Editorial | Gangrenous pox at CPFSA

Fayval Williams acted with appropriate dispatch in sending the children’s advocate report on the Carl Robanske scandal to the police, and in calling on Rosalee Gage-Grey, CEO of the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA), to quit her job.

But Mrs Gage-Gray should not have to be asked. If only a smidgen of the findings by Diahann Gordon Harrison, the children’s advocate, is true, Mrs Gage-Grey’s position at CPFSA is wholly untenable.

Moreover, that Mrs Gage-Grey could have displayed the poor judgement highlighted in the report, and so failed in her duty of care to a group of children and vulnerable young women she was obliged to protect, calls into question suitability to work in this area again. At least, she requires a lengthy cooling off and deep reflection before being permitted to do so. Others in the child care apparatus must also go.

Carl Robanske is an American citizen, who, for a decade and a half, could appear to have done valuable charitable work in Jamaica, especially among children, using a US-registered nonprofit vehicle called Embracing Orphans.

SEXUAL DEMONS

Yet, with respect to teenage girls, Mr Robanske appears to harbour sexual demons. In 2014, while he was growing his Jamaican franchise, Mr Robanske was found to have engaged in inappropriate communication in Washington state with a middle-school student, including, according to official documents on the issue, sending her a “frontal picture of an adult male with his groin area covered in a Pinocchio tattoo”. He also exchanged with the student text messages with sexual innuendos.

He was suspended from his job, went on administrative leave, but soon resigned. A psychologist who evaluated him as part of the case concluded: “Mr Robanske lacks insight into any of the unconscious or conscious motivations for his inappropriate behaviour … . If a person lacks insight in understanding both their unconscious and conscious motives, then there is an increased probability of that type of behaviour reoccurring.”

In December 2016, the Washington’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, the state’s certification body for teachers, suspended Mr Robanske’s certificate for two years. He, however, would have to satisfy a number of stringent conditions to return to the classroom.

He would have to undergo treatment and complete a psychological evaluation to prove he was capable of unsupervised access to children.

Further, his application for reinstatement would have to include character and fitness references, and his fingerprint would have to be taken for cross-checking by domestic law enforcement, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If his suspended certificate expired before his suspension ended, Mr Robanske would be required to undergo background checks, show he had no criminal record, and that he met all education qualifying standards.

RED FLAGS

These ought to have been inescapable red flags for any child protection agency dealing with Carl Robanske.

The CPFSA conceded that it became aware of Mr Robanske’s troubles in 2018, by which time his charity had, for four years, operated a transition home for girls, The Father’s Home. It became a public issue in 2021 when Nationwide News revealed Mr Robanske’s ongoing involvement in the home and engagements with the CPFSA, which Mrs Gage-Grey defended because he had no criminal conviction.

Ostensibly, however, the CPFSA had instructed that Mr Robanske should have no access to children. That, in Mrs Gage-Grey’s interpretation, according to Mrs Gordon Harrison’s report, could not include The Father’s House. All the girls there were supposedly over 18 and, therefore, beyond the remit of the CPFSA.

Except that some of the girls at the home were in fact below 18, including as young as 14. And Mr Robanske, for years after his supposed ban, continued to have access to the home and contact with its residents.

Indeed, when the children’s advocate’s investigators broke through a wall of silence among the young women (and the CPFSA’s apparent circling of the wagon to keep them at bay), three girls grudgingly expanded on reports of Mr Robanske’s sexually inappropriate communication and attempted grooming of them – and something nearly worse in at least one case.

DEEPLY TROUBLING

There are other things in the children’s advocate’s findings with respect to the CPFSA’s concept of, and approach to, protecting children’s welfare that this newspaper finds deeply troubling. One is the agency’s seeming presumption that all its nurturing obligations end at the stroke of midnight on the day that a child in its care turns 18. Which, presumably, would make The Father’s House off limits. Yet, these young people, after a period of institutional care, are in an exceedingly vulnerable phase of life, facing even more complex transitional issues than others of their age.

What, though, on the basis of the report, is even more inexplicable is the dissembling , circumlocution and rampart-building by the CPFSA, which could only benefit an American deviant to the potential damage of Jamaican children and young adults. That people apparently got their priorities badly skewed demands explanation. For nothing that Mr Robanske and Embracing Orphans brought to the table would have been worth it. In fact, he should have been sent packing in 2018 and The Father’s House nationalised.

This, unfortunately, is not the first case of abuse and breach of trust of children in care. It, however, must be learnt from. The first lesson is that the CPFSA is in need of leadership and overhaul.