FAYETTEVILLE (KFSM) - Rep. Justin Harris on Friday (March 6) accused the Arkansas Department of Human Services of threatening him and his wife with abandonment charges if they returned two adopted girls to state care.
Instead Harris sent the two children to live with a Bella Vista man convicted in 2014 of sexually assaulting one of the girls.
Criticized this week for re-homing the girls without first getting state approval, the West Fork Republican addressed the media at a news conference in Little Rock on Friday (March 6), defending his actions. Such re-homing practices are legal, but legislation has been filed at the Capitol to require court approval before adopted children are sent to live with someone other than a relative.
Harris said he was "heartbroken" by what happened in his situation.
"Despite what you may have read, we have reached out to DHS numerous times, and we were met with nothing but hostility," Harris said at the news conference. "We were failed by DHS. When DHS fails adoptive parents, they fail the children even more."
In a prepared statement, the state agency said it cannot discuss adoptions and is "prohibited from clarifying inaccurate information."
"This is a sad and unfortunate situation," the statement reads. "For us, what is important is the safety and well-being of children. So we are working with the governor and the Legislature to ensure there is more oversight in place to limit families’ abilities to 're-home' children who come from state custody. The legislation also will prevent families from giving a subsidy to anyone else without DHS and court oversight."
After Harris' story came to light in an Arkansas Times article this week, Rep. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville, filed a bill to end re-homing without court approval.
The Arkansas Times article notes that Harris and his wife placed the girls in the care of Bella Vista residents Eric Francis and his wife. Court documents show Francis was later convicted of sexually assaulting one of the girls.
At the news conference Friday, Harris said he and his wife adopted three girls who had severe behavioral problems. He said the human services department relocated the oldest child to a treatment facility after she had threatened to kill the other girls in the family and had stashed sharp rocks under her bed.
Harris said the other two girls who stayed with him and his wife were diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder, and the couple was later advised by a psychiatrist and pediatrician to move the children to a different home for the sake of their biological children.
According to Harris, one of the adopted girls "crushed a family pet to death" and attempted to harm two other family pets.
When Harris and his wife contacted the human services department, he said a current employee told them DHS would pursue abandonment charges if they tried to return the girls to state custody. Harris said he and his wife felt they had run out of options and decided to re-home the adopted girls with Eric Francis and his wife, who Marsha Harris had known for 20 years.
Harris said the Francises were interested in adopting the girls and had already gone through three international adoptions involving a more stringent vetting process than domestic adoptions. Harris also said Eric Francis had a child development degree from the University of Arkansas, had been a Head Start and pre-K teacher, and had undergone two background checks to work at Growing God's Kingdom, a preschool in West Fork owned by Harris.
"We never had any indication that Eric Francis was anything other than a child-care professional who would be an asset to our day care," Harris said at the news conference.
Harris said he gave every stipend check he received to the Francis family and continued to pay for the girls' material needs. He said he made copies of the checks and kept bank statements to prove he gave the money to the girls' new family.
Harris said after the girls were re-homed with the Francises, he and his wife signed a guardianship authorization and the Francises officially adopted the girls in 2014. That same year, court records show Eric Francis pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting one of the re-homed girls.
Harris also mentioned that he supported Leding in his efforts to pass HB 1648, a bill to end the private transfer of adopted children through re-homing, except to relatives. Leding's bill would require adoptive parents to go through the court system to move their children to another family.
The DHS statement issued after Harris' news conference says senior agency officials "have always been available to Rep. Harris when he had personal or constituent concerns and they have had many conversations over the years."
"That open-door policy would have been true in this case as well," the statement reads
The statement adds that the agency urges "families to let us know if they are struggling."
"We understand that in rare cases, a successful adoption is impossible to achieve," the statement reads. "In those situations, there is always an option."
The statement also indicates that the agency discloses in writing andy "medical and psychological information and diagnoses and have the adoptive families sign those forms."