A young man who claims he was repeatedly raped and tortured as a child by a staff member at a group home in Greenville County now blames the Department of Social Services for withholding files related to the history of child sexual abuse at the facility and dragging out the discovery phase of his 3-year-old lawsuit against the state.
John Roe, now 24, asked that The Post and Courier conceal his real name by using the pseudonym he chose for the 2014 lawsuit filed against Boys Home of the South and the Department of Social Services.
In the complaint, Roe's lawyers explain he was removed from his home in 1998 and placed in state custody. In 2004 and 2005, they said he told more than one DSS caseworker that a staff member at Boys Home of the South in Belton raped him several times. He was 12 and 13 years old at the time of the abuse.
"They knew that it was happening shortly after it started and they waited to move me out of the group home," Roe told the newspaper. "They don’t want to take responsibility for the wrong that they allowed to happen."
In the lawsuit, Roe alleged he was also raped by another child at the facility. The Post and Courier first interviewed Roe two years ago and featured his lawsuit in an investigative series about group homes for children in South Carolina, titled "Warehousing our Children."
On Wednesday, a Social Services spokeswoman said DSS Director Susan Alford was traveling and could not be reached for an interview. In a 2015 conversation with The Post and Courier, Alford admitted that the state sends too many foster children into groups homes. As a rule, agency officials do not discuss pending litigation.
Before a high-profile sex abuse lawsuit forced Boys Home of the South to close three years ago, DSS sent hundreds of children in state custody and millions of dollars to the group home. In 2015 and 2016, other men came forward claiming they were raped as children there, too. That's why Roe and his lawyers want DSS to release files related to other cases of child sexual abuse at the facility. So far, the agency has refused, claiming that the documents would violate the privacy of those children.
"The disclosure of information regarding the alleged sexual conduct or abuse of any child – especially children who have nothing to do with the subject litigation – is of paramount important to (DSS)," a lawyer for the agency wrote in a February court filing.
Roe's lawyers wrote in response that the agency's hesitation to release the files was "a blatant attempt to hide relevant and damning evidence ... of the Department's failure to address rampant sexual abuse of children at Boys Home of the South."
Both a trial judge in Greenville and the state Court of Appeals agreed that DSS must release the documents. But the agency's lawyers have argued in court records that the judges need to review the documents privately to determine their relevancy before DSS must make them public.
The decision now rests with the state's Supreme Court. It is not clear when the high court will weigh in.
Attorneys Heather Stone and Robert Butcher, who represent Roe, recently won a $3.75 million verdict against DSS in Spartanburg County. The child victim in that case was abused for months by her mother and her mother's boyfriend. Stone and Butcher successfully argued that the Department of Social Services had been warned about the ongoing abuse but did nothing to stop it.
They also represent victims in Anderson and Newberry who claim they were sexually abused at Boys Home of the South. Those cases, Stone said, can't move forward until DSS turns over the relevant records.
"It could go on for years more," Stone said.
Meanwhile, Roe said it's hard to "truly heal" without closure. He said he thinks about the abuse every day.
"The trick is to try to not let it bother me, to try to grow past it," he said. "No matter what I do, I will never forget it."
