David Frodsham was a high civilian commander at a US air station in Afghanistan who "jokingly" requested access to YouPorn, told a female that she was recruited because he wanted to be "surrounded by pretty women," and habitually called others "honey," "babe," and "cougar" before being ordered home after numerous allegations of sexual harassment were verified by the military.

According to an investigative file by the US Army, a commanding officer recommended he leave his post at Bagram Airfield and return to his home base in Arizona, saying he did not recommend a "position of authority but rather pursuing disciplinary actions at his home station."

When Frodsham returned to his home station in the autumn of 2015, he rejoined the Army's information technology service provider, the Network Enterprise Technology Command, where he had worked as director of people for a worldwide command of 15,000 troops and civilians.

In 2016, Frodsham pled guilty to sex assault charges and was sentenced to 17 years in prison. However, records examined by AP reveal that the US Army and the state of Arizona overlooked or disregarded countless red signals over a decade, allowing Frodsham to allegedly mistreat his adoptive son and other children for years while jeopardizing national security.

Despite almost 20 reports and attempted complaints of abuse, neglect, maltreatment, and license breaches, the state allowed Frodsham and his wife, Barbara, to foster, adopt, and keep custody of their numerous children. Meanwhile, the Army granted Frodsham security clearances and key positions.

Frank Figliuzzi, the former assistant director of counterintelligence for the FBI, said, “Fort Huachuca is one of the more sensitive installations in the continental United States. People with security issues should not be there.” In addition to NETCOM, where Frodsham worked, Fort Huachuca is home to the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, according to its website.

Frodsham, retired Sgt. Randall Bischak, and a third man unrelated to the Army are all serving jail sentences for their participation in the child sex abuse ring. However, the inquiry is still ongoing since Sierra Vista police suspect more men were involved.

Two of Frodsham's adopted kids have filed separate lawsuits against the state for licensing David and Barbara Frodsham as foster parents in a house.

According to attorney Lynne Cadigan, who represents all three children, a third adoptive son is likely to bring suit in Arizona state court in Cochise County on Tuesday. In the most recent complaint, Trever Frodsham, 19, claims that caseworkers missed or ignored multiple signals that David and Barbara Frodsham were unfit parents. These included a sex abuse complaint made with local police in 2002 by one of the Frodshams' biological daughters against an older biological sibling, as well as David and Barbara Frodsham being victims of child sex abuse.

In an interview for AP, Ryan Frodsham recalled how his step-father sexually abused him when he was 9 or 10 and began offering his stepson to other men in his teens. It "makes me throw up thinking about it," he said.

He said his adopted mother knew "what was going on" and the state was informed of the abuse. According to Ryan Frodsham's lawsuit, David and Barbara Frodsham physically abused their children "by slapping them in the face, pinching them, hitting them with a wooden spoon, putting hot sauce in their mouths, pulling them by the hair, bending their fingers back to inflict pain, forcing them to hold cans with their arms extended for long periods of time," and refusing to let them use the bathroom unless the door remained open. In his interview, Ryan stated that Barbara never sexually molested him but was in the room multiple times when his adoptive father abused him.

The adopted sons' two lawsuits and related legal filings allege that investigators with the Department of Child Safety and caseworkers with Catholic Community Services, which subcontracts foster and adoption work from the state, failed to effectively follow up on 19 complaints and attempted complaints about the Frodsham home over a decade.

The complaints started in 2002, when the Frodshams applied for their foster care license, and lasted until 2015, when David Frodsham was charged with disorderly conduct and driving drunk with children in his car, prompting the state to suspend their license indefinitely and remove all foster children from their home, though the charges were later dropped.

After he was deployed to Afghanistan five months later, Frodsham was returned to Arizona after 4 months.

No one listening

The Frodshams' lawsuits detail how they attempted to report their abuse to caseworkers to no avail.

In one instance, Neal's case manager reported the call to his mother who "interrogated" him and punished him.

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In the second case, his case manager said he needed to state the reason for his call before a meeting due to the 90 minutes driving distance from Tucson to Sierra Vista.

After he was photographed with bruises at the Sierra Vista police department after he ran away from home at 12, Ryan Fridsham's caseworker who met with Ryan said his claims are "unsubstantiated" and he was returned to his adoptive mother.

Many child welfare experts believe people who have been subjected to abuse as children are likely to continue the pattern with children in their own homes and should be interrogated to make sure their trauma has been overcome before placing children in their care.

David and Barbara Frodsham have both said they were abused as minors but did not disclose the information on their foster parent applications.

Kathleen Faller, an expert witness in Ryan Frodsham’s lawsuit, said Arizona welfare workers "did not know how to interview and, therefore, they didn’t get candid answers from the Frodshams."

The state of Arizona has said all complaints about the Frodsham home were properly handled.

Pornography ring

The Frodsham case surfaced after an undercover Homeland Security agent using the Kik messaging app found someone posting videos and photos labeled “pedopicsandvidd.”

Due to the storing of IP addresses on Kik, the police department found that the user was in effect Sgt. Randall Bischak.

When police raided his house, seizing laptops, mobile phones, tablets, and CDs containing child pornography, Bischak admitted to having intercourse with a 59-year-old man he named "Dave" and his adolescent son. In at least one case, Bischak had covertly videotaped the encounter. He also told investigators that he and Frodsham talked about having sex with little children and that Frodsham supplied him with at least one of the "little ones".

Thomas Ransford, a Sierra Vista police investigator who specializes in child sex abuse investigations, served as a military police officer at Fort Huachuca, where Frodsham was the director of Training, Plans, Mobilization, and Security in the mid-2000s.

Ransford recalled that when Frodsham was questioned, he was "pompous" and later acknowledged his crimes when he was shown the video taken by Bischak.

According to Ransford, Ryan fueled the investigation when he began identifying other members of his father's abuse ring.

The Frodsham child sex abuse ring is one of a slew of sex abuse incidents that have surfaced in Cochise County, Arizona, in recent years, including some involving US Border Patrol employees, two of whom worked at the Naco Border Crossing.

Ransford believes that good police work is to thank for the effective prosecution, while Cadigan, the attorney representing the Frodsham brothers and Neal Taylor, says child sex abuse is on the rise in Arizona.

Unmanageable workload

The Frodsham brothers and Neal Taylor reportedly suffered physical and sexual abuse at a period when Arizona's child welfare system was mired in controversy. Officials disclosed in 2013 that the Department of Protective Services had a backlog of over 6,500 abuse and neglect allegations that had never been examined.

The discovery spurred then-Gov. Jan Brewer to disband the whole agency and establish the Department of Child Safety as a new Cabinet-level entity. “It is evident that our child welfare system is broken, impeded by years of operational failures,” Republican Brewer said.

Deep budget cuts to family support services were at the root of the scandal, resulting in an increase in abuse and neglect complaints and what an auditor general's report later referred to as "unmanageable workloads, staff turnover, and the limited experience of some CPS supervisors and newly hired investigators."

Research conducted for the state Legislature in 2014 revealed that the rise in workloads in Arizona during the decade ending in 2012 was bigger than in all but one other state. It also revealed that between 2009 and 2012, the response time for abuse and neglect allegations increased from 63 hours to nearly 250 hours.

Ryan Frodsham told AP that he wanted the state to admit "what it did was wrong."