A state agency in South Carolina that is supposed to look out for kids in danger is being blamed for putting a teenage girl “in the hands of a monster.”
Gregg Martin is accused of being a sexual predator and has been charged with over a dozen s*x crimes. The claim says that he was able to groom, drug, and abuse the girl for six weeks while the Department of Social Services (DSS) watched.
A man named Gregg Martin, 56, from South Carolina was caught by the Richland County Sheriff’s Office in March.
He has been charged with 14 crimes in South Carolina, most of which are related to the alleged abuse of the young girl in 2022. He has also been charged with three crimes in Georgia, including using computer services to seduce a minor and giving children obscene material.
The Foster Care Abuse Law Firm brought the lawsuit against South Carolina’s DSS and specific caseworkers for what they are said to be careless actions.
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The lawsuit says that the agency did nothing when the victim’s mother asked them several times to take her daughter away from Martin’s home, so the abuse could go on without being stopped.
A lawyer for the family, Debra Butcher, told Fox News Digital, “What that child went through at the hands of a monster was just unbelievable.”
The teenager was first put with Martin while DSS looked into claims that her father abused and neglected her.
Her mother was strongly against the placement, but she felt forced to go along with the DSS safety plan, which usually involves placing kids with family or close friends while investigations are going on.
The safety plan in this case put the girl with Martin for five to six weeks. Martin is related to the victim’s best friend.
The lawsuit says that DSS did not do any safety checks on the girl during this time, which let Martin abuse her without being stopped.
Martin is said to have abused the woman mentally and physically and taken sexy pictures of her.
Butcher made it clear that DSS never went to that house. “All these five weeks or so, her mom kept saying, ‘My husband can move out of the house.”
“We can put her with a family member.” We can put her up with a friend. “We don’t want her to stay at the Martin house.””
The victim’s mother tried to get in touch with DSS many times to ask that her daughter be taken away from Martin’s house.
Text texts that Fox News Digital got from her show how frustrated and desperate she is.
In a message from February 2022, she said, “I have been trying to get in touch with you since February 23 and have not heard from you yet.” Is everything okay? I’m worried about how little can be said.
It had been weeks since they had replied. The caseworker finally answered that they couldn’t take the girl away from Martin’s house because the papers were already signed.
After six weeks, the case was given to a new supervisor, who quickly moved the girl out of Martin’s house.
That’s when the victim felt safe enough to tell everyone about the abuse she had been through, which led to Martin’s arrest. The victim is still troubled by the pain she went through.
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“She talked about this about two weeks ago.” Debra Butcher said, “When she was done, she had to get up and leave. She was crying and shaking.” “It’s still very traumatic for her.”
This is not the only case like this. The Foster Care Abuse Law Firm has sued the state agency three more times, saying that children were examed in ways that were not necessary or were too invasive.
In these cases, it is said that children were given invasive pediatric genitourinary exams even though there were no reports or suspicions of sexual abuse.
Another lawyer in the case, Robert Butcher, said, “Sometimes, in the process of wanting to do good, some of these people are hurting these kids.” “This is s*xual abuse.”
The cases want these kinds of tests to be banned without good reasons and for more oversight of how the DSS works.
People who are suing say that one of the defendants, Prisma Health, may have “hundreds of thousands of images of children’s genitalia” on their computer.
Prisma Health doesn’t want to say anything about ongoing legal issues and stays silent during ongoing litigation proceedings.
“Each of the lawsuits implores the courts to prohibit the Department of Social Services and Prisma Health from performing these types of exams without allegations,” Debra said.
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