A Boulder County couple is suing the area’s social services department and several department employees, charging that they took his children away because of the couple’s fundamentalist religious beliefs.
Stephen and Bedra Starkey filed a lawsuit last week in Denver District Court against the Boulder County Department of Social Services. They also have an ongoing lawsuit in U.S. District Court against six county employees for denying visitation with and parental rights over Stephen Starkey’s three children, now ages 16, 14 and 12.
“The individual Defendants’ actions were taken under color of state law, and were pursuant to a custom or policy of Defendant Boulder County Social Services to discriminate against persons with ‘fundamentalist’ Christian views,” wrote the Starkeys’ attorney, Samuel Ventola, who declined to let his clients comment on the case.
Deputy Boulder County Attorney Madeline Meacham said the legal actions taken against the Starkeys had to do with abuse allegations and not religion.
“Child-protection decisions are based on the best interest of the child and the safety of the child,” she said. “We never would make decisions based on the parents’ religious beliefs.”
But documents filed in the 2006 federal case show social workers were concerned about Stephen Starkey’s religion.
“At the time of admission, the patient’s social worker expressed deep concern that during the patient’s stay at her father’s, that she had been ‘brain washed’ religiously by her father who apparently started his own church a number of years ago and is very heavily into religion,” a doctor at Colorado Mental Health Institute at Fort Logan wrote when one of the children was admitted for anxiety and stress.
A sworn affidavit from the child in that case alleges that a social-service worker placed her in an unauthorized foster home because the social worker and foster parent went to the same church. Meacham said the allegations are false.
Social-service records also have school and hospital officials expressing concern about how Stephen Starkey’s beliefs are affecting the children, including middle school officials who felt the family’s religion was “cultish.”
A federal judge dismissed the case against the county, saying it had immunity in federal court, but allowed the federal lawsuit to continue against the employees as individuals. The Denver District Court civil complaint was filed against the county last week because of the federal judge’s ruling, Ventola said.
The family has had a tumultuous relationship for at least four years, records in the federal case show.
“The children are seriously endangered … (and) removal from the home and continued placement is in the best interests of the children,” according to a 2004 Boulder District Court temporary custody order that was in the federal court file.
The children were placed in the custody of social services in 2004 after police decided that Stephen Starkey inflicted “excessive” discipline on the children, including forcing them to lie on the floor for hours while reading the Bible, withholding meals and hitting one child on the head that caused a headache, according to county documents.
“Children should live in fear of their parents, the police and others to prevent them from an immoral life,” Stephen Starkey is quoted as saying in the report.
The county said it received more than a dozen referrals against the family from 2002 and 2005, the documents show, but many allegations were pending or unfounded. The department documents said some reports of family neglect, medical neglect and emotional abuse were founded.
Bedra Starkey was eventually allowed to adopt the children, so they are now in the couple’s custody, Ventola said.
Mediation in the federal case earlier in August failed, and Meacham said she will soon file a motion asking for a summary judgement to dismiss the federal claim.
Staff writer Arthur Kane can be reached at 303-954-1244 or akane@denverpost.com.
