Report: Records Show Dozens of Allegations of Sexual Misconduct in Immigrant Shelters



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ProPublica reported that it used public information requests to acquire documents relating to 70 of the approximately 100 refuges managed by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services. .

in the last years of the Obama administration.

CNN has not been able to acquire the data used by ProPublica in its report.

"We always focus on the safety and the interest of every child" Department of Human Services said. "These are vulnerable children in difficult circumstances, and the HHS treats its responsibility for each child with the utmost care."

He says the refugee resettlement office has a "zero tolerance policy" for sexual abuse or inappropriate behavior. Department said that policy violations are implemented quickly. Employees may be disciplined, dismissed or reported to law enforcement.

ProPublica cited the report of a 15-year-old Honduran boy who was inappropriately touched in a shelter in Tucson, Arizona. "If you are a predator, it's a gold mine," said Lisa Fortuna, director of psychiatry for children and adolescents at the Boston Medical Center at ProPublica. "You have full access and you have children who have already had this story to be a victim."

Tuscon's parent company, Southwest Key, has sent ProPublica a statement that the center has a strict policy on abuse and neglect. any allegation seriously, history said. CNN contacted Southwest Key and other centers mentioned in the article, but did not get an immediate response

The article mentions that the reports do not indicate whether or not the children were separated from their parents or if they were unaccompanied minors.

  • Psychologists believe that some children do not report incidents, so the data does not include all cases of abuse.
  • Some reports concerned alleged abuse in the country of origin of the child.
  • Police were also named for "minor incidents and a horse game not uncommon in American schools."

A former Obama official said shelters housed children shortly after arriving in the United States. and they were well managed. "But if you serve 65,000 children a year," said the official at ProPublica, "there will be bad incidents."

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