WATCH: Video & audio of Tiffani McLean-Camp’s opening statement
Atlanta, Ga. — Today at a U.S. Senate Human Rights Subcommittee hearing in Atlanta, Tiffani McLean-Camp, who was a child in DFCS’ care and remains in extended care, testified about abuse, medical neglect, and sexual assault & trafficking she experienced while in DFCS’ care.
“When I was put in foster care DFCS didn’t believe that I had been abused or neglected, even after I told them. To them I was unruly, a runaway, and a behavior problem,” McLean-Camp testified. “While in DFCS’ custody, I experienced abuse, medical neglect, educational neglect, and was even sexually assaulted and trafficked.”
“I moved placements more than 20 times. I was put in group homes, detention centers, and foster homes,” McLean-Camp testified. “I remember the barbed wire fence, being overmedicated, but put in isolation. I remember staff forcing my pants down and forcing me to get a shot on my bottom and then feeling drowsy. They treated me like I wasn’t human.”
“I was placed in a few different group homes that were supposed to be safe houses for girls who were trafficked,” she said. “At one of these placements, I witnessed the staff fighting with the other girls in the home, staff smoking marijuana, and not being allowed to go to school in person – not for my protection, but to protect group homes and staff other children. The staff would call me and the other girls the B word. One time, I even heard the staff call other girls in the home a slut.”
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