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Updated at 1:45 pm on Oct. 16: Marion County Circuit Court Judge David Leith signed the temporary restraining order late Thursday.
The Oregon Department of Justice has asked a Marion County Circuit Court judge to issue a restraining order that would block longtime foster-care executive Mary Holden and her allies from stripping assets from nonprofits Holden controls.
Court documents filed Oct. 14 show that the agency, which regulates Oregon nonprofits, is seeking to preserve whatever value remains in two organizations: the Alfred Yaun Child Care Centers and the Alberta Women's League Foundation.
Both organizations were established in 1969 but have long been effectively dormant, although both own real estate. Holden, the former longtime executive director of a Portland foster care agency called Give Us This Day, also came to control real estate owned by Alfred Yaun and the Alberta Women's League.
As WW has reported, a DOJ investigation found that since 2009 Holden and Give Us This Day's board either diverted or wasted nearly $2 million that the state Department of Human Services paid Give Us This Day to take care of foster children.
Holden allegedly spent the money on trips to Jamaica, Hawaii, Las Vegas and many other places; luxury clothing; health and beauty services; remodeling her home, and many other unauthorized expenses.
Former Give Us This Day employees say that children were neglected at Give Us This Day group homes—often going without food, sheets and basic hygiene supplies.
In September, after a two year investigation, DOJ forced Holden and Give Us This Day's board to cease operations and dissolve the agency.
But new court filings allege that while Holden was negotiating shutting down Give Us This Day, she was also emptying the organization's bank accounts.
Between May and September 2015, a DOJ investigator says in court filings, the state paid Give Us This Day $511,000. Bank records show that Holden personally withdrew $118,000 during that period, more than three times what she would have been due in salary.
"As she had done so often in the past, [Holden] withdrew all excess funds for her own personal use," the DOJ investigator wrote. "This left GUTD in a very precarious financial condition."
Meanwhile, foster parents who were supposed to be getting paid by Give Us This Day say they recieved nothing after July.
Holden could not be reached for comment.
The court filings also shed more light on where the money Give Us This Day was supposed to spend on foster children allegedly went:
*$213,000 was allegedly spent on furnishing and remodeling Holden's West Linn home.
*$234,000 was allegedly spent on saving Holden's home from foreclosure.
*Holden allegedly spent another $102,000 of Give Us This Day money as partial payment on a building she bought on Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
*Holden allegedly spent another $146,000 of Give Us This Day's money on a for-profit company called DTUG Media.
DOJ had sought Holden's agreement to remove herself from further involvement in foster care. But she declined to end her affiliation with Alfred Yaun, which owns a large group home on Northeast Rodney Street, and the Albina Women's League, which owns a property on Northeast Killingsworth Street.
DOJ went to court on Oct. 14, presenting new evidence of Holden's continuing to misuse Give Us This Day funds even as she negotiated the organization's dissolution and new corporate filings showing that associates of hers were moving to establish a for-profit foster care agency based at the Rodney Street property.
Investigators think that one of Holden's associates used some of the missing Give Us This Day money to pay $50,000—in cash—to save the Rodney Street house from tax foreclosure on Oct. 1.
Defendant [Holden]'s efforts to save Rodney House from foreclosure were not an eleventh hour realization that the asset should be used for charitable purposes," says the DOJ filing. "Instead, she acted to ensure that she could continue to financially benefit herself at the expense of foster children."
Willamette Week