Foul-up in adoption costs state $40,000

Thursday, April 13, 2000 | 10:39 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A foulup by the state Division of Child and Family Services in handling an adoption case is going to cost taxpayers $40,000.

The state Board of Examiners agreed Wednesday to pay the money to Virginia Nolte, who with her former husband adopted 13-year-old twin girls, who wound up creating havoc in the Reno home.

The state agency provided information on the background of the girls but didn't give the history of physical and mental abuse suffered by the twins. After their adoption, the girls physically and sexually abused each other, other children in the neighborhood and one of the parents.

The state attorney general's office said one of the girls threatened to kill the mother and the girls destroyed about $20,000 of the couple's property. The parents subsequently divorced.

"The adoptive parents were not provided with information that would have been crucial in making the decision to adopt the children," the attorney general's office said. "As a result they were subjected to physical and sexual abuse and destruction of their property,"

In another case, the Examiners Board agreed to pay $65,092 to Vennita Wilson, the victim of sexual harassment by her supervisor at the Northern Nevada Women's Correctional Center in Carson City, where she was employed.

The attorney general's office said there was strong evidence the harassment and retaliation did not take place against Wilson. But the case was tried in federal court and the state lost. It also lost on appeal.

The board denied a $150,000 claim from Suzanna Wilson who sought damages when she fell and was injured on the sidewalk at the Adult Mental Health Center in Las Vegas in July.

Also rejected was a $50,000 claim from Ester Raeder, who slipped and fell on a wet spot in the parking lot of the state Department of Motor Vehicles in Henderson in December 1998.