The State of Arizona, Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS), and Catholic Community Services must stand trial in a multi-million dollar lawsuit involving years of abuse endured by a Sierra Vista youth at the hands of his foster-adoptive father and other men in a child sex ring, a Cochise County judge ruled Wednesday.
Ryan Frodsham, now 21, is one of several foster or adoptive children victimized by David Frodsham, a longtime civilian employee of the U.S. Army who pleaded guilty in 2016 to sexually abusing Ryan and allowing other men in the Sierra Vista / Fort Huachuca area to molest the boy.
A multi-count negligence lawsuit was filed on Ryan’s behalf in 2018 against several parties. In response, attorneys for the State of Arizona asked Judge Jason Lindstrom to dismiss the lawsuit on the basis of qualified immunity. The State also argued that any abuse or harm to Ryan “was unforeseeable.”
In support of qualified immunity, the State shared a recent court ruling in Pima County case involving a very young girl allegedly abused while spending a few months in the Frodsham home as a foster child. Judge D. Douglas Metcalf ruled in that case that qualified immunity was warranted to avoid second-guessing “overworked and overstretched” child welfare professionals.
Lindstrom acknowledged Metcalf’s ruling, but noted Ryan was placed in the Frodsham home as a foster child in 2004 and then adopted in 2011. He also noted the many documented issues about misconduct or abuse in the household with very little action by child welfare workers until David Frodsham’s arrest in 2016.
“DCS investigators and case workers are indeed overworked and overstretched, and anyone working in the foster care/dependency system will acknowledge these obvious facts,” Lindstrom wrote. “What is also readily apparent in the ‘system’ is that these same people are generally underpaid, overburdened, undertrained and underappreciated.”
And those poor workplace conditions appear to be due to society and institutions seemingly valuing “the budget over the goal the budget is presumed to serve,” which Lindstrom found is “perhaps the strongest argument” for allowing Ryan’s lawsuit to move forward to a jury trial.
“This is not necessarily a fault with the individual employees, but with the system itself, and the institutions it funds to care for these important tasks,” he wrote.
Lindstrom went on to explain there are facts in dispute between Ryan’s claims of negligence and the defenses put forth by the State and by Catholic Community Services which further warrant moving the case forward.
“The Court finds it is possible that a reasonable jury could conclude that internal policies, procedures and/or institutional standards were either negligently ignored, diminished due to being under appreciated or under financed, or went unrecognized by one or more of the Defendants or their staff,” Lindstrom wrote.
Ryan’s lawsuit initially named Arizona Partnership for Children LLP as a third defendant but Lindstrom was notified earlier this year that the organization settled with Ryan. The settlement is understood to have been for $1 million.
To date, Arizona taxpayers have paid the private law firm of Rusing Lopez & Lizardi nearly $2 million to defend DCS in Ryan’s case.
The judge’s multi-page order came one day after Pulitzer Prize journalist Michael Rezendes drew national attention to the child sex ring involving David Frodsham, whose position with the U.S. Army at the time of his arrest was with the Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM) based at Fort Huachuca.
READ REZENDES’ ARTICLE HERE
David Frodsham is serving a 17-year prison sentence. Two other men, including a U.S. Army soldier, were also convicted and are in prison for their abuse of Ryan.
There are two more Frodsham-related lawsuits active in the Cochise County Superior Court. One involves Ryan’s younger brother Trevor who recently turned 19 and is now pursuing his own claims against DCS and several organizations.
