Convoluted Arkansas adoption/sex abuse case seems determined to get even more convoluted.

Courtesy of the Arkansas Times:  

On April 4, 2014, a 38-year-old resident of Bella Vista named Eric Cameron Francis was arrested by the Arkansas State Police for the rape of a 6-year-old girl in what the police said was his temporary care. Sexual crimes against children always attract a certain horrified attention, but this particular case earned additional scrutiny because Francis had recently worked as head teacher at a Christian preschool in West Fork owned by state Rep. Justin Harris (R-West Fork) and his wife, Marsha. 

Harris, who said he was "devastated and sickened" by news of the abuse, told the Arkansas Times in April 2014 that Francis had been in his employ only about three months, from November 2013 to January 2014, before being fired for poor work attendance. 

"He came with a pristine record," Harris said at the time, noting that Francis was also a youth pastor at a church and had worked previously in early childhood education for the Bentonville School District and with a Head Start program. Harris added that he was confident nothing had happened to any of the children at Growing God's Kingdom Preschool, because of strict security protocols (the classroom contains a continuously operating camera that generates a permanent record). Indeed, no further charges against Francis resulted from subsequent State Police interviews of families at the preschool, although investigators uncovered at least two other incidents of sexual abuse of children in the community outside of the school. In November, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison on a negotiated plea. 

What Harris did not publicly disclose last spring, however, is how Francis came into contact with the 6-year-old victim. In prosecutor documents recently obtained by the Arkansas Times, state police investigators and multiple witnesses concur that the child was in fact the legally adopted daughter of Justin and Marsha Harris.

That's right Harris legally adopted the six year old and her two younger sisters, then when the older child became too much for him to handle he simply sent them all off to live in the home of a man that he hardly knew, without notifying DHS of this plan.

The reason Harris did not notify DHS, as he stated in a recent interview, is apparently because he believed that they had it in for him. This courtesy of Wonkette: 

In the interview, Harris repeated his claim that he was threatened by the DHS that if he tried to dissolve the adoption, he would be charged with child abandonment; he says that Cecile Blucker, the head of DHS’s Division of Children and Family Services, told him this and that another source inside DHS (who he again declined to identify) told his wife, Marsha, “this is what they plan for you… because of your husband’s belief system, they will charge you with abandonment. This is what they have planned for you.” He clarified that he meant that he was singled out “for my political beliefs,” apparently because he is that extremely rare thing, a rightwing fundamentalist Christian, which we suppose must be a persecuted minority in Arkansas. He added that he believed DHS threatened him because, as a state legislator, he had held the agency accountable for its poor performance in constituents’ adoptions. 

And don't forget that these  uber-Christian teabaggger types have an innate distrust of all things governmental.

As it turns out the family that had previously fostered the two younger girls argued against the Harris family adopting them: 

An experienced foster family that housed the two younger girls for a year and a half prior to their adoption by the Harrises has approached the Times with their story. Craig and Cheryl Hart say, among other things, the adoption was allowed to proceed over the objections of the foster parents and local DHS staff only because the head of the the Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS), Cecile Blucker, exerted pressure on behalf of Justin Harris. DCFS is the arm of DHS responsible for child welfare. 

The Harts also say the middle sister — who would have been 4 years old at the time she entered the Harris home in 2012 — was not violent or dangerous. They claim the Harrises were warned repeatedly by themselves and local DHS staff that their home was not a suitable placement for the two girls or their older sister. 

The third sister, who would have been about 6 when she entered the Harris home, was fostered at a different household that provided specialized therapeutic care for troubled children. The Harts had some contact with her as well, since DHS would sometimes arrange for the siblings to visit one another. Harris said on Friday the third girl threatened to kill his entire family.

As somebody who has worked extensively with foster families and adoptive families, let me just say that this is an extremely common scenario. 

Often with failed placements there is a religious component that convinced the adoptive family that they were called to become adoptive parents by God, and that he would provide support for them.

That is almost verbatim what Harrises argued:

"DHS attempted to talk to them about the girls' issues, but I feel like they were in denial," Cheryl said. "They were very defensive about it. They repeatedly told us they had degrees in Early Childhood Development, they had therapists there at their preschool, and they had God to help them through this."

Sometimes the bad people that are waiting to harm vulnerable foster or adoptive children are not simply sexual deviants or physically abusive people, sometimes they are those who will simply not accept the help or support that they will need in order to cope with the challenges of bringing children with special needs into their homes.

And if you think that reminds you of somebody, well give yourself a gold star for intuition.

Rep. Justin Harris and his wife, with Sarah Palin in 2013.