CRIES FOR HELP FOR JEANETTE MAPLES GOT NO ANSWER

 

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/01/cries_for_help_for_jeanette_ma.html

 

By Susan Goldsmith, The Oregonian

January 02, 2010, 5:24PM

EUGENE — Many in this community were heartbroken last month when they learned that 15-year-old Jeanette Maples was killed, but few were surprised when authorities charged her mother and stepfather with murder.

For three years, people in Jeanette’s life tried to get child welfare authorities involved, to no avail. Her step-grandmother, a concerned parent of a friend and educators all called the state Department of Human Services because she was bruised, constantly hungry and said she had been beaten at home.

Though police and prosecutors have released few details about the case, citing an ongoing criminal investigation, Jeanette’s relatives, friends and former teachers say she died a horrific death at her Eugene home after being starved and abused for years.

Her mother, Angela McAnulty, 41, and stepfather, Richard McAnulty, 40, have been charged with aggravated murder as a result of “intentional maiming and torture.” Both could face the death penalty if convicted, and both have pleaded not guilty.

DHS officials won’t comment, because they’ve convened a critical incident response team review to examine how the agency handled the case. The internal inquiry is expected to wrap up this month.

“The CIRT investigation under way is aggressively reviewing all prior contacts with the family to find out what happened,” said Gene Evans, a DHS spokesman.

Jeanette, a quiet, dark-haired girl who sought refuge in books at her school’s library, tried unsuccessfully to hide her injuriesduring her middle school years, friends recalled. But many days when she got into her clothes for gym class, friends saw bruises on her abdomen and legs, which she said came from falling.

One classmate, Amber Davis, wouldn’t accept Jeanette’s explanations about her injuries and pressed her for the truth.

“She told me her mom was abusing her when we were in seventh grade,” said Davis, 15, one of Jeanette’s closest friends during her years at Cascade Middle School.

Davis told her parents and school officials about Jeanette’s bruises in 2007, and they contacted the state’s child welfare office in Eugene. Cascade Middle School officials, who didn’t want to be identified because of the ongoing investigations, say they contacted the DHS at least twice while Jeanette was a student.

Jeanette’s stepgrandmother, Lynn McAnulty, who lives in Leaburg and saw her grandchildren only occasionally, says she twice called child welfare authorities anonymously in six months to report abuse. At the funeral, grieving friends, their parents, teachers and family members said they trusted that social workers would rescue Jeanette, but they never did.

“It’s hard to understand. I told. Everybody told, and nothing happened,” Davis said.

Jeanette’s death follows five years of critical incident reviews into child deaths and serious injuries of youngsters who’ve had contact with the DHS. Twenty-one reports since 2004 identify a myriad of problems, including a failure to investigate and follow up on cases, inadequate documentation and lack of ongoing assessment.

“This agency cannot hold itself out as protecting children when they repeatedly fail,” said David Paul, a Portland attorney who has sued the department on behalf of 10 children. “I am tired of hearing they need new resources. They don’t need new regulations or a blue-ribbon panel. What’s needed is accountability and public oversight, and it’s just not happening.”

Signs of trouble

People who know Angela McAnulty, Jeanette’s mother, describe her as a high-strung and controlling woman who made little money, once lived in her car, and isolated her children from others.

In Sacramento in 1995, McAnulty lost custody of Jeanette, who was then 1 year old, and the girl’s two older brothers because of suspected abuse and neglect. The children’s father, Anthony Maples, was in prison for drug offenses and had little contact with his children.

In a phone interview, Anthony Maples said his two sons, Jeanette’s brothers, grew up in foster care after they wrote a letter to the family court judge overseeing their case pleading to not be sent back to their mother.

Jeanette spent 5 1/2 years in foster care in Sacramento before she was returned to her mother in 2001, Anthony Maples said.

By that time, Angela McAnulty, who was a cashier at a discount store, had another daughter. Sometime after being reunited with Jeanette, Angela met Richard McAnulty, a truck driver, and the two were married in 2002.

Angela and Richard had a son, and the family moved to Eugene in late 2005, according to Lynn McAnulty, Richard’s mother.

Jeanette started at Cascade Middle School in the middle of her sixth-grade year in 2006. Her mother sent her there in ratty sweatpants and an old yellowing T-shirt, and children made fun of her, her friends said.

Despite the teasing about her clothing and appearance, friends said, Jeanette loved school. She liked writing and reading poetry and being away from home.

But there were signs of serious trouble. Jeanette was constantly hungry, and each day when it was time to go home, her demeanor changed, friends said. She became sad, withdrawn and anxious. Her mother was strict, they said, and wouldn’t allow friends to call her or let Jeanette visit their homes or invite them over.

“Once the bell rang to go home, you could see she didn’t want to go,” said Karina Mora, 15, a friend from middle school who attended her funeral.

Amber Davis said Jeanette confessed that her mother beat her after Davis pushed her to explain the repeated injuries. She encouraged her friend to get help, but Jeanette feared that would enrage her mother.

“She got scared and said she didn’t want her mom to take her out of school because she thought things would get worse,” Davis remembered.

Davis then told her mother, Holly Sams, who called the DHS office in Eugene.

Sams said child welfare screeners downplayed her concerns and told her secondhand accounts of abuse were not sufficiently serious to send social workers out. So Sams told her daughter to enlist officials at Cascade Middle School, which she did.

One school official who asked not to be named and who spoke at Jeanette’s funeral said: “We cared about her. We did what we could, and we fed her.”

Stepgrandmother reported her concerns to state

After graduating from eighth grade in the spring of 2008, Jeanette was home-schooled by her mother. Friends and family say she was hidden away with almost no contact with the outside world while her siblings attended school and appeared healthy and happy.

Richard McAnulty was often out of town driving trucks across the country. Last summer he ended up in a California hospital for open-heart surgery. Angela McAnulty and the children showed up at the hospital.

Jeanette “looked bad, really thin, her hair had been chopped off, and she had a busted lip,” her stepgrandmother, Lynn McAnulty, said.

A few weeks later, McAnulty called the DHS to report suspected abuse. She didn’t give her name because she was worried her son and daughter-in-law would find out.

“I said I was a neighbor and told them to check on the kids and said the older girl is extremely thin, and they said they’d check into it,” McAnulty said.

