More than a dozen previously unreported instances of sexual misconduct and abuse spanning at least two decades at the Colorado Center for the Blind in Littleton have surfaced during an internal investigation of the school’s parent organization. Among the offenses were the alleged sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl by a summer youth camp counselor […]
Sun Investigation
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Parents of young Coloradans killed by fentanyl call it murder. So why aren’t there more convictions?
In a matter of seconds, a tiny blue pill disguised as a prescription painkiller can kill a person with a lethal dose of fentanyl, a drug so powerful that amounts as tiny as a few grains of salt are deadly. Parents of Colorado high school and college students who have died after taking the synthetic […]
Posted inSun Investigation
After teen fentanyl overdoses, moms and community groups step up to hand out testing strips, lifesaving nasal spray
Kate Lacroix was screaming at the top of her lungs on social media. Boulder teens were dying of fentanyl, swallowing pills that looked like real pharmaceuticals but instead were counterfeits laced with lethal doses of the synthetic opioid. “URGENT COMMUNITY WARNING,” she said in one February Facebook post, begging others to help spread the word. […]
Posted inSun Investigation
How counterfeit drugs made to look like real pills have ravaged one Colorado county
Jack Swanson, 18, died in February while listening to music in his bed. Next to him were little blue pills and rectangular-shaped white ones, the kind sold in his hometown of Boulder and throughout Colorado as “mexis” and “xanny bars.” Two in five of the counterfeit pills circulating the country, drugs made in Mexico to […]
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Colorado may toughen probes into institutional child abuse claims following Colorado Sun/9News investigation
A state child welfare committee will consider changing the way allegations of institutional abuse are investigated at residential centers for troubled kids, following news reports about a chronic runaway problem that resulted in two deaths. Two state lawmakers, meanwhile, are vowing to strengthen mental health treatment for children and compel the state child welfare division […]
Posted inSun Investigation
Families kept in the dark about children’s safety in Colorado’s child welfare system
Colorado’s child fatality review team did not investigate the death of a 12-year-old boy who ran away from a residential center. State officials refuse to release numbers of abuse allegations.
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With bites, bruises and low pay, caretakers for Colorado’s troubled youth say there’s not enough staff to keep kids — and each other — safe
Olivia Couch followed as the boy hopped two fences and climbed into a drainage ditch filled with water. Her job was to keep the 12-year-old safe, and protocol at the residential treatment center was to “shadow” children who ran off campus but not restrain or block them. Couch had never given up on sticking with […]
Posted inSun Investigation
The deadly consequences when kids run away from Colorado residential treatment centers
In the places of last resort for Colorado’s most troubled kids, the doors are not locked. And the children run. They scale fences and slip through gates. They bolt from staff, who are not allowed to block or restrain them, and they roam city streets for hours or sometimes days. Children and teens run away […]
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“Fraudulent worker” investigation shakes Moffat County; human services director leaves job
Jennifer Tipp knew who was giving her 15-year-old son methamphetamine. She even had a photo of the adult in a living room with a group of teenagers and a bong. The Craig mom called police and local child welfare authorities more times than she could count, begging them to confront the person who was smoking […]
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Colorado child protection caseworker under investigation for falsifying reports about checking on kids, at-risk adults
At first, the child protection worker’s supervisor noticed missing notes in a handful of cases of alleged abuse and neglect. Then more cases looked suspicious, as if the caseworker’s details about checking on children and their families weren’t actually true. After an outside team — a crew of 15 caseworkers from nine counties — was […]