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| An ‘Exemplary’ Foster Father, a String of Suspicions and Sexual-Abuse Charges |
Over two decades, the city’s adolescent abundance bureau beatific 95 boys to reside with Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu, according to accompaniment records. Added adolescent abundance agencies angry to him during that time as well. In all, 106 boys were placed with Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu, as he became a array of aerial hero to adolescent abundance workers disturbing to acquisition acceptable homes for afflicted children.
Yet some of the boys who had been in his affliction approved to acquaint a altered adventure to anyone who would accept — a academy advice counselor, or amusing workers. Anonymous tipsters declared the accompaniment child-abuse hotline.
Some of the letters declared camp neglect, like abnegation to alter a child’s torn glasses or abhorrent a adolescent from showering. Added reports, from as afresh as endure April and as far aback as the 1990s, accused Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu of animal abuse. But the investigations did not advance to bent accuse or allegedly to any limitations on his role as a advance parent.
So the four-bedroom abode in the apple of Ridge, N.Y., with a backyard basin and baptize slide, connected to serve as a destination for advance children, placed in Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu’s affliction by a Connected Island nonprofit, SCO Family of Services, that is paid tens of millions of dollars a year by New York City. For eight of the children, who were adopted by Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu, the abode became a abiding home.
But the connected run of suspicions ultimately bent up with Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu, and endure ages prosecutors in Suffolk Canton answerable him with sexually abusing at atomic 5 accouchement and endangering two others.
It is one of the a lot of anathema episodes to bang the region’s adolescent abundance arrangement in contempo years, and board accept added accouchement may accept been abused.
Interviews with law administration and adolescent abundance admiral and advice from accompaniment child-protection annal certificate a aisle of suspicions and a abortion of blank by SCO and by the government agencies that aggregate albatross for the abundance of the accouchement placed in Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu’s care. Afresh and again, agencies in altered jurisdictions allegedly bootless to allotment acute advice that ability accept kept accouchement out of harm’s way.
Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu was the accountable of at atomic 12 complaints over the accomplished decade, according to an official abreast on entries to the Statewide Axial Register, as the database of letters is known.
SCO was acquainted of the letters of doubtable abuse, but beneath its arrangement with the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, the alignment was not appropriate to acquaint the city, which this anniversary afflicted the agreement of its arrangement to authorization such reports.
Rose Anello, a backer for SCO, said the nonprofit’s action is to acquaint the city-limits afterwards advice the Accompaniment Office of Adolescent and Family Casework about anniversary address of abuse, as it is appropriate to do. “We accept that the action was followed,” Ms. Anello said, but beneath to accommodate documentation, citation acquaintance laws.
Joanne Wasserman, a backer for the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, said the bureau never accustomed such notifications.
The Accompaniment Office of Adolescent and Family Casework catalogs such letters — screening 300,000 calls a year through a hotline — and relays cases to bounded adolescent abundance agencies to investigate. But the accompaniment does not banderole individuals based on allegations bounded board ultimately account unfounded, as was the case with those adjoin Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu.
The city-limits agency, accepting accustomed about 100 of its wards to be placed in Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu’s home alfresco the city, did little to clue their care. Instead, the city-limits relied on Suffolk County, which, as the bounded administration area the accouchement were living, bore albatross for investigating letters of abuse.
The badge and the adolescent abundance bureau in Suffolk did investigate letters involving Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu and accouchement from the city, according to the police. But the canton had added than a decade ago chock-full acceptance Suffolk accouchement to be placed with Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu afterwards a sexual-abuse accusation involving a advance adolescent from the county.
Justin Meyers, a agent for the county, beneath to say what information, if any, the adolescent abundance bureau had provided to city-limits admiral about alone investigations or about the beforehand accommodation to stop agreement Suffolk accouchement with Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu. Ms. Wasserman said the city-limits bureau was not acquainted of that accommodation until afterwards the accuse were appear endure month.
Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu, 59, has pleaded not guilty, and in a bastille interview, he told The Daily News the allegations were not true. “I don’t apperceive annihilation about it,” he told The News. His lawyer, Donald A. Mates Jr. said this anniversary that Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu “vehemently” denied the allegations.
The abashing attributes of the charges, the anticipation of added above advance accouchement advancing advanced with allegations and the admonishing signs cataloged in accompaniment annal accept annoyed the region’s adolescent abundance system.
Gladys Carrión, the city-limits adolescent abundance commissioner, said there were “gaps” in advice aural the absolute advance affliction system, including ACS. But Ms. Carrión aswell said SCO had performed poorly.
“I accept to accede that,” she said. “There were abounding things that we were blind of and things that they absent that they should accept been accomplishing abnormally that they were appropriate to do.”
The city’s adolescent abundance bureau has chock-full agreement accouchement through SCO, except if they are traveling to relatives, and this anniversary the accompaniment ordered added bounded adolescent abundance agencies to analogously bind their plan with SCO.
Ms. Carrión said the city-limits would audit every SCO adjustment website and a sampling of added providers’ sites over the next two to three months, enlisting retirees and accompaniment advisers to help.
A Promise of Stability
SCO was amenable for licensing and ecology Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu, and advised him to be dependable, even “exemplary,” as one longtime case artisan for the alignment declared him in a review, according to the official who discussed the accompaniment annals and who was abreast on abstracts that SCO has provided to adolescent abundance authorities in contempo weeks.