In October, she was briefly allowed into the family’s home. Jeanette was inside, facing a wall because she was being punished by her mother. McAnulty tried to talk to Jeanette as her daughter-in-law hovered nearby. The girl was emaciated, and she had a split lip, the stepgrandmother said.

Angela McAnulty told her mother-in-law that Jeanette had fallen.

Lynn McAnulty left the house and said she again called the DHS anonymously to report suspected abuse. That was the last time she saw Jeanette.

On the night of Dec. 9, Lynn McAnulty got a frantic call from her son and daughter-in-law that Jeanette was cold and had stopped breathing. Lynn McAnulty said she screamed at them to call 9-1-1, which they did. The couple were arrested later that night after Jeanette was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

No official cause of death has been released. Detectives took away boxes of evidence, and Lynn McAnulty was given the grim task of cleaning out the house.

She found food padlocked in kitchen cupboards and a blood-spattered bedroom. She described the inside of the house as filthy, with junk and toys everywhere. Investigators urged her not to view her stepgranddaughter’s body.

“They all told me that I did not want to see this body because it was the most horrific thing they’d ever seen,” said McAnulty, who took their advice.

“Dropped into the abyss”

Even though the DHS investigation will not be made public for weeks, one child welfare advocate in Oregon is confident the agency is making important strides and diligently examining its mistakes.

“The leadership of DHS is finally willing to work with advocates and scrutinize themselves,” said Robin Christian, executive director of the nonprofit Children First For Oregon.

But she added: “The state is not making the kind of child welfare investments they need.”

Attorney David Paul isn’t convinced. After deposing scores of state child welfare workers and administrators and examining reams of internal agency documents, he says he does not believe any meaningful change will come from the inside.

“Trying to make this agency accountable is like trying to push a freightliner with a canoe paddle. They are interested in maintaining the status quo,” Paul said. “People call the hot line expecting something is going to happen, but you are dropped into the abyss without any rope.”

Lois Day, administrator for the DHS’ Office of Safety and Permanency for Children, said all calls about abuse and neglect are documented. She said if an allegation of abuse or neglect is made, department officials determine how quickly a family needs to be seen.

“Our response times are within 24 hours to five days,” Day said. “We have to document that a delay does not compromise the safety of a child.”

If a social worker goes out and determines abuse or neglect is not a concern, that is also documented, she said.

In Jeanette’s case, what steps the agency took after receiving calls won’t be known until its report is made public.

“The injuries on Jeanette were completely obvious,” Amber Davis said. “There’s no way anyone from the department could have seen her and said she was OK.”

– Susan Goldsmith

MAN GETS 25 YEARS TO LIFE FOR MURDER OF DAE’VON BAILEY, 6

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bailey16-2009dec16,0,741489.story

By Hector Becerra

Marcas Catrell Fisher, 36, pleaded guilty to beating his ex-girlfriend’s son in South L.A. as his 5-year-old daughter watched from the corner of a room, unable to scream.

One month after pleading guilty, a South Los Angeles man was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years to life in prison for beating his ex-girlfriend’s 6-year-old son to death.

Compton Superior Court Judge John Cheroske sentenced Marcas Catrell Fisher, 36, to the maximum term for first-degree murder.

Fisher killed Dae’von Bailey on July 23 in South Los Angeles as the boy’s 5-year-old half sister — who was Fisher’s daughter — watched from the corner of a room, unable to scream. The girl would later tell social workers that she had seen her brother tied up in the hallway, crying, as her father beat him.

Later, she said, Fisher put Dae’von in the shower and told him to “wake up” before dragging him to the bedroom. Fisher eventually fled, leaving his daughter behind with her dead brother.

For almost a month, he eluded a police dragnet before being tracked to an apartment in North Las Vegas.

A convicted rapist, Fisher had agreed to care for Dae’von and his daughter after their mother, Tylette Davis, put five of her six children in other people’s care. The boy and his siblings had been the subject of 10 child abuse or neglect investigations since 1999 by the time he came under Fisher’s care.

In the last three months before his death, Dae’von twice told authorities that he had been physically abused by Fisher, but both times he was left with the man who eventually killed him.

Los Angeles Police Department detectives said that the boy’s body bore bruises in different stages of healing, indicating that he had been abused for an extended period of time.

On Tuesday, a bespectacled Fisher apologized from behind a pane of glass at the Compton courthouse for killing the boy.

Before he was sentenced, Majella Maas, the boy’s kindergarten teacher at Lakewood’s Riley Elementary School, told the court that Dae’von’s death left not only his family grief-stricken. Later, Maas said the boy was the most affection-hungry child she had encountered in 28 years of teaching, always asking for hugs.

After the sentencing, she went to his grave site in a Compton cemetery. It bears no marker, she said, but a cemetery worker knew where it was and led her there.

He had made a makeshift marker for Dae’von’s grave, Maas said.

“He said, ‘Oh, the baby?’ I’ll show you where he is,’ ” she said. “He knew his name instantly.”

hector.becerra@latimes.com

CALIFORNIA FALLS SHORT IN EXAMINING DEATHS OF CHILDREN

 

A law designed to allow public scrutiny of fatal abuse and neglect is unevenly enforced and leaves many unaccounted for.

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-child-deaths5-2009nov05,0,6734205.story

By Kim Christensen and Garrett Therolf

 

November 4, 2009 | 6:45 p.m.

A new law aimed at exposing child deaths to public scrutiny has given Californians their most complete view yet of the toll of abuse and neglect but falls short of legislators’ intent and leaves many fatalities uncounted, according to interviews and The Times’ review of previously confidential records.

Known as Senate Bill 39, the 2008 law was largely intended to highlight systemic flaws in hopes of preventing other children’s deaths. More than a year after it took effect, however, it has shed limited light on how — and how many — children die of abuse and neglect.

“We do not know how many children have died in California,” said William L. Grimm, senior attorney for the nonprofit National Center for Youth Law, one of SB 39’s backers. “We did not know five years ago, and we don’t know today.”

The problem, in part, is that counties interpret the law’s requirements differently. Their views vary on what constitutes abuse or neglect and on what information is subject to disclosure. And in at least one county, Los Angeles, deaths appear to have been mistakenly overlooked.

The Times early this year filed public records requests with all 58 counties, and they in turn reported a total of 109 child deaths in 2008 caused by abuse or neglect. Some pending cases were later substantiated, bringing the statewide total to 114, according to records obtained from the state Department of Social Services.

