"Starting Place" employee arrested in sex battery case

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Parent Category: Oct 2011

Category: Week ending Oct 29th, 2011

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A Grenadian from Gouyave, St John, but currently residing in the United States has been charged with four counts of sexual battery on a minor.

 According to a report in The Miami Herald newspaper, the man has been identified as Raphael Castillo, of 1351 NE Miami Gardens Drive in North Miami Beach.

 According to the report, police in Hollywood arrested the 44-year-old man who had worked at The Starting Place outpatient clinic as a counselor and charged him with four counts of sexual battery on a minor.

 Castillo remains at the Broward County Jail pending trial on $20,000 bail.

 The report said that Castillo began having “sexually explicit conversations’’ with the teen shortly after the boy was court-ordered into treatment at The Starting Place, a Hollywood detective wrote.

 In late September, after the youth had been discharged from treatment, Castillo picked the boy up in his Jeep Patriot and put his hands inside the boy’s underwear.

 On Oct. 10, Castillo again picked the boy up and drove him to an alley, where he parked and “pulled the victim’s head to his groin area,” the police report said.

 While in the car, Castillo both performed and received oral sex from the youth, police say. Castillo also allegedly attempted to sodomize the youth, but “the victim then pushed away because it began to hurt.”

 The boy is not being named because he is an alleged rape victim.

 The boy’s father, who recently earned a master’s degree in child protection, realized he needed to have a talk with his son when changes in the boy’s behavior matched most of the items on a checklist for sexual abuse, the father told The Miami Herald.

 The 17-year-old was abusing drugs, having trouble in school, appeared depressed, was having temper tantrums and had wet his bed for the first time in more than a decade.

 “Before I even began work in the field, my first case was my son,” said the father. “I’m not stupid. I knew something was going on.”

 The father also became concerned when his son disclosed that Castillo insisted on watching closely when the boy urinated for drug tests.

 He said he asked Starting Place supervisors whether Castillo’s behavior was appropriate, but never received a reply. He called the police.

 The Starting Place, a non-profit organization that was founded in 1969, had been the subject of several investigations a few years ago, following a litany of allegations of sexual misconduct, embezzlement, and decrepit conditions at the program’s facilities.

 State social service administrators say they had worked with the Hollywood-based program to improve conditions and oversight.

 Joel Kaufman, The Starting Place’s CEO, said in a statement last Wednesday that Castillo has been fired.

 “The Starting Place is thoroughly investigating the matter concerning Raphael Castillo, and will cooperate fully with authorities,” Kaufman said.

 “Our uppermost concern is for the client and his family and doing whatever we can to make sure they are receiving the assistance they need as they move through this process.”

 “If any parts of the allegations prove to be true,” Kaufman added, “the actions would have been those of a rogue employee acting outside the normal course and scope of his employment and in a criminal manner.’’

 Apart from the police investigation, state substance abuse administrators have begun their own inquiry into The Starting Place, which receives $1.1 million from the state Department of Children & Families - $888,000 of it for children’s substance abuse treatment programs.

 “We have been in contact ... with the leadership there,” DCF’s spokesman in Broward County, Mark Riordan, said.

 “We are looking at their policies and procedures. Were they followed? Were they appropriate? What was the treatment history between the therapist and the client? Were background checks performed?”

 “I think they’ve done quite a bit to fix these problems,” Riordan said. “We worked with them extensively to address issues in the past, and the policies and procedures now in place are reflective of that.”

 In February 2008, The Starting Place’s residential treatment center on Coolidge Street was shut down amid probes by DCF, Hollywood police and the Broward Sheriff’s Office’s child abuse investigations unit into allegations that some youths were sexually abused by staff.

 An attorney for the boy’s family, David Fuchs, said Wednesday the drug program’s administrators should have done more to protect his son.

“These multiple charges against Castillo raise serious and troubling questions about a program whose sole mission is to protect children,” Fuchs said.

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