VERO BEACH — The boy seldom sleeps through the night.

He stirs for a while, then jolts himself awake and begins to cry. His father sometimes sits watch near the 6-year-old's bed in their Port St. Lucie home, hoping his presence will scare away his son's memories of the shelter, the bed and the big boy who did the bad touching.

"My son is not the same as he was," the father said. "I see him doing and saying things that he never did before."

The 6-year-old deaf boy and his younger brother were separated from their widowed father six months ago, when the father was arrested. They went first to a foster home, then to the Hibiscus Children's Village, a Vero Beach shelter for children.

The village is part of a network of residences the state Department of Children and Families uses to place Treasure Coast children.

By the time the kids get there, most have been victims of neglect, physical abuse and sexual molestation. Sometimes they try to run away. Sometimes they inflict physical harm on themselves or others as a way of acting out their previous abuses.

And sometimes, as in the case of another boy who sneaked into the 6-year-old's bed one night in May and fondled him until a Hibiscus staffer intervened, they pass the sexual abuse they have suffered to other children.

The boy's molestation and court officials' concern over other cases at the 2-year-old Vero Beach center prompted a St. Lucie County judge to order the boy, his brother and six other county children removed from the shelter this summer.

Shelter boosts precautions

In a letter to the court, a case coordinator and assistant director for a group assigned to advocate the rights of children in the court system said they had "grave concerns" about reports of abuse at the center. Indian River County Sheriff's Office records show the shelter has called nearly a dozen times with reports of child-on-child sexual abuse since it opened in 2004, but deputies said most of the allegations were cleared.

"A thorough investigation needs to be completed to help find out why these incidences continue to occur at Hibiscus Village," said the letter from the Guardian ad Litem program.

Circuit Judge Scott Kenney, who ordered the children removed, declined to comment on his ruling. Administrators with United for Families, the Treasure Coast's foster care agency, confirmed that the judge asked them to remove the children from the center in May. Currently, there are no St. Lucie County children at the center.

Court officials in Martin and Indian River counties also have discussed issues at the center, but because of the confidentiality surrounding cases involving children, it is difficult to determine what action, if any, they have taken.

Either way, the removal has cast a shadow on the new $5 million center that provides housing, therapy and other services to children DCF officials expect to be in the system long-term. The village is the newest part of the Hibiscus Children's Center, a 21-year-old not-for-profit organization that also runs a crisis nursery and a children's shelter in Jensen Beach.

On a recent morning, three young boys played outside at the preschool on the center's campus of eight homes. Most of the other 16 children were on a fishing trip, one of many summer outings the center sponsors. All live in one of several houses on the campus, which is designed as different from a traditional shelter as possible.

The campus is off a major road in Vero Beach. Hibiscus officials said they don't put up a sign because they don't want to attract attention.

"Are we perfect? Absolutely not," Hibiscus CEO Jan Huffert said. "Do we wrap our arms around this program to make sure these children have a chance to be happy, productive members of our society? We do. If I didn't believe that we make a difference, I couldn't keep going."

Huffert, who has dedicated decades to helping the Treasure Coast's most abused and neglected children, said she takes every potential abuse report seriously but thinks her staff does an excellent job of keeping the problems to a minimum.

She said she could not speak about specific cases, including the one involving the 6-year-old, but said that in general her staff has stepped up nighttime bed checks to five-minute intervals and watches each child closely to look for signs of sexual aggression.

According to records on the incident, the boy who touched the 6-year-old also was 6. The boy's father doubts that.

"When my son told me what happened to him, he said it was a big boy, big like this, and he put his arms above his head," the father said. "I don't think it was another little boy."

Signs not obvious

Child-on-child sexual abuse at foster care centers is a nationwide problem, experts say. Because the nature of sexual abuse revolves around secrecy, signs of abuse will not manifest in bruises and burns, as they do with physical abuse.

Shelters such as Hibiscus, which receive the majority of their children through emergency placement, often have children for a while before they receive all paperwork and specifics on the traumas the kids have suffered. That's why Huffert and others say knowing which child might potentially act out sexually toward another is difficult.

DCF officials said they investigated Hibiscus after the judge's order and looked for signs of improper supervision and faulty care by staff workers. They found none.

"These children bring a lot of baggage into the system," DCF administrator Vern Melvin said. "I think Hibiscus does the best they can to help them."

When abuse is suspected, Huffert said, she encourages her staff to call authorities immediately. The child who perpetrates the abuse is assigned to sleep alone in a room and everyone involved undergoes intensive therapy related to the incident.

For the 6-year-old molested in May, the effect of the new trauma still manifests itself in nightmares and an increased wariness of strangers, his father said. The father was released from jail in March after his charges, which stemmed from allegations that he threatened teachers at his son's school, were dropped. DCF reunited him with his sons last month.

Records show DCF workers had concerns about the boys' safety, fearing their father had become so despondent over his wife's recent death that he could no longer care for them. Teachers at the 6-year-old's school said the father sometimes showed up with the smell of alcohol on his breath and his eyes red, as if he had been crying. Several times, he threatened to remove the boy from the school.

As for the boy, after the molestation a Hibiscus mental health worker talked to him about the difference between good and bad touching, a lesson the father said his son learned both too late and too soon.

"I can't stop thinking about it," the father sobbed over the phone one night before he was reunited with his son. "I can't believe they did that to my baby."