A Social Services department supervisor and her husband have been arrested and charged with multiple child abuse charges after cops found one of their children handcuffed to the porch, with a dead chicken wrapped around his neck. Let me repeat that: a social worker. Was arrested for child abuse. Was someone in the wrong job or what?
Wanda Sue Larson heads up a Social Services department in Union County, North Carolina, and over the years, she and her husband have adopted four kids, plus they were fostering a little boy. Were until a cop responding to a call at a neighbor's house noticed the foster son, handcuffed to the porch by his ankle.
This is one of those cases where the alleged criminal's job really must come under the microscope. How could a social worker, a woman charged with protecting kids from abuse, have gotten mixed up in something like this?
Perhaps more to the point: if this is what was happening in Larson's home, what was she letting slide at work?
After all, if the charges against Larson and her partner, Dorian Lee Harper, are true, she was fine with unspeakable cruelties being committed against a child she had pledged to love. If that's OK in her eyes, what would she allow to happen to kids who weren't her own? What was happening to all the kids out there who were depending on the social worker to protect them?
Hopefully this case will send folks back into her files to review her cases, but I shudder to think what they might find.
As for her home, all of Larson and Harper's kids have been taken from them. They've been charged with of intentional child abuse inflicting serious injury, false imprisonment, and cruelty to animals, plus Larson is facing charges of willful failure to discharge her duty as a public official.
Have you had a bad experience with a social worker? What happened?
Image via Union County Sheriff's Office