Los Angeles County, by far the largest with more than 10 million residents, reported 32 such deaths, but some other large counties noted far fewer. For instance, Alameda County, the state’s seventh-largest with a population of 1.5 million, reported one — an 18-month-old Hayward boy fatally scalded in a bathtub; his mother’s boyfriend has been charged.

Twenty-eight other counties — nearly half — reported no deaths from abuse or neglect.

One of the law’s sponsors, Sen. Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara), said it has brought greater transparency to the child-welfare system, but she lamented that there still is a “lack of uniformity” in how the counties have responded. “Counties need to be given a clear and concise directive,” she said. “Until we can say we have done everything possible to save every child from injury or tragic death, we have more work to do.”

::

Beaten, shaken, shot or simply allowed to starve, scores of California children die each year from abuse and neglect. Until last year, virtually all information about these deaths was kept from public view, ostensibly to protect the privacy of children and their families.

But that secrecy also shielded child welfare officials and their sometimes lethal mistakes from public scrutiny, children’s advocates argued. At their urging, state lawmakers mandated the release of previously sealed records, including those detailing dead children’s prior contacts with child welfare agencies.

The results have shed some light on the problem — showing, for instance, that 14 deaths occurred last year among children whose families had been at one time investigated by Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services.

It is impossible to know how many deaths were not counted that should have been. But in its review The Times found some clear instances of underreporting.

The Los Angeles County children’s services department, for example, said in August that it had recorded four child deaths this year that resulted from abuse or neglect. Internal records obtained by The Times showed there actually had been nine.

Among those the county had not disclosed as abuse and neglect were the deaths of a 10-year-old boy killed in a June traffic accident when he and two siblings were thrown from a van that had no rear seats and that of a 3-month old boy who died in a motel room where his parents left him alone for 12 hours.

When a reporter raised the discrepancy with the department, Director Trish Ploehn acknowledged the additional deaths and pledged to institute “internal controls” to avoid such oversights.

Grimm, of the Oakland-based youth law center, which has collected death records from the 15 largest counties, said the totals fall short of what he would have expected.

“Our own experience making requests in counties across the state so far suggests that we are not getting a complete picture of the children who have died as the result of abuse or neglect,” Grimm said.

Gail Steele, an Alameda County supervisor who has pushed for full disclosure of child deaths, said she thinks many abuse and neglect fatalities are not reported. Her office tracks all children’s deaths in that county and reviews coroner’s files to make its own assessments.

“My thing is you can’t figure out how to prevent deaths or fix things if you don’t know what happened,” she said.

Often the problem is varying interpretations of what constitutes abuse and neglect.

Grimm cited the example of a small child who is killed in an auto accident because the intoxicated parent who was driving had not placed him in a car seat. Although that death would fit most people’s definition of neglect, he said, some child welfare officials might deem it an accident, especially if the coroner did.

“The official cause might be accidental, but if you look more closely at it you say, ‘My god, that’s definitely neglect’ and it should be labeled as a neglect death,” Grimm said.

Bethany Christman, who oversees children’s services in Kern County, said such latitude in interpreting the law could help explain why her county, with a population of about 820,000, reported nine deaths last year while much larger counties reported far fewer.

“If law enforcement or the coroner don’t say anything [about abuse or neglect], some counties won’t either,” she said.

In passing the law in 2007, legislators said they wanted to bring to light not only child deaths but also the details of the young victims’ experiences with child welfare officials.

“Without accurate and complete information about the circumstances leading to the child’s death, public debate is stymied and the reforms, if adopted at all, may do little to prevent further tragedies,” wrote the bill’s sponsors.

Even when a death is disclosed as required, California law allows most records to remain closed if prosecutors or families’ attorneys object to their release. Those that are made public often are so heavily redacted of names and other identifying information that it’s impossible to decipher what happened — or even who died.

Grimm and others complained in a March 13 letter to the California Department of Social Services that recently issued regulations made it hard for counties to determine what should be released or redacted. They also objected to the department’s decision to exclude deaths caused by people who were not in a custodial role, including boyfriends, extended family members and family friends.

“The regulations are a tortured reading to say the least,” said Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., who also signed the letter. “The law is pretty explicit that all abuse or neglect deaths must be released.”

Officials with the California Department of Social Services said in an interview that they were revising the guidelines and would consider the letter writers’ criticisms.

Jan Viss, who heads the Child and Family Services Division in Stanislaus County, which reported that five children died from abuse or neglect last year, said the law is plain enough already.

“We are very clear about what we are supposed to report and we take that responsibility very seriously,” she said, adding that her county thoroughly reviewed child deaths even before the law took effect.

“Even one death is a tragedy,” Viss said. “All we can do is strive to do better for these kids in the future.”

kim.christensen@latimes.com

garrett.therolf@latimes.com

FREMONT MAN SENTENCED IN DEATH OF FOSTER CHILD

 

http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_13576790

The Associated Press

Posted: 10/16/2009 09:13:35 AM PDT

Updated: 10/16/2009 09:13:36 AM PDT

HAYWARD, Calif.—A Fremont man convicted of killing his 2-year-old foster child has been sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

An Alameda County Superior Court judge sentenced 45-year-old Terry Howard Corder Thursday in the 2004 death of Dylan James George. Corder was found guilty in September of second-degree murder and assault on a child, causing death.

Authorities say Corder beat George on Oct. 2, 2004 because the boy refused to eat. George died two days later from blunt trauma.

He had been staying with Corder and his wife Sherrie for less than three weeks.

Sherrie Corder is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday after pleading guilty to child endangerment. Prosecutors agreed to drop a murder charge in exchange for her testimony against her husband.

MURDERED TODDLER’S PARENTS HAVE HISTORY OF ABUSE ALLEGATIONS

 

27 NEWSFIRST has learned both Amanda Johnson and Michael Troy have previously faced child abuse charges.

 

http://www.wkyt.com/wymtnews/headlines/67416282.html

Reporter: Cheryl Glassford

As a 23 month-old murder victim was laid to rest Thursday, 27 NEWSFIRST is learning more about his parents’ past.

Amanda Johnson and Michael Troy used to live in Muskegon, Michigan. The Assistant Chief Prosecutor for Muskegon County tells us years ago both of them faced child abuse charges for another child of theirs, which resulted in the two of them losing their parental rights.

 

NEWSFIRST asked Troy about the charges.

