Iowa to pay $10M to settle lawsuits of siblings of teen who was starved to death

Two former siblings of Sabrina Ray, a Perry teen starved to death and severely abused by parents who adopted her out of foster care, are expected to receive almost $3 million each in special trusts under a settlement approved Monday by the State Appeal Board.

The law firm Sease and Wadding that filed suit against the state on behalf of the siblings will receive more than $4 million, and the youths' medical bills also will be paid as part of the settlement that will cost taxpayers $10 million.

The siblings, younger sisters of Sabrina's who were adopted by Marc and Misty Jo Bousman-Ray, were not identified by name in the settlements. But attorney Scott Wadding, representing both, said one is now 18 and the other still a minor.

A conservator will be appointed to oversee the girls' trusts, which will be overseen by a Polk County district judge.

Both girls initially sought $50 million from the state, saying they were severely abused, tortured and neglected, and that DHS failed to consistently inform the agency's field workers of reports of abuse, including withholding food in the Ray home before Sabrina died."In short, the amount of abuse committed by the Rays is indefensible, and the foster-care system’s failures to protect the children were significant," wrote Deputy Attorney General Stan Thompson in a letter announcing the settlement. "The prolonged exposure to such an environment caused significant physical and emotional damage to these children."

Bousman-Ray is now serving a life sentence, and Ray received an 80-year prison term for the abuse perpetrated over years.

The settlements also call for the director of Iowa's Department of Health and Human Services to convene a task force by the end of the year to "review implementation" of an ombudsman's report released in the aftermath of Ray's death in 2017.

Ray, 16, was one of 23 foster children the Rays took in over a decade's time. On May 12, 2017, as the couple took their sons to Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, their oldest adoptive daughter, Sabrina, died in a dark room with her two little sisters by her side.

Over the course of 13 years, the Rays had looked after 112 children at Sunshine Daycare, their licensed child care center in Perry. Among the children the couple cared for were those of employees of Iowa’s Department of Human Services and a private agency that contracts with DHS to provide child-welfare services.

The adoption, foster care and child care subsidies the couple received from the state totaled more than $640,000 from 2006-17.

More: The short, troubled life of Sabrina Ray, who died at 16 in Perry

Yet in all that time — and with all that interaction and oversight with DHS employees and contract workers, and all that money at stake — DHS workers never confirmed child abuse was happening, despite 11 abuse reports over the first half of the 2010s, a state ombudsman's investigation released in 2020 found.

The State Appeal Board is a three-member board comprised of the state auditor, treasurer of state, and director of the Department of Management. The board approves or rejects and pays claims against the state or a state employee and resolves local budget protests.

At least one other child, a 10-year-old placed in the Ray's child care, also received a $500,000 settlement last November. The boy began attending Ray and Bousman-Ray's day care in 2013 and continued until 2017, when the couple were arrested in Sabrina's death and the abuse of her two younger sisters, Appeal Board records show.

The abuse case involving Sabrina and her siblings came on the heels of similarly alarming abuse allegations involving West Des Moines 17-year-old Natalie Finn, who starved to death in October 2016, and Malayia Knapp, who fled an abusive home in Urbandale in late 2015.

Shy and small, Sabrina was separated from an older half-sister and four brothers when she was placed in foster care before the age of 10, birth relatives said.

The ombudsman's lengthy report found DHS had wrongly rejected some reports of abuse against the Rays — who, witnesses said, had allies within DHS and in Perry, where day care was scarce. The report also said caseworker records were inaccurate and not thorough enough, and that the agency failed to retain records long enough to help workers identify patterns of abuse.

Those findings were similar to what the ombudsman found after looking at the death of Finn, who, like Ray, had been pulled out of school and abused by the foster parents who adopted her.

“In some ways, though, DHS’ failings in the Ray case were even more acute than with the Finns,” the report said. “In the Ray household, the mistreatment of children extended beyond the immediate family, to the parents’ in-home day care and foster care children. Unlike the Finn case, where Natalie’s mother obstructed authorities’ attempts to inspect the home, DHS workers and contractors were regularly in Sabrina’s house and in contact with the family over a period of years.

“Suspicions of abuse were certainly present among those who interacted with children at the Ray household. Unfortunately and sadly, a lack of communication among those workers weakened the oversight that could have discovered that abuse."

Several of the allegations lodged against the Rays included that Sabrina looked extremely thin and unhealthy.

“There were plenty of official eyes and ears on this family,” the report said. “When it came down to it, there was not sufficient communication among DHS officials.”

By scrutinizing DHS files and through interviews with staff, the ombudsman found many of the allegations could have been handled with "more vigor, and with greater skepticism of the Rays’ explanations."

Police discovered Ray slept on a thin mattress on the floor of her bedroom and apparently had used a toilet intended for toddlers. The bedroom had locks, alarms and coverings on the doors and windows.

A DHS day care inspector failed to check the bedroom just months before Sabrina’s death because she misunderstood a policy requiring a complete examination of the house, the ombudsman said.

Some DHS workers noted during their assessments that Sabrina appeared thin, but in interviews with the ombudsman after her death, they acknowledged a lack of training in recognizing malnutrition.

An independent consultant hired to review the Department of Human Services' practices and policies after Ray and Finn's deaths found morale was poor among social workers. Staffers complained their training was insufficient and the state has long expected them to do more with less.

In a statement, DHHS said the agency's highest priority is the safety and welfare of children and vulnerable people.  Since receiving the 2020 ombudsman's report, the agency has conducted a multi-year assessment.

"As a result, we have made significant investments in the Child Welfare IT system, which will now ensure each case is managed with methodical process compliance, have restructured the Child Welfare team with a single point of accountability and have prioritized the most important aspect of this work ― seeing children on a consistent basis," the agency said.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa to pay $10M to siblings of Sabrina Ray, who was starved to death