The Department of Children and Families sent a letter of dismissal to a child protective investigator who allegedly had sex with a teenage girl in foster care.
Jean LaCroix had been assigned to the teen’s case for a month last fall, but court documents show they had a sexual relationship for months.
LaCroix was placed on paid administrative leave in May and will continue to be paid for 10 additional days.
“This investigator completely betrayed our trust, and unfortunately people will do bad things, but we have to insure things like this do not happen,” said DCF Secretary David Wilkins.
A search warrant affidavit spells out what LaCroix is accused of. The 17-year-old, who was in foster care, told authorities that she “engaged in consensual sexual intercourse on numerous occasions with her DCF case worker Jean LaCroix."
"The victim advised that while in school she would call or text the subject and the subject would arrange to pick her up from school and take her to his residence where they would engage in consensual sexual intercourse," the warrant said.
The girl is also one of the victims in the prostitution ring revealed earlier this week that led to the arrest of four men.
Local
“We put him on administrative leave. We took away access to his case file and children that he might have had access to. We took his phone and before doing all of that contacted law enforcement,” said Esther Jacobo, the DCF regional supervisor. “We did not fire him immediately in part because law enforcement asked us not to fire him immediately so that they could conduct appropriate investigations and prosecute the case.”
Meanwhile, when Wilkins was asked if this was an isolated case, he told NBC 6: “Are there other investigators that are doing this? I've heard allegations, to be quite frank, that others that it has happened to, and when we hear about that type of thing that we will investigate it. Is it a widespread problem? No.”