Michael Troy says he and Johnson had two other children before Stephen while they were living in Michigan, including a little boy named Tyler Johnson.

Their parental rights were terminated in 2005 after Tyler’s arm was broken.

“We just got into an argument and I don’t know went wrong,” Troy says about the day Tyler was injured, “I was holding him and I didn’t want him to go and she was trying to take him, and I was trying to keep him”

The Assistant Chief Prosecutor says both parents were charged as juveniles with child abuse, and Johnson pleaded no-contest.

“We were really young back then – we were basically babies ourselves,” said Troy, “back then I really didn’t understand what was going on, so I don’t really understand the charges.”

Troy says their second child born in Michigan was taken by child protective services after his birth.

“They took him right from the hospital,” Troy said.

Just a month before Johnson gave birth to their third child, little Stephen Troy – the boy Johnson’s now accused of killing – Troy says the couple left for Kentucky. According to Troy, he and Johnson were afraid Stephen would also be taken into custody of Michigan’s child protective services.

When confronted about the previous abuse charges, Troy still says Stephen was safe in their care, and says doesn’t know how the deadly injuries occurred.

“I don’t have no idea,” Troy said, “just the way I’ve seen (Johnson) with Stephen, I don’t think she did it.”

Stephen was found unresponsive at Johnson’s boyfriends home last Friday, where they had been living. Stephen later died at the hospital, authorities say from blunt force trauma to the abdomen.

Police have arrested Johnson for Stephen’s death. She’s pled not-guilty to murder and criminal abuse charges. She’s being held at the Laurel County Detention Center.

WHY DO THE CHILDREN KEEP DYING?

 

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-et-onthemedia16-2009oct16,0,4314089,full.column

 

James Rainey

 

Gail Helms told me how she happened on the pictures and the headline on the front page of Sunday’s Times: “Flawed County System Lets Children Die Invisibly.”

The tears came to her eyes. She put the paper aside for a while.

Reading about two teenagers dying in foster care would be painful for anyone, but doubly so for Helms. The stories served up another reminder of the anger and despair she felt 14 years ago, when her grandson Lance was beaten to death after a judge returned the boy to his violent, drug-plagued father.

“These cases are so difficult,” Helms, 66, said quietly, on the phone from her home in Hemet. “You can’t help but think: Has anything changed? Has anything changed?”

It’s trite and inadequate to say all of us have failed, but I’m going to say it anyway because I think it’s true.

The L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services needs to do more to keep better tabs on children. The county supervisors who oversee the agency need to do a lot of things better — starting with breaking the years-long logjam that has kept county departments from sharing information about children at risk. And the media, including The Times, need to more consistently pursue an issue that won’t go away any time soon.

I’ve had a particular interest in the issue since I met Gail Helms in the dark days after 2 1/2 -year-old Lance’s death in North Hollywood.

Little I’ve written in nearly 30 years of newspapering has generated as much response as that 1995 story. A picture of the adorable, sandy-haired toddler appeared on Page 1, along with the description of how he’d been hit so hard his internal organs burst.

The phone calls and mail arrived in waves. Eventually, the state Legislature passed reforms.

It all seemed so important then. It all seems so inadequate now.

My article touched only one of the system’s horrific failures, but barely hinted at how kids fall into danger and, more important, what helps keep them safe.

I like to think I got to some of those deeper issues as I wrote about foster care over the next couple of years. But the problems seemed so big — an army of incompetent parents overwhelming a small rank of protectors — it was hard not to get depressed.

Every few years, The Times would go full throttle after another child death or mount a series of stories, but then move on to other things.

“On the general topic of staying on a subject year after year, I think that’s fair criticism on a lot of subjects,” said David Lauter, the Times’ assistant managing editor who oversees local coverage. “News organizations have a tendency to focus attention on a subject for a while, then move on to the next subject. That’s not always a bad thing, but it does work against consistency.”

I could see how the paper would focus its attention elsewhere. There are so many other subjects, people and places in the county that cry out for coverage. Even one activist who has dedicated much of her life to child welfare issues told me confidentially: “You get to a point that your eyes glaze over and you move on.”

Still, if abused and neglected children don’t fall under the old journalism admonition — comfort the afflicted — then who does?

Since taking over local coverage more than a year ago, Lauter said, he has asked his reporters for more coverage. And my colleague Garrett Therolf has joined the battle. He’s detailed children’s deaths, ridden along with a social worker, raised the question of how a county supervisor could be “shocked” at the number of fatalities, when the lawmakers receive regular reports of same and noted how Los Angeles’ many bureaucracies have failed, repeatedly, to figure out a way to share information about endangered kids.

Therolf and veteran investigative reporter Kim Christensen wrote the Sunday pieces about Miguel Padilla and Lazhanae Harris that had Gail Helms near tears.

The stories raised questions about county oversight but also suggested a long-running dilemma of a system “in which choices sometimes boil down to leaving children with families that can’t or won’t care for them, or placing them in foster homes that are no better — and are sometimes worse.”

What hasn’t changed since I left the child welfare beat?

* The need to provide as many services as possible — drug rehab, parenting classes, day care and the like — to troubled families to help them keep children at home. It’s tempting to want to wish a pox on deadbeat parents, but evidence shows it’s cheaper, and works better, to give them a hand. The alternative often is the long-term costs and abysmal outcomes that come with foster homes and, often, the probation camps and prisons that follow.

Trish Ploehn, director of the family services department, tells me an arrangement with federal officials has allowed more money to be spent on such services. The 14 kids in the system who died of abuse or neglect last year was higher than any of us should accept. But when the county was pulling many more children from homes a decade ago, foster care deaths peaked at 20 in one year.

* Promises that the county social workers will get more information — from probation, mental health, sheriff’s deputies and others — to give them more clues when children might be in danger. The supervisors are stumbling along, more than a decade later, on the most recent fix. It’s not a panacea, but more information can only make for better decisions.

* Fights over public records. Our reporters still struggle to learn more about what happened to the kids who died. Despite passage last year of yet another “transparency” law, reports on child deaths often have many key facts blacked out. Ostensibly, the redactions protect siblings, but they seem more likely to protect adults who need to be held accountable.

Finally, I think we could use more notice — like the article Therolf wrote in March about a “ride-along” with one caseworker — about the huge challenges social workers face every day.

As with many other subjects, the media focus more on foster care problems than solutions. News outlets need to do both when it comes to the most daunting work I can imagine.

