Anne Grant, of the Parenting Project, criticizes the Department of Children, Youth and Families during a packed meeting of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services yesterday.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

PROVIDENCE — Peter Sleicher’s son was 7 years old when the boy first visited the Sexual Assault Trauma Resource Center.

With the police watching from the other side of a one-way mirror, the boy told a story that no one should have to tell.

Peter and Tina Sleicher had opened their home a few weeks earlier to a troubled boy in the custody of the Department of Children, Youth and Families. The Sleichers had been temporary foster parents for about four years. Even with two young boys of their own, the Warwick family felt an obligation to help troubled youth.

“We feel we have more than enough for ourselves and we want to share it with others,” Peter Sleicher said.

One Monday the family met with a DCYF representative to talk about the foster child’s history. Nothing came up about sexual abuse. Five days later, Tina Sleicher caught the foster child molesting their 7-year-old son.

“His innocence is lost,” Peter Sleicher said of his son, now 10. “He had it taken away. He didn’t deserve it.”

Peter Sleicher had not spoken publicly about his family’s ordeal before yesterday.

The 43-year-old man waited three hours, sometimes pacing the vast halls of the State House, before sharing his experience with a packed meeting of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services.

It was the second in a series of hearings focused on the inner workings of the DCYF, which is the target of a lawsuit by Child Advocate Jametta O. Alston. The class-action suit, backed by the New York group, Children’s Rights, claims systemic breakdowns at the child-welfare agency that has caused alleged widespread physical and mental abuse among the 3,000 children in state care.

Sleicher was the 14th person to testify at last night’s meeting. The people before him had told stories of children being stripped from mothers, allegedly for no reason; loving foster parents barred from contacting children raised in their home; social workers drunk on the job.

Sleicher read his statement quickly in a soft voice that betrayed his fear of public speaking. He stumbled over his words a few times. He nervously rubbed his fingers together.

“We feel that we have been used. We feel as though this type of conduct is destined to continue,” he said. “Is it appropriate to call these actions state-sponsored rape?”

Across the crowded room, DCYF Director Patricia Martinez’s face was in her hands.

It had been a long day for her too.

Before the public testimony began, Martinez had fielded questions for an hour and a half about staffing levels, abuse and systemic failures at her agency.

She told the committee that there had been 45 allegations of abuse or neglect this year in residential facilities that care for children in state care. There have been another 42 alleged incidents in non-relative foster homes. And 24 allegations of abuse or neglect were reported in relative foster homes.

Martinez cited statistics that suggest Rhode Island is on par with its New England neighbors in the relatively low rate that abuse is repeated — 91 percent of reported abuse isn’t reported again, she said.

The Senate committee, led by chairwoman Sen. Rhoda E. Perry, D-Providence, asked Martinez to detail the shortage of DCYF field workers charged with monitoring children in state care.

The Child Welfare League of America suggests that each caseworker monitor no more than 14 families, Martinez said. The average caseworker in Rhode Island works with nearly 18 families, and as many as 20 in some parts of the state, according to data provided by the DCYF.

The state would need to add 44 caseworkers to its work force of 158 full-time caseworkers and another 4 supervisors to the current 38 to meet the recommended staffing levels, Martinez said. And while 15 new caseworkers are expected to be added early next month, Martinez said that simply adding bodies isn’t enough.

The department is working to shuffle responsibilities to allow caseworkers to spend more time working with families. She acknowledged they are overburdened now. She also acknowledged a system often complicated by the directives of the Family Court, which has ultimate authority over children’s placements.

“It’s really difficult because on the one hand, the things that are coming out are things that have been embedded in a culture that for two years we’ve been trying to change,” she said. “But we could do much more.”

Governor Carcieri appointed Martinez to head the DCYF in 2005.

When asked about the Sleicher case, Martinez said she received a letter from the Warwick family late last month. She said she immediately started an investigation into the situation, including the DCYF staffer involved.

“When I read the letter, my heart broke because here you have somebody taking someone in,” she said. “It’s very overwhelming. We talk about cases. And they’re not cases. There’s a face behind every single case.”

The child advocate’s lawsuit did not come up at yesterday’s hearing. And Alston did not attend.

There has been “very little movement” in the case so far, Alston said in a phone interview earlier in the day. The state attorney general’s office was granted an extension and is scheduled to file a public response to the lawsuit in early September, she said.

But Peter Sleicher knew very little about the lawsuit. His primary concern was changing state law to require the DCYF to inform prospective foster parents of allegations of foster children’s prior sexual abuse.

He was willing to swallow his fear and tell his story to a Senate committee and a horde of strangers.

“It happened. There’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t change it. But I can try to move forward. This is my way of trying to do that,” he said.

speoples@projo.com