Justice Department wrote.
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