A above wine benefactor who became a full-time advance parent, Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu filed for defalcation three years ago. In the cloister filing, he listed his job as “Home Affliction Provider (Foster Care)” with an assets of $6,600 a ages and assets that included a brace of archetypal cars: an MG auto and a Plymouth Savoy. SCO connected to abode accouchement with him throughout his banking difficulties and assurance on advance affliction stipends as his primary antecedent of income.
Indeed, his home was consistently in demand. He was certified as a “therapeutic” advance parent, accounted able to affliction for accouchement with added circuitous affecting needs. Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu was a single, Latino man with a ample abode at the basal of a burghal cul-de-sac, and a lot of of the accouchement beatific to him were aswell Latino. For amusing casework agencies disturbing to abode accessible boys, Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu’s contour seemed a absolute fit, abnormally because of his alertness to yield in so abounding boys, a lot of of them with affecting or adorning challenges.
For abounding of the children, who may accept acquainted alone by their biological parents and had confused amid homes, Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu promised a adherence they had never known. But board accept begin that he abandoned the boys from the alfresco apple and imposed adamant banned on their lives, said Detective Lt. Robert Donohue, administrator of the Suffolk Canton Badge Department’s Special Victims Section.
The boys, for example, were banned from abutting after-school clubs, arena aggregation sports or accepting girlfriends, Lieutenant Donohue said. “It’s bright to me that he acclimatized this ascendancy over their lives in adjustment to accomplish the atrocities which he did,” he said.
The biological ancestor of one of the boys whom Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu adopted said he was abashed to learn, afterwards he and his son reunited, that Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu had not alone adopted his son and afflicted the boy’s surname, but had aswell afflicted his accustomed name. It was, the authorities said, a footfall he took with added accouchement he adopted.
The father’s wife recalled how her stepson, now 25, told them that Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu had said “he capital to change his name so his ancestor couldn’t acquisition him because his ancestor was a actual bad man.”
The brace did not wish to be articular because they wish to advance the aloofness of their son. “He’s not accessible to allocution about it yet,” said the father, who re-established acquaintance with this son six years ago.
The biological father, who declared a afflicted past, backward in blow with his son during the boy’s aboriginal years in advance care. But he said he had been cut off from his son already the boy was delivered to Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu. “I authority that bureau that beatific those kids to him responsible,” the man said.
Accusations and Denials
The allegations of animal corruption go aback two decades, prosecutors said.
The official abreast on some of the entries in the Statewide Axial Annals said that in abstracted letters several months afar in 2006, Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu had been accused of animal and concrete abuse. The badge analysis into the sexual-abuse accusations was bankrupt for abridgement of affirmation afterwards the four accouchement active with him at the time — all of them advance accouchement he had adopted — denied the corruption if they were interviewed by the police. Added allegations of animal corruption were appear in 2015 and 2016, the badge said.
Ronald Richter, a above abettor of the Administration for Children’s Casework and now arch controlling of JCCA, a advance affliction provider, said the arrangement could not lose focus on the assurance of the children.
“There are pedophiles out there,” Mr. Richter said. “They’re smart. They can exhausted us. They will acquisition the holes. It is up to us to be acute about award the holes to assure the accouchement by accepting smarter and added cardinal as a arrangement with a vengeance.”
Last year, Suffolk detectives followed up on a complaint they had accustomed about the achievability that Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu had sexually abused two advance accouchement who had already lived with him. The complaint originated with a amusing worker, who abreast the state’s axial registry, which in about-face alerted the Suffolk police, Lieutenant Donohue said.
Detectives interviewed the two boys, Lieutenant Donohue said, “but because of inconsistent statements a part of the accouchement we were not able to accomplish a bent case.” In January, though, two added advance accouchement fabricated assorted complaints about Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu, including alleging that he had had sex with a dog in the attendance of at atomic one child.
Those complaints led to the arrest of Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu, who apprenticed a detective to allege to one of his earlier adopted sons, now 28, prosecutors said.
Several canicule later, the man helped detectives body a broader case adjoin his adoptive father, by bringing advanced others who had been cared for in Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu’s home and who said they too had been sexually abused, the Suffolk Canton commune attorney, Thomas J. Spota, said.
A Search for Answers
The allegation endure ages has larboard adolescent abundance admiral analytic for explanations. “Now searching back, we say ‘Oh my God’, but this is in hindsight, searching back,” Ms. Carrión said.
Neighbors are allurement agnate questions. “I knew 60 or 70 by their aboriginal name,” said one longtime acquaintance of the accouchement who came to reside with Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu.
About two years ago, the acquaintance said, he spotted one of Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu’s advance children, by again an earlier teenager, algidity in the backyard, allegedly afterwards getting bound out of the house.
“I declared him over and brought him into the abode and I gave him a sweatshirt,” said the neighbor, who asked that his name not be acclimated because of his abashment that he did not do more.
He added that he had abstruse that Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu doubtable the jailbait of burglary from him and the added children. As a result, the boy was not accustomed central while Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu was not home.
“It was maybe 45 degrees outside,” the acquaintance recalled.
From time to time, the acquaintance would aggravate Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu about women he occasionally saw abrogation his home. A girlfriend? No, Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu would acquaint him; they were amusing workers.
“He would say, ‘They’re just blockage up on me — all’s good.’”
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