El Paso child abuse case: Children placed in abusive home | Colorado Watch

After child sexual abuse allegations against a father surfaced, El Paso County child protective services officials placed two children back with their estranged mother, who was living with a boyfriend with a violent past.

Another child eventually ended up with an aunt, who was living with a registered sex offender.

In their mother’s home, one of the children — a boy now 10 years old — suffered sexual abuse and physical abuse so extensive he likely will need to wear orthopedic inserts in his shoes for the rest of his life to correct a deformed tendon due to an untreated broken bone in a leg, according to court records.

When he and his siblings were rescued from their mother’s home, tests found meth in the boy’s system, according to court records. He also allegedly had an untreated broken arm, a fractured rib and numerous bruises and abrasions across his body, including indications of strangulation of his neck and excoriation to his groin. In all, doctors found more than 30 points of trauma on his slender body.

Underweight and the size of a child nearly half his age due to a genetic disorder, the child now is in foster care, where he has “continued to self-disclose abuse” alleged to have occurred in his mother’s home, according to El Paso County child-protective services records.

His mother tried to explain away the child’s injuries when confronted by Manitou Springs police officers, according to a police report. She came up with various fraudulent excuses for the child’s trauma, ranging from claiming her child was clumsy to alleging he had been hit by a car door or had injured himself falling when at a pool, police contend.

“He has become obsessed with expressing what occurred,” child-protective records further state, adding that the child repeatedly asks his foster mother to ensure his protection. His three siblings have been placed together in another foster home.

The mother and her boyfriend also forced one of the daughters to provide them nude cellphone photos of herself, and the mother asked her if she wanted to engage in sex with them and one of the other children, a police report further alleges.

One of the children provided police a written statement alleging extensive abuse, adding that the mother’s live-in boyfriend “threatened them that they better not tell the truth about doing drugs or else he would hire a hit man to come and beat us up.”

County officials appear to have missed warning signs suggesting the home of the mother, Ila Frost, would not be a safe environment for the children, raising questions over whether they negligently placed the children in peril when they placed them with the mother in 2022.

James R. Walter Jr., who was Ila Frost’s live-in boyfriend, had been sentenced to one year probation in 1996 after he pleaded guilty of assault and was sentenced to another one-year probation in 1999 after he pleaded guilty of criminal mischief.

Before Walter moved in with Ila Frost, another woman had expressed fears in court filings over his alleged proclivity to violence. In 2017, his wife, now separated from him, reported in one filing that she was “scared of him having no respect for human life” when she accused him of violating a permanent protection from abuse order.

A judge had granted the permanent protection order barring Walter from having any contact with his then-wife or their 9-year-old son after the wife documented a pattern of violence and abuse. She alleged in one court filing two incidents of choking her as well as physical abuse of their child, cruelty to animals, threats of self-harm and a punching incident along with three shoving incidents.

She reported resorting to calling the police for protection nine times in 2017, in her court filing for the protection from abuse order, which a judge granted the same month that she filed it in the El Paso County District Court.

In one clash with two Colorado Springs police officers, Walter taunted the officers, telling them he was a Navy SEAL who knew the Sons of Silence outlaw motorcycle gang, which law enforcement has tied to murders, drug trafficking, witness intimidation, extortion and prostitution, according to her account as detailed in court records.

Walter’s estranged wife has since moved away from Colorado Springs with their son.

After separating from his wife, Walter, 57, would go on to move in with Ila Frost, 39, who was estranged from her husband, Richard Frost, 69, and two of their children — two boys, now ages 10 and 16. The Frosts’ oldest daughter, now 18, and another daughter, now 13, already were living with the mother at the time when child-protective services removed the boys from Richard Frost’s care.

Child-protective services removed the boys from the father’s care on June 30, 2022, after the oldest daughter alleged the father had molested her, records show. In less than three months, on Sept. 20, 2022, a hotline call came in alleging an abusive and dangerous environment in their new placement at their mother’s home, which ultimately led to child-protective services placing the children in foster care and criminal charges being filed against the mother, Ila Frost, and her live-in boyfriend, Walter.

Why El Paso’s child-protective services officials allowed vulnerable children to be placed in a home Walter was living in, despite past court filings alleging he was violent and unstable, isn’t entirely known. Child-protective officials with the county noted when they moved to remove the children from the father that the mother was “an alcoholic” and there was “possible drug use” in her home.

El Paso County officials said the county’s Department of Human Services, the agency in charge of child-protective services, could not, by law, give details about specific cases.

“Removal and/or placement recommendations are made with careful consideration guided by a comprehensive assessment process and specific criteria,” said Natalie Sosa, a county spokeswoman, in a prepared statement. “DHS conducts background checks on all known individuals over the age of 18 residing in the home where children may be placed. DHS does not make removal or placement decisions, itself; instead, DHS is authorized to initiate a legal process to have a child paced in protective custody or placed outside the home.”

Richard Foster, the father of the children, said he warned a child-protective services official about his estranged wife’s home. He said he had concerns about excessive drinking and marijuana use there, and his oldest son had expressed fears about going over there. “He said, ‘Papa, I don’t ever want to go back there. I feel afraid, and I just don’t want to go back,” Foster said his son told him.

“When DHS placed my children there, he (Walter) was living with her, and they did absolutely no investigation before placing my children,” he said.

A self-proclaimed practitioner of Messianic Judaism who adheres to Christian beliefs while engaging in Hebraic practices, Foster denies his daughter’s allegations of molestation and argues child-protective services is complicit in placing them in harm’s way at their mother’s home.

Court records state the criminal case against Richard Foster was dismissed, with the records sealed from public view. He said in an interview that police arrested him in May 2022, and that he spent 13 days in custody at the El Paso County Detention Center before he was released after prosecutors declined to bring criminal charges because they did not find the allegations of molestation his daughter lodged against him believable.

The children’s mother has relinquished her parental rights, and El Paso County District Court Judge Robin Chittum terminated the father’s parental rights last week despite the support of his therapist and seven acquaintances who wrote letters to the court backing his efforts to have his children returned to him.

The mother, Frost, formerly of Manitou Springs, pleaded guilty of a felony count of solicitation to commit felony aggravated incest in February. El Paso County District Court Judge William Moller initially sentenced her to 10 years to life on sex offender intensive supervised probation after she claimed the abuse in her home stemmed from what she said was an uncharacteristic lapse in sobriety and an abusive relationship.

In August, Moller revoked her probation and resentenced her to four years to life in prison after finding that within a month of her original sentence she had started violating the terms of her probation.

She had gone back to having contact with her co-defendant, Walter, who still faces multiple criminal charges of sexual abuse of her children, probation officials reported to the judge. She also had begun drinking alcohol excessively again while having sex with multiple men and had ignored court orders that she refrain from having contact with minors, according to their report.

Walter still faces an 11-count felony indictment. He is charged with seven counts of child sexual assault, two crimes of violence, an assault charge and an aggravated incest charge. His two-week trial is scheduled to begin March 10. He has been released from custody, pending his trial, after posting a $50,000 bond.