Frustration goes around after couple charged with child abuse

ANKENY, Iowa (KCCI) — Iowa legislators are insisting on procedural changes in the child welfare system after an Ankeny couple who adopted nine disabled children were arrested this week and charged with child endangerment.

State Sen. Matt McCoy, a Democrat from Polk County and a frequent critic of the Department of Human Services, said the abuse case — in which John Bell, 55, and his wife, Joyce, 57, were shown in a video posted on Facebook physically abusing two of their children — proved there was a lack of communication between law enforcement authorities and the beleaguered state department.

“With 68 calls that went into police dispatch, at what point did they not work directly with the Department of Human Services and say, ‘We’ve got an ongoing problem here?’” McCoy said, referring to an exclusive Des Moines Register report that investigated years of alleged child abuse in the Ankeny couple’s home.

According to documents obtained by KCCI, police responded to the home 68 times but only filed 20 reports. One of the adopted children secretly captured the abuse on camera, prompting authorities to investigate matters further.

In one of the disturbing Facebook videos, Joyce Bell is shown screaming at a mildly autistic boy named John; another video showed the mother repeatedly hitting him.

Makayla Bell, who was adopted but removed from the home at 17 years old, said her childhood in the household was abusive and filled with constant fear, alleging that her adoptive mother kicked her in the face several times and left her with permanent marks.

“I didn’t even realize how bad it was until about three or four days after when I looked in the mirror and couldn’t recognize myself,” the estranged daughter said. “It was bad enough to the point where I didn’t want to live anymore, and there were times that I would just pray and hope I could go to another family that would actually love and care about me.”

Makayla Bell said the adoptive parents never learned how to cope with their anger and used the children as a means to take out their rage.

“DHS needs to look into everything a lot more than they do,” she said. “Just because they seem like upstanding citizens does not mean that they are.”

The incident comes approximately one month after Gov. Kim Reynolds appointed 64-year-old Jerry Foxhaven to lead the troubled DHS, which came under fire in the past year following the starvation deaths of two 16-year-old girls who went through the system.

DHS officials have said the department’s goal is to find safe, permanent homes for children, but McCoy said innocent children are falling through the cracks, a euphemism that means “children are literally being killed by abuse, neglect and starvation.”

“We should be looking at how many special needs kids that a family should be able to adopt,” he said.

The senator also suggests mandatory reporters including teachers, doctors or police officers should be given a higher priority because children often open up about how safe they feel at home to trusted authorities.

McCoy also criticized the fact that the Bell family received a subsidy for each adopted child, which exceeded $110,000 a year. Over the decade since the Bells adopted their children, whose ages range from 16 to 38, the couple received more than $1.5 million from the state.

KCCI contacted officials with DHS, but a spokesperson said they are unable to comment due to confidentiality rules. The spokesperson did say, however, that DHS officials are examining the child welfare system and that changes have already been made in light of the recent child abuse cases.