Thousands of Sexual Abuse Allegations by Unaccompanied Children in U.S. Custody

[Content Note: Sexual abuse of children.]

Malice is the agenda. There can be no doubt. The vast harm being done to migrants and refugees at the southern border is ghastly.

Sophie Tatum at CNN reports:

The Department of Health and Human Services received more than 4,500 complaints of sexual abuse against unaccompanied minors from 2014-2018, according to internal agency documents released Tuesday by Florida Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch.

In addition,1,303 complaints were reported to the Justice Department during that same time frame, according to the documents.

Deutch addressed the documents during a high-profile House hearing Tuesday on the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy that resulted in thousands of immigrant children being separated from their parents.

He said that the documents "demonstrate over the past three years, there have been 154 staff on unaccompanied minor, let me repeat that, staff on unaccompanied minor allegations of sexual assault."

"This works out on average to one sexual assault by HHS staff on unaccompanied minor per week," he added.

..."I am deeply concerned with documents that have been turned over by HHS that record a high number of sexual assaults on unaccompanied children in the custody of the Office of Refugee and Resettlement," Deutch said. "Together, these documents detail an environment of systemic sexual assaults by staff on unaccompanied children."

Jonathan White, HHS' U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps commander, said at the hearing that "the vast majority of allegations prove to be unfounded when they are investigated by state law enforcement and federal law enforcement and the state licensure authorities to whom we refer them" and that he is "not aware of a single instance anywhere of an allegation against the ORR federal staff for abuse of a child."

Which is, of course, a heinous defense against more than 5,000 allegations of sexual abuse against children. It is genuinely inconceivable that "the vast majority" of those allegations are unfounded, and such a finding suggests instead that the investigators are profoundly corrupt.

Further, who gives a single fuck if no allegations have been made against federal staff. All that means is that the poorly scrutinized force hired to do the work by subcontractors is full of abusive dirtbags.

Something we have known for some time.

For example, last July, Rebekah Entralgo and Joshua Eaton at ThinkProgress reported that "a man with a history of serious sex crimes allegations" had been hired as the human resources manager for a shelter for unaccompanied immigrant children in Topeka, Kansas.

As another example, last June, Aura Bogado, Patrick Michels, Vanessa Swales, and Edgar Walters at Reveal News reported that unaccompanied immigrant children were being sent to shelters with known abuse histories, including staff that had sexually abused minors and allowed older children to sexually abuse younger ones.

This is intolerable. I am so sad and so fucking angry that children are being harmed by the U.S. government, in its citizens' names, under the utterly fabricated pretense of protecting us.

Even if every goddamn lie Donald Trump was telling about the "immigration crisis" to justify his vile nativist agenda were true, and even if his disgusting policies were actually effective, the cost would not be worth it to me.

I would take my chances with Trump's conjured monsters before I would support actual monsters being paid with my tax dollars sexually abusing children.

Goddammit.