State pays $43,000 to settle lawsuit alleging cover up in horrific child abuse case
A former internal investigator at the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services who alleged that her superiors wanted her to cover up mistakes made in a horrific child abuse case in Berea has settled her whistleblower lawsuit.
Bridget Frailley, a 20-year employee, sued the cabinet earlier this year, saying she refused to falsify her report on how the cabinet’s child-protective office in Madison County erred by leaving the girl with her abusive father, Julio Valladares, and his abusive girlfriend, Linda Richmond, both of them now in prison.
As part of a sealed settlement on Nov. 13, the cabinet paid Frailley $43,000. It also gave her a new job in Louisville as a social services specialist. She was involuntarily transferred in March to what she considered the less desirable post of social services clinician, which was part of the reason for her lawsuit.
The Herald-Leader obtained the terms of the settlement in Franklin Circuit Court through the Open Records Act.
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article187378213.html