Advocates seek changes to industry to protect children from predators

By: DENIS DEVINE - Staff writer | Monday, April 25, 2005 11:55 AM PDT ∞

In our rush to protect children from adults who would harm them, we may have left behind one important group: those young people we invite to stay in American homes as foreign-exchange students. The industry that brings them here remains vulnerable to neglectful host families and, much worse, exploitation by sexual predators.

More than 30,000 foreign students are hosted by American families each year, including more than 4,300 high school students in California this year, according to industry statistics. Dozens will stay with North County families this year. The great majority return to their home countries with fond memories and lifelong friends. But some ---- no one knows how many ---- learn the hard way that the student-exchange industry can put them in harm's way and that the industry's protections don't rise to the standard of other child-oriented professions.

For instance, the industry's accrediting agency, the Council for Standards on International Educational Travel, does not require criminal background checks for exchange-agency employees and the volunteer hosts they recruit. In fact, the council is actively fighting efforts in the Oregon state legislature to make such checks mandatory. Officials say the Internet background searches used by some agencies are deeply flawed and thus offer a false sense of security.

And unlike child-oriented professions ranging from bus drivers to teachers, employees and host families are not instructed to automatically report cases of abuse to the police, though California's broad and growing list of so-called "mandatory reporters" suggests they are breaking the law if they don't. Advocates for exchange students say that too often, agency representatives protect themselves and their employers at the expense of the children they're entrusted with.

On paper, the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is overseeing the exchange-student industry. In practice, the department relies on the companies' own reporting to monitor them. Margaret Short, the bureau's chief of academic and government programs, acknowledged that the lack of a legal reporting requirement "appears to be a loophole" through which exchange students fall through. Fed up with relying on the industry to police itself, the State Department is forming its own compliance unit to handle investigations, she said.

For victims and their advocates, it is attention that's past due.

"The Department of State is dropping the ball," said Sally Arguilez Smith of Tierrasanta, whose daughter's friendship with mistreated exchange students launched her activism on their behalf. "It stands in the place of the parent in the United States. After World War II, it was our government that wanted this program; we thought it would be great for other students to experience this country. But in subsequent decades, the State Department has turned over its responsibilities to these many small companies."

Close to home

Smith learned the hard way that those companies are not always willing or able to protect children in their care. In 2003, her work on behalf of students helped force the State Department to reprimand the American Intercultural Student Exchange, then based in La Jolla. The worst of several incidents involved a boy from Denmark who was molested by his host during a hiking trip to Yosemite; a San Diego man, David Goodhead, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of engaging in unsolicited sexual contact in 2003.

No one knows for sure whether exploitation of foreign-exchange kids is widespread. Yet all agree that even one such case is too many. Industry representatives say they rarely hear of sexual predators hosting foreign students. But reformers say the problem is underreported, citing a long list of cultural, social and procedural barriers that hinder victims' ability to seek help and press charges.

Last year, a Hemet High School teacher pleaded guilty to molesting the 15-year-old German student who stayed in his Murrieta home from February to May 2003. Moments before the trial was set to begin, Peter William Ruzzo pleaded guilty to seven felony charges. The prosecutor said Ruzzo's plea came shortly after he learned his victim took the unusual step of flying back to the United States to testify against him.

But that case was the exception, say the people drawing attention to the problem: Agencies usually shunt victims to new homes or back to their home countries labeled as "troublemakers," with charges never filed against offending hosts. If it sounds like the Catholic Church's treatment of pedophile priests, it should, said one of the world's leading advocates for exchange students whose foreign home stays go horribly wrong.

Rotary turned around

Freda Briggs is a professor emeritus of child development at the University of South Australia, but the energy she devotes to protecting children hasn't retired a bit. Since learning that her own near-escape from a predatory host father 50 years ago was not a unique experience, Briggs has heard horror stories from around the world.

"When students did report abuse, they were blamed and demonized by the very coordinators who were supposed to protect them," she wrote in an e-mail. "My students who were sexually abused in the United States, Brazil and Germany while on exchanges suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. They attributed this equally to the rape and the mishandling of their disclosure by the organization."

Briggs initially targeted Rotary International, a service group based in Evanston, Ill., that sends more than 7,000 students around the world each year. Her lobbying ---- and unwanted media attention after several former abuse victims went public ---- paid off, so now the group is leading the industry in developing a more-stringent set of guidelines to protect its youthful charges.

"While the (council) guidelines are recognized as the industry standard, Rotary has gone one step further," Theresa Nissen, who is in charge of Rotary's youth exchange programs, wrote in another e-mail. "Based on the best practices identified by experts in the field, Rotary also requires clubs to conduct background checks for adults participating in the youth exchange program as additional protection for those who participate in our program. "

Flaws exposed

While federal legislation in the 1990s made it possible for exchange-student agencies to request fingerprint-based background checks through the FBI, few do so, citing the high cost. Instead, they usually use Internet-based searches that rely on personal information supplied by the applicants.

