2 Who Operate Care Facility Accused of Torturing Children

A mother and son who operate a licensed foster-care and child day-care home in Mira Mesa have been arrested on suspicion of torturing children in their care by practices that allegedly included beating youngsters tied to a whipping post with wooden sticks and forcing them to sleep naked on the cold garage floor and in the bathtub.

Henri Mathis Dyson and her son, Harold Alexander Dyson, were arrested Thursday night after a 17-month-old boy under their care was taken, near death, two weeks ago to a local hospital. Physicians there called authorities. Police believe the boy went into shock and slipped into a coma when he was tortured with a water enema.

The Dysons were being held Friday in San Diego County jails as child-abuse detectives in the San Diego Police Department continued the investigation. Authorities are preparing to interview all 17 children who have been placed in the Dyson home since it was first licensed five years ago.

The children’s ages range from 17 months to just under 10 years, and officials said the Dyson home has been licensed by the county to care for up to six foster-care and six day-care children at any given time.

Many Previously Abused

Yolanda Thomas, a spokeswoman for the county Department of Social Services, said the case is particularly tragic because many of the foster children under the Dysons’ care came from homes where they had already been sexually or physically abused.

“They were abused children to begin with,” Thomas said. “And the courts have felt that these kids, who have been traumatized already in the past, should be in safe foster homes for their protection.

“Because our job is to protect children, we, of course, think this case is devastating.”

Henri Dyson, 41, was booked on suspicion of one count of attempted murder, five counts of felony child abuse, five counts of injury to a child, three counts of false imprisonment, and one count each of threatening a witness and furnishing drugs to a minor.

She was being held under $500,000 bail in the County Jail at Las Colinas.

Harold Dyson, 24, was booked on suspicion of four counts of felony child abuse, four counts of injury to a child, and one count of false imprisonment. He was taken to the County Jail downtown, also under $500,000 bail.

San Diego Municipal Judge Frederic Link said he set the high bail because of the severity of the allegations.

“These were foster parents taking care of foster children,” the judge said. “And, during this relationship, according to the allegations, these children were severely injured and abused.”

Police said the exact number of victims remains unclear. However, all of the children were removed from the home, in the 8700 block of Pagoda Way, on Jan. 6, the day police said Henri Dyson took the 17-month-old boy to Children’s Hospital. Doctors at the hospital alerted police.

Sgt. James Duncan of the police child-abuse unit said the boy, who was a foster child, went into a coma after as much as five quarts of cold water had been injected into his system. He said that doctors also discovered injuries to the boy’s anal area and that police, while searching the Dyson home Thursday, found “some enema bags and some other equipment in the master bedroom.”

“Her explanation is that he was constipated,” Duncan said in describing how Henri Dyson responded to inquiries about the injuries to the boy.

Thomas said that, because the home was under investigation beginning with the Jan. 6 incident, the state on Jan. 13 suspended the combination foster care-day care license. She said the license, issued in June, 1982, was in the name of Henri Dyson and her husband, Alvin Dyson.

Police said Alvin Dyson, who is not a suspect in the case at this time, is a member of the Air Force Reserves and is often out of town during the week.

Interviews With Children

Police said there were four other children living in the home at the time the infant lapsed into the coma. After they were removed, police began interviewing some of the children.

Duncan said the investigators were told that one child had been tied to a pole in the kitchen and beaten with a stick. “He was tied with his hands in an upward position to the post in the kitchen,” Duncan said. “The boy was around 7 to 9 years old.”

Police said other children told them that they were forced to sleep in the garage and in a bathtub, sometimes without being given clothing to wear.

When the detectives searched the home Thursday, they found a post in the kitchen, along with rope and several wooden sticks and belts, Duncan said. He said they also found a thin mattress on the floor in the garage, as well as the equipment used to perform an enema.

Asked how long the alleged abuse had been going on, Duncan said: “It could possibly have been going on for several years. When we talk to these other kids, we’ll know for sure.”

Police also said the home, which had been enlarged to contain as many as seven bedrooms and four bathrooms, was spotlessly clean. Investigators said some of the children have told them that they were forced to work endlessly on house-cleaning chores out of fear of reprisals from the Dysons.

Investigation a Surprise

Duncan said the social service agencies were at first surprised that the Dysons were under investigation.

“She’s worked for the social agencies here in San Diego County for a number of years and has enjoyed a very good record with them,” he said of Henri Dyson. “She has been a person that they have held in high esteem as far as her ability with foster children and the way she managed her foster home.”

Thomas, the spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services, said six complaints had been filed against the Dysons since they obtained the license and that five of those allegations were found to be unsubstantiated. She said one of the unfounded complaints dealt with physical abuse against a child in the home.

The one complaint that was proven true, she said, dealt with a complaint that Henri Dyson allowed a child to visit her natural mother without the consent of a social worker.

“She was cited for that,” Thomas said. “She acknowledged she had done that and wouldn’t do it again.”

Otherwise, Thomas said, there were no blemishes on the Dysons’ record. And she said that routine visits to the Dyson home provided no clues that the children were being abused.

“License workers and placement workers would go in there periodically,” Thomas said. “But nothing was found, except for the one incident.”