It’s hard to comprehend the many losses Gail Helms has suffered. After Lance died, her son, David, went to prison for delivering the fatal blow. Daughter Ayn died of lupus, after a long fight to keep custody of Lance and for foster care reforms.

Now 66 and retired from a career in insurance, Gail Helms remains resilient. She laughs about her fading memory and still brings herself to read about foster care horrors, wondering when the system will get better.

In the meantime, Helms said, people can feel better if they help just one child. They can sign on with the Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), a group of volunteers who help judges make the right decisions for foster children. Or they can give money to the Alliance for Children’s Rights, another nonprofit that intervenes when foster kids aren’t getting what they need.

“Even now, after all these years, it’s like most people don’t know what to do,” Helms said. “I think people need something they can do.”

james.rainey@latimes.com

FLAWED COUNTY SYSTEM LETS CHILDREN DIE INVISIBLY

 

Miguel Padilla, mistreated and abandoned, killed himself at 17

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-miguel11-2009oct11,0,4795548.story?page=1

By Kim Christensen and Garrett Therolf

 

October 11, 2009

Miguel Padilla ran away from a licensed group home in April 2008, but he didn’t go far.

Unknown to anyone at the time, the 17-year-old amputee made his way to a stand of trees near the main driveway. Using his one arm, he climbed into the branches, tied a makeshift noose to a limb and hanged himself.

Nine days passed before a staffer found his body at the sprawling LeRoy Haynes Center in LaVerne, coroner’s records show — and then only by chance.

“To our knowledge there was no search by LeRoy’s or any other authority,” said Dave Rentz, the boy’s minister.

Miguel Padilla died much as he had lived: alone and out of sight, his suicide the final step in a failed journey through Los Angeles County’s child welfare and juvenile justice systems.

At least 268 children who had passed through the child welfare system died from January 2008 through early August 2009, according to internal county records obtained by The Times. They show that 213 were by unnatural or undetermined causes, including 76 homicides, 35 accidents and 16 suicides.

Eighteen of the fatalities were deemed the direct result of abuse or neglect by a caregiver, subjecting them to public disclosure under a recent state law aimed at prevention.

But Miguel and many others perished all but invisibly, their deaths attracting little or no public scrutiny.

Through interviews and previously confidential records, The Times examined his death and that of Lazhanae Harris, a 13-year-old girl slain in March. Both underscore systemic failings, particularly the risks of losing track of abused kids as they commit crimes and “cross over” to the justice system, or as they move through multiple state-licensed homes.

Together, they also illustrate the range of flaws in a system in which choices sometimes boil down to leaving children with families that can’t or won’t care for them, or placing them in foster homes that are no better — and are sometimes worse.

Trish Ploehn, director of the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services, said such deaths, though horrific, do not represent the vast majority of the thousands of cases her agency handles each year.

“The tragic lives and deaths of Miguel and Lazhanae only begin to scratch the surface of the extremely difficult, complex and complicated family circumstances that DCFS social workers are faced with every day,” Ploehn said.

“It is very rare for a child to die of abuse or neglect while in the care or under the supervision of DCFS,” she added, “and we consistently work to perfect our performance to help keep children safe, even after they leave our protection and supervision.”

Ploehn said efforts are under way to improve collaboration between juvenile justice and child welfare officials and to intervene swiftly in the lives of troubled families.

By almost any measure, Miguel’s life would fit the definition of mistreatment: He was abandoned by his mother, largely neglected by his father and left to struggle with untreated medical problems and depression most of his life.

By the time he died, however, he’d broken the law and moved from the care of the county’s children’s services department to that of its Probation Department, which oversees 20,000 juvenile offenders.

Up to half have a history with the child welfare agency, Probation Department Director Robert Taylor said. Ploehn said the proportion was far lower.

In Miguel’s case, interviews and records show, the county failed him time and again — not finding him a stable home, not addressing emotional problems that contributed to his delinquency, not even looking for him when he disappeared.

When the County Children’s Commission, a panel appointed by the Board of Supervisors, took the extraordinary step of reviewing Miguel’s death and four others among abused children on probation last year, it found “serious and consistent deficiencies” in their care. Four were suicides and one died of disease.

“Had the system met its responsibilities, the committee believes that some of these suicidal youth might have made healthier choices and the fifth might have had his health complaints acted upon more timely,” the commission said in a confidential draft report prepared for county supervisors and obtained by The Times.

The draft was never issued in final form.

Abandoned at 10

Miguel Angel Padilla Jr. was born in February 1991 at a Sylmar hospital and later moved with his family to Mexico, where he had two accidents that would shape his life.

When he was about 9, he touched a metal rod to a power line while playing on an apartment building rooftop. He was seriously burned and lost his right arm below the elbow. He later lost the sight in his left eye when a firecracker shattered a pop bottle in his face.

At age 10, he lost his mother, who took his three siblings to Texas and started a new life without him, according to interviews and child welfare records obtained through a court petition.

“Minor’s mother left him when he was little and has never made any attempt to visit or call,” a social worker’s report noted in August 2004.

Shortly after Miguel’s mother left, the boy and his father, Miguel Padilla Sr., moved back to Southern California, to the Santa Clarita Valley community of Newhall.

The father worked odd jobs and spent much of his time in Mexico. The boy was raised mainly by his elderly paternal great-grandmother, Maria Arriaga Hernandez, who by all accounts, including her own, was ill-equipped to care for him.

“She had no real control,” said Rentz, a minister who was close to the family, “but she provided the best she could.”

The family first came to the attention of the children’s services department in April 2003, when social workers substantiated allegations that Miguel’s father had neglected the 12-year-old’s medical, dental and emotional needs.

Their report cited the father’s “lack of cooperation,” poverty and limited job skills. Records also noted Miguel’s suicidal tendencies, which his father attributed to ridicule from other children about his disability.

“Miguel sometimes seems to have a hard time processing information,” a follow-up report stated, adding that he used poor judgment and seemed depressed.

Records show that Arriaga, then in her late 80s, went to Mexico with his father for long stretches, leaving the boy with friends or relatives.

Although social workers visited regularly and drafted a mandatory action plan, even its clearest goals — to get Miguel to school regularly and to get him a prosthetic arm — were never achieved, documents show.

Arriaga told social workers repeatedly that she had trouble comprehending what they said, even though they spoke Spanish. On the signature line of the parenting plan, she scratched an X.