But such searches are fatally flawed: If an applicant slightly changes the spelling of his or her name, date of birth or Social Security number, or if someone in the justice system ever made a typo along the way, a person may not be matched with his or her criminal record by such a search.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nonprofit that serves as the focal point for services and information related to abducted, endangered and sexually exploited youths, completed a study in December exposing these flaws. They ran fingerprint searches of people who volunteered to work with a trio of big youth-serving organizations ---- the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, the National Mentoring Partnership and the National Council of Youth Sports. The results were shocking.

"When we looked at 7,000 applicants, we didn't think it would uncover 700 people that have criminal histories," said Jim Samuels, a senior official at the National Center. More than half of the criminal records they found ---- including sex crimes ---- had not shown up on Web-based searches, he said. Nine percent had records that indicated the applicants should not work with children.

"I don't have any confidence in name-based background checks," Samuels said. "Even people that know they're being fingerprinted and sign a statement that they're clean, they want access to children so much they're willing to lie on the record."

Industry: False security

This is why the Council for Standards on International Educational Travel, the industry's certifying and lobbying group, is vigorously resisting an Oregon bill that would make such checks mandatory, says council President John Hishmeh.

"Obviously we don't want this to happen, either," Hishmeh said. "But a slight change in name would elude this background check. There's a false hope that this would solve the problem."

Hishmeh also worried about the financial toll that mandatory background checks would take on the industry's smaller players; more than 75 agencies were accredited by the council for the 2005-06 school year.

"The background checks would become too financially cumbersome to run," Hishmeh said. "We can't require a check on every single family member. There's not evidence to support that this problem is rampant, nor that this would fix them."

The Oregon bill is the brainchild of Carlos Cartlidge, a retired parole officer. He says five out of 60-70 sex offenders he supervised over a three-year period had successfully applied to host foreign-exchange students ---- in just one Oregon county.

"These organizations are charging a lot of money to place students here in homes in the U.S.," Cartlidge said. "I think they're neglectful in terms of providing for the safety of those kids. ... Strangely enough, the host organizations you'd think would be very concerned with the safety of the youngsters they brought over here to study, well, obviously they're not. They're afraid that it will hurt recruiting."

How agencies screen hosts

Companies are required by the State Department to do thorough inspections of potential host families' homes, conduct lengthy interviews and require three personal references from each potential host.

Up in Oregon, Cartlidge wasn't impressed with the industry's safeguards. "My wife and I have hosted students for 22 years," he said. "During that time, we've been visited in our home exactly twice. The students are placed with us, but there's never any follow-up from the organizations to see how the students are doing, what's going on in the home... If you talk to other host families, I think you'll hear the same."

Some hosts interviewed for this story did tell similar stories. But agency employees described a screening process they believe is rigorous enough to prevent abuse and neglect.

Cindy Knight, a Santa Rosa-based regional coordinator for the Pacific Intercultural Exchange, said she always conducts lengthy interviews of potential host families, visits their homes and sometimes checks their backgrounds ---- when law enforcement agencies respond to her request for help. "It sometimes can be difficult," she said.

Through Knight's area rep in Valley Center, girls from Brazil, Germany, Russia and the Ukraine are staying with families in Valley Center, Escondido, Chula Vista and San Diego.

Another agency, the Council for Educational Travel USA - PALS Division, has placed a pair of European girls with families near La Costa Canyon High School. Regional coordinator Michelle Johnston said it is difficult to find host families in Southern California, and stories like this one won't help, she feared.

While Johnston said her organization conducts thorough interviews and home inspections, it doesn't conduct criminal background checks. A human resources professional by trade, Johnston wasn't sold on background checks.

"If there's some weird person out there, and they're trying to use this program to their benefit, is a background check going to stop them?" she asked. "I don't know. Where there's a will there's a way. It may deter someone who might not be too savvy."

Johnston also worried about the cost of such checks. "The cost is going to be passed along to the kids," she said. "We're a nonprofit."

Already, the costs to send a student abroad ---- upward of $7,000 per trip ---- ensure that participation is limited to mostly well-to-do families in foreign countries. But Jim Samuels of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children doesn't think the added cost of a fingerprint-based background check would deter many foreign families from participating.

"I'm sure there are some parents that live in United Arab Emirates that wouldn't mind sending 50 bucks for a criminal background check," he said.

No reporting required

Agency representatives contacted for this story said they were not legally required to report abuse or neglect to the police, though many said they would do so if the charges were serious enough.

Even the State Department official supervising the industry said employees were "not legally required" to report complaints. "However, they're supposed to also have the child's best interests at heart," Short said. "While they may not be legally required, we would hope they would anyway."

But officials in the industry and its regulators appear to be wrong on this one: California law does require agency representatives to immediately report to police any claims by children that they are being endangered or harmed, say local and state experts. What's more, agencies routinely insist that students first turn to company employees if something goes wrong with host families.

California Penal Code Section 11165.7, a, 8 defines a "mandated reporter" as "an administrator or employee of a public or private organization whose duties require direct contact and supervision of children." A spokesman for the state attorney general's office said this "catch-all" phrase could "reasonably" be assumed to apply to the foreign-exchange industry.

Tracy Prior, a San Diego County deputy district attorney specializing in North County family justice, said while her office rarely filed such charges, people who are required to report something to the police and don't could be charged with a misdemeanor.

Contact staff writer Denis Devine at (760) 740-5415 or ddevine@nctimes.com.