South Dakota — Foster Care Abuse Claims
Decades of Reform and an Ongoing Systemic Crisis
South Dakota’s child welfare system has been in and out of crisis for decades, heavily criticized for operating a system that removes children from their homes, ripping family and cultural ties apart. While foster care systems claim to protect children, unfortunately tjey are instead re-abusing far too many innocent children, subjecting vulnerable youth to horrifying rates of sexual abuse and physical abuse. South Dakota’s systemic issues that allow foster children to be sexually and physically abused also demonstrate a broader national reality: foster care is a failed human experiment on these kids. This habit of removal over reconciliation when the potential systemic failures of foster care system’s like North Dakota’s has led to family separations, placement instability, and intense trauma for children. South Dakota’s Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Van Hunnik class action lawsuit demonstrates these dangers. Children should not be removed from their natural parents who are their main source of safety, stability, and protection without a significant, compelling reason and without consider what can and does occur in foster care.
Children reported missing from South Dakota DFCS custody, 2018–2022
Identified as likely sex trafficking victims
Of reviewed cases with unaddressed safety concerns
Medicaid-enrolled children affected, per the Isaac A. complaint
Foster care should protect children. In South Dakota, the record shows it too often fails them.
As a Hunkpapa Lakota leader once said, “Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.”
As sensitive advocates, Justice for Kids® continues to protect foster children by working with licensed lawyers in South Dakota to file personal injury and damage claims throughout the state. Justice for Kids® refuses to be silent.
The Litigation Record
Thirty-eight years of federal oversight
Every case below is part of one continuous legal fight: holding South Dakota’s child welfare system to the constitutional standard it has repeatedly failed to meet.
The Human Cost
Numbers a docket can't fully carry
Missing child reports involving 1,790 individual South Dakota foster children
Foster youth high school graduation rate, vs. over 83% of statewide peers
Ever attain a four-year college degree
Some high-needs children housed in offices and budget motels
Justice for Kids® Refuses to Be Silent
If your child was harmed in South Dakota's foster care system, you have the right to answers.
We connect families with licensed South Dakota attorneys who handle personal injury and damage claims on behalf of children abused in state custody — at no upfront cost to you.
Behind the Statistics
The Human Cost Behind the Legal Battles
Unjustified and aggressive separations deeply traumatize children, cutting their ties to their parents, extended families, and overall cultural heritage. When a system resorts to emergency removals without evidence or proper hearings, it creates a never-ending cycle of instability and deep emotional harm. As seen in national analyses of child welfare failures, litigation in South Dakota operates a system that is so overburdened and poorly maintained that it frequently fails to secure timely permanency, protect children from abuse, or provide safe placements. This systemic disregard for foster children’s basic rights reflects the country’s national crisis, where foster care placements put our youth in danger rather than peace.
Even after class-action lawsuits attempt to enforce systemic accountability, these levels of institutional negligence continue to cause personal injury and psychological damage to South Dakota’s children. A disturbing February 2025 federal case from Sioux Falls, South Dakota exposes how 55-year-old Len Homelvig, a state-approved foster parent, was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for the production of child pornography. Despite state oversight, Homelvig exploited his power by secretly recording minor female foster children placed in his care, slipping his phone under the bathroom door and over the shower curtain to capture unauthorized images and videos of their private areas while they bathed and dressed. The investigation, which began in December 2023, identified five victims, four of whom were minors subjected to this extreme invasion of privacy and exploitation without their knowledge. Homelvig pleaded guilty to the charges in October 2024 and was formally ordered by U.S. District Judge Roberto A. Lange to pay $8,000 in restitution and register as a sex offender upon his release. While this prosecution under the Department of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood removed one predator, the fact that a state-licensed foster home was allowed to become a hidden site for child sexual exploitation proves that the initial failure to protect these defenseless children leaves them with severe, lifelong psychological trauma.
These localized failures directly evidence a catastrophic national crisis. Federal data tracks approximately 20,000 youth who age out of the foster care system annually across the country, representing about 10% of the older foster care population. National data from Casey Family Programs shows the many harms the foster care system imposes on children, including educational neglect. Foster children are disproportionately likely to fall behind on education, with only 55%-56% graduating high school compared to over 83% of their statewide peers, and just 3% to 12% ever attaining a four-year college degree. Vulnerable foster youth that are left to grow up alone in institutional isolation face incessant trauma instead of strong family bonds and are thereby led into adulthood entirely unprotected.
In the News
Independent reporting on South Dakota's foster care crisis
A story told in data: Overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the SD foster care system
Unwarranted family separations exposes vulnerable children to unchecked emotional and physical abuse, as well as the threat of sexual abuse,…Secrecy cloaks foster care investigations by S.D. social services
The systemic secrecy in the name of confidentiality in state child welfare operations can trap vulnerable foster children in dangerous…South Dakota Senate Candidate Charged with Multiple Sexual Acts Against Adopted Child
The disturbing reality of domestic exploitation can expose some adopted children to severe physical abuse, ongoing sexual abuse, and intense…Foster girl sues ex-lawmaker on rape charges
The severe betrayal by state-approved guardians exposes vulnerable foster children to unchecked physical abuse, profound sexual abuse, and intense emotional…Sioux Falls Resident Receives 15-Year Sentence for Exploiting Foster Children
The failure to protect vulnerable children from physical abuse, systemic sexual abuse, and emotional abuse inflicts deep psychological damage and…Eagle Butte Man Found Guilty of Aggravated Sexual Abuse of a Child
The reality of unchecked child predation exposes children to severe physical abuse, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse, causing high levels…