Even so, there is no evidence that the children’s services department tried to remove the boy and find him a more stable environment.

When a reporter visited Arriaga recently at her apartment in Newhall, she referred questions to Miguel Sr., 45.

In an interview, he acknowledged that he lives much of the time in Mexico, where he has two other children. He was unable to drive Miguel to his appointments, he said, because he’d lost his license and was jailed for driving under the influence.

But he denied that he neglected his son or that the boy was emotionally troubled. He suspects foul play in the death, not suicide.

“My son didn’t have no problems,” Padilla said. “He was just a fighter, that’s all, and when I wasn’t around for a while he got away from his grandma. She’s old and she couldn’t handle him too good.”

Child welfare records paint a bleaker portrait, saying Miguel sometimes refused to eat and locked himself in the bathroom for hours, crying. At school, he’d skip recess.

“He said at school he stays in the classroom because he can’t make friends, except for the second or third graders because they are nicer to him,” a social worker wrote in June 2004, when he was 13.

That spring, Miguel was measured for a prosthetic arm he desperately wanted. Months later, he had to be re-measured; he’d missed so many appointments his size had changed.

Meanwhile, he wore a down jacket to hide his disability, said Denise Tomey, executive director of the Carousel Ranch in Santa Clarita, where he spent six months in a riding program for disabled kids.

“He had no self esteem,” Tomey said in an interview. “He walked with his head down and he wore that heavy jacket, even if it was 105 degrees out. He thought people judged him because he was missing an arm.”

Tomey and Rentz both remembered the boy showing a softer side, such as when he helped other kids at the ranch learn to ride and groom horses.

“I have a heart,” he told a probation officer in March 2006. “I care about people. When I have opportunity to do something really bad I think about it.”

But he also had a penchant for trouble: He faced charges for allegedly threatening and assaulting a teacher. He also was accused of burglarizing a home, vandalizing cars and tagging a fence with gang graffiti.

Cumulatively the charges were enough to land Miguel in the care of the Probation Department and in a succession of juvenile hall and group home placements.

Along the way, probation reports show, he joined a Newhall gang; picked up the nicknames “Little Shadow” and “Lefty”; and told authorities he used marijuana and alcohol. He liked school but was “not that smart,” he said, and during one stretch of heavy absenteeism he pulled straight Fs.

By May 2006, his great-grandmother was overwhelmed. “I cannot take him,” she told probation officials. “He is not well. He asks me to make him well. . . . He yells out loud to me, ‘Cure me.’ “

Miguel spent the last two years of his life in multiple placements, running away at least once before going to the Haynes Center. One probation report called him “a continual behavior problem.”

While Miguel was in juvenile detention, psychiatrist Saul Niedorf concluded that the boy’s impulse control had been impaired by brain damage from the electrocution. Until then, apparently, no one had considered that possibility.

Niedorf recommended a “structured, therapeutic setting” for Miguel, and he was sent to the Haynes Center, which is licensed to house 72 boys, in January 2008.

The day after his last court hearing that month, his father and great-grandmother left for Mexico, asking a social worker to visit him in their absence. In a March 2008 letter seeking official permission to stop by, the social worker said Miguel had had no weekend visitors for two months.

“I have been informed that the minor has been struggling lately and I believe he may benefit from the interaction,” she wrote.

A month later he hanged himself.

Taylor, the county’s probation chief, defended his department’s handling of the case but acknowledged that the death highlighted the need to better understand why so many children who pass through the child welfare system end up in the care of his agency.

In hindsight, Taylor said, it might have been better if Miguel at a much earlier age had been placed with someone other than his elderly great-grandmother.

“Finding someone who would have been a better caregiver might have resulted in a different outcome,” he said. “You just don’t know.”

As for youngsters who go AWOL from Probation, Taylor said, about 300 were missing at the time Miguel disappeared and he doesn’t have the staff to track them down.

Dan Maydeck, president and chief executive of the LeRoy Haynes Center, declined to comment, citing legal and contractual restrictions.

Miguel’s death signifies a much broader problem, said Miriam Long, a Los Angeles deputy mayor who worked on children’s issues as an aide to former county Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke.

“A lot of these kids have mental health problems that should have been addressed much earlier in their lives,” she said. “Without sounding too much like a bleeding heart liberal, because I’m not one, they could have been redeemed.”

But Long said they can be difficult, and many adults would rather not deal with them.

“The teachers were happy when they were finally washed out and gone,” Long said. “DCFS was happy when they were gone to Probation, and Probation was glad they were gone and went AWOL.”

Before her retirement last year, Burke got board approval to have Probation search for AWOL children and report any deaths confidentially to supervisors.

Seeing no action, her successor, Mark Ridley-Thomas, got the board last month to reiterate Burke’s order.

“They don’t get it,” he said of the department.

Tomey, the ranch director, knows only that children like Miguel can be helped.

“He really was one of those kids that, if he’d been in the right situation, he would have ended up being a totally different person,” she said.

“His life could have turned out OK, or not. Tragically, it did not.”

kim.christensen@latimes.com

garrett.therolf@latimes.com

Times database editor Doug Smith contributed to this report.

FREMONT FOSTER FATHER TESTIFIES IN OWN MURDER TRIAL

 

http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_13301675

By Ben Aguirre Jr.

Oakland Tribune

Posted: 09/09/2009 12:00:00 AM PDT

Updated: 09/10/2009 07:10:38 AM PDT

HAYWARD — Murder suspect Terry Corder, the Fremont man charged with killing 2-year-old foster child Dylan James George in October 2004, took the stand Wednesday and is expected to continue his testimony today.

Corder, 45, is one of the last witnesses to testify before defense attorney Barbara Thomas and prosecutor Elgin Lowe deliver their closing arguments in the trial.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Roy Hashimoto said Wednesday that he plans to give jury instructions next week for the charges of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, as well as lesser crimes.

Corder is on trial for murder and assault on a child causing death after prosecutors said that the foster father beat Dylan on Oct. 2, 2004, partly because the boy refused to eat.

Dylan died Oct. 4, 2004, after being placed on life support at Children’s Hospital Oakland.

A pathologist said Dylan died from blunt trauma to the head, although Corder’s attorney has disputed that cause of death during the trial.

Corder took the stand for about an hour Wednesday during an abbreviated session at the Hayward Hall of Justice. He spent most of the time debunking the testimony of his wife, Sherrie Corder. However, he has not yet discussed what happened Oct. 2, 2004.

At one time, his wife also was charged with murder in the case, but she accepted a plea agreement in exchange for her testimony. She has pleaded guilty to child endangerment and will be sentenced to four or six years in prison at the conclusion of her husband’s trial.

Sherrie Corder has testified about her relationship with her husband, as well as the events that have been attributed to the boy’s death.

She said her husband often became abusive when he was drinking alcohol, and at one time was a cocaine addict.

Sherrie Corder also said that her husband defrauded San Mateo County about a decade ago by faking a back injury while he worked as a janitor at a county hospital. From that injury, Terry Corder received a large sum of money that he spent on personal items as well as a family trip to Disneyland, Sherrie Corder testified.

On Wednesday, Terry Corder testified that he was never addicted to cocaine, and was not faking his back injury. “I have two fused discs in my back,” he testified.

He went on to say that the large sum of money his wife spoke of was really cash he withdrew from his retirement fund to help her start her day-care business.

EXPERTS WORRY CHILD DEATHS WILL LEAD TO “PANIC”

 

http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_13273648

By Troy Anderson Staff Writer

Posted: 09/04/2009 08:59:47 PM PDT

FOSTER CARE: Some fear agencies may rashly take youngsters from parents in wake of county fatalities.

By Troy Anderson Staff Writer

Following a series of high-profile deaths of children in Los Angeles County, child welfare experts are warning that foster care agencies could overreact to the renewed scrutiny by tearing hundreds of children needlessly from their families.

Several experts said that when the agencies faced public criticism in the past they have at times acted too quickly to take children from their families and place them in foster care.

They warn this reaction will further overload the system, making it even harder for social workers to help children in real danger.

“Children’s lives – literally – may depend on stopping such a foster care panic,” said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

In the past year, well-publicized deaths of a child by the hands of a parent or caregiver in Los Angeles have included Dae’von Bailey, 6; Jasmine Granados, 2; and Lars Sanchez, 4. Bailey and Sanchez’s alleged mistreatment had been reported to DCFS before their deaths.

Bailey’s stepfather, Marcas Fisher, allegedly beat him to death in late July in South Los Angeles.

County Supervisor Gloria Molina last month said the death of a child from starvation, the decapitation of another child and the beating death of another child convinced her that “something did not happen – something fell through the cracks.”

But county officials disputed the idea of a “foster care panic,” saying they have seen no evidence of it.

Department of Children and Family Services Director Trish Ploehn noted the number of detention petitions filed in Juvenile Court has dropped from 941 in May to 896 in July. That’s down from 972 in May to 934 in July of last year.

“Why is (a foster care panic) not happening in Los Angeles?” Ploehn asked. “The answer is our county’s child welfare system, which has been significantly reformed over the past several years, is built on the belief that child safety is paramount and that children should only be removed from their families when necessary due to their safety.”

But Wexler said social workers – fearful they could be disciplined or fired for leaving or returning a child to a parent who later kills them – know they will not face repercussions for needlessly removing children from their families and placing them in foster homes.

“After seeing scores of their colleagues transferred to desk jobs, seeing one county supervisor falsely blaming fatalities on efforts to keep families together, and seeing another declare that heads will roll, every caseworker is running scared.”

Kenneth Krekorian, executive director of Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers, said he’s noticed an uptick in the number of detention petitions filed in Juvenile Court to separate children from their families since the child deaths received widespread publicity.

“I don’t know whether we have enough information yet to see if the increase is due to the deaths of these children,” Krekorian said. “But I would agree with (Wexler). I’ve been doing this for many years and it does seem when there is something in the newspaper about a death of a child, or a notorious case, that there is an increase in filings afterwards.”

County officials said eight social workers are currently assigned to desk duty as investigators probe the deaths and any mistakes made in the cases of the children who died over the past year.

Studies show a third of children are abused in foster care and when they leave the system many wind up homeless, on welfare, incarcerated or dead. A recent county grand jury report noted nearly 70 percent of people in California prisons and jails are “products of the foster care system.”

The concerns about a foster care panic come as DCFS has made what its former director, David Sanders, called “revolutionary” reforms, reducing the number of children in foster homes on any given day from 30,000 in 2003 to 15,553 last month.

The Board of Supervisors has kept vacant for nearly three years the position of an independent entity charged with investigating child deaths and recommending what actions should be taken to prevent future tragedies.

Despite the drop in the number of children living in foster homes, Wexler said DCFS takes children away from homes at a much higher rate than most other large metropolitan areas. After falling for several years, the number of children entering the county’s child protective system rose 24 percent from 8,299 in 2003 to 10,903 in 2007 before dropping to 10,083 last year, according to the Center for Social Services Research at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Board of Supervisors has expressed concerns that DCFS has become too focused on reducing the number of children in foster care. Since the recession began, concerns have mounted that the downturn could result in increased stress in families and more violence in the home.

Although Molina and Yaroslavsky did not return calls for comment, Karen Strickland, executive director of Find The Children, a Los Angeles-based missing children’s organization, said she shares their concerns and has seen numerous cases where social workers have left children in the care of parents who are potentially dangerous to their children.

“I’m concerned about the assessment skills of these workers and the supervision these workers are getting,” Strickland said.

Despite the recent tragedies, Ploehn noted the number of deaths of children from abuse and neglect “known to the system” has dropped from a high of 20 in 1999 to a record low of 11 in 2006. The number increased to 12 in 2007 and 14 last year.

Ploehn said more than 50,000 children were living in foster homes in 1999, the same year the county experienced the highest number of deaths due to abuse and neglect of children known to DCFS.

As DCFS has provided more services to help families stay intact, Ploehn said “children are indeed safer, not only from harm and possible death, but also safer from the negative effects of being separated from their family.”

To prevent a “foster-care panic” in which social service agencies needlessly remove children from homes, foster care expert Richard Wexler offers a few recommendations to the Board of Supervisors:

Expand investigation of high- profile death cases to include equal attention to wrongful removal cases.

Seek changes in state law to provide for “total transparency,” including opening court hearings in child welfare cases, and most case records, to the public and media.

Establish clear public benchmarks for progress, post the data prominently on the DCFS Web site and commit to measuring DCFS by those outcomes, “not by whatever happens to be on the front page that morning.”

Suspend the use of “structured decision-making” in which computers decide when to remove children based on questionnaires filled out by social workers.

“They need to make clear to front-line caseworkers that wrongfully removing a child from a safe home is every bit as dangerous as leaving a child in a dangerous home,” said Wexler.

- Troy Anderson

 

Expert tells how he would prevent ‘panic’ in foster-care system

 

http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_13274570

By Troy Anderson, Staff Writer

Updated: 09/04/2009 09:28:34 PM PDT

To prevent a “foster-care panic” in which social service agencies needlessly remove children from homes, foster care expert Richard Wexler offers a few recommendations for the Board of Supervisors:

Expand any investigation of high-profile death cases to include equal attention to cases of wrongful removal.

 

Seek changes in state law to provide for “total transparency,” including opening court hearings in child welfare cases, and most case records, to the public and press.

Establish clear public benchmarks for progress, post the data prominently on the DCFS Web site and commit to measuring DCFS by those outcomes, “not by whatever happens to be on the front page that morning.”

 

Suspend the use of “structured decision-making” in which computers decide when to remove children based on questionnaires filled out by social workers.

“They need to make clear to front-line caseworkers that wrongfully removing a child from a safe home is every bit as dangerous as leaving a child in a dangerous home,” said Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va.

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said he’s confident an action the board recently took calling on better information-sharing among various government agencies will help prevent tragedies like the recent ones.

“We need to use these tragedies to improve and upgrade DCFS investigations,” Antonovich said. “That’s why we are talking about using more modern technology.”

EX-BAKERSFIELD WOMAN FACES MURDER CHARGE

Why was this woman allowed to adopt a child after a foster child had already died in her care?

  

NOW

  

 

Ex-Bakersfield woman faces murder charge

 

http://www.bakersfield.com/news/local/x616725415/Ex-Bakersfield-woman-faces-murder-charge

BY STEVE E. SWENSON, Californian staff writer

A former Bakersfield foster mother once arrested on charges of willful child cruelty in Kern County is now facing murder charges in Sacramento County in a child’s death.

Sabrina Banks, 41, formerly known as Sabrina Stafford, was arrested by Bakersfield police in September 2003 after foster child Angelic Clary, 3 months old, was found dead in her home on Castleford Street.

Despite an extensive investigation, no charges were ever filed against her in Angelic’s death.

Deputy District Attorney Scott Spielman said there was no conclusive medical evidence that the infant’s death was either due to abuse or neglect.

He last reviewed the evidence in March 2004.

The Kern County coroner’s office ruled the infant’s death was either natural or accidental. The infant likely breathed in something, possibly vomit, and choked, the coroner’s office found.

The child’s twin sister, Tiffany, was also found in the foster home near Panama Lane and Wible Road with a 104.8-degree fever.

Paramedics took the surviving sister to Memorial Hospital where doctors found her to be hungry, dehydrated, had low sodium in her blood and barbiturates in her systems.

Barbiturates are depressants, normally used as a sleeping aid.

Tiffany was removed from Stafford’s care.

The mother of the twins, Ruth Rodriguez, filed a lawsuit against Kern County, but it was dismissed in January 2005.

Stafford, as she was known then, lost her foster license shortly after Angelic’s death. She reportedly had ties to Visalia.

The Sacramento County case stems from the May 2, 2008, death of 3-year-old Lavender Banks, the adopted daughter of the woman now known as Sabrina Banks.

Sacramento County coroners determined that Lavender died from asphyxia and several blunt force injuries, the Sacramento Bee reported.

The Elk Grove Police Department reported last month that an investigation showed Banks was responsible for the child’s death, and a murder warrant was issued for her.

Banks was arrested Aug. 5 in Visalia.

Banks made news over the adoption of Lavender because Chinese central authorities had refused to approve the adoption on the grounds that Banks was African American.

Many adoptive parents rallied behind Banks and China authorities reversed their stand and approved the adoption, news reports say.

Before the 2003 death of Angelic in Bakersfield, two complaints were filed with Child Protective Services against Stafford.

The first, in January 2002, alleged Stafford hit one of her children on the back and thighs, leaving marks.

Investigators concluded no license violations were committed, CPS documents said.

The second was in May 2002, alleging Stafford burned a 3-year-old child on the hip with a hot spoon.

Stafford denied anything like that ever happened. Her license was voluntarily withdrawn when she went to Visalia, but it was restored in Kern County in early 2003.

 

Former Foster Mom Arrested In Connection With Child’s Death

 

http://www.turnto23.com/southwest_county/20727996/detail.html

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — A former Kern County foster mother who was once suspected in the death of a foster baby has been arrested on suspicion of murdering her adoptive child near Sacramento.

Sabrina Banks, formerly known as Sabrina Stafford was arrested in Visalia for the May 2008 death of her 3-year-old adopted daughter, Lavender Banks.

Elk Grove police said Banks called 911 and said the child wasn’t breathing.

Paramedics were unable to resuscitate her.

Sacramento County’s Coroner said Lavender died from asphyxia by smothering and multiple blunt force injuries.

In 2003, Banks was arrested in southwest Bakersfield after she called 911 to say one of the twin babies she was fostering wasn’t breathing.

The baby, 3-month-old Angelic, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The other twin, Tiffany, was taken to a nearby hospital with a temperature of 104 degrees, and was found to be malnourished and dehydrated, police said.

Banks was arrested and charged with two counts of felony willful child neglect.

Deputy district attorney Scott Spielman said, during that time, the county forensic pediatrician looked at the toxicology findings and the results were inconclusive as to whether Banks was responsible.

All charges were dropped.

Spielman said the DA is now going to forward the case back to the Bakersfield Police Department and contact police in Elk Grove to see if they can assist each other in their cases, and possibly re-file charges in Kern County for Angelic’s death.

 

THEN

 

Sept. 18, 2003:

 

CPS Feeling Heat After Baby Dies In Foster Mother’s Care

 

Stafford Facing Willful Child Neglect

 

http://www.turnto23.com/news/2495728/detail.html

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — The death of 3-month-old Angelic Clary has led to the arrest of her foster mother, Sabrina Stafford, KERO reported. All eyes are also on the foster care system in Kern County.

Kern County Child Protective Services has faced criticism before — most recently in a grand jury report that said the system was failing to adequately inspect foster homes.

But CPS is quick to defend the system, saying it is exceeding the state standards by making quarterly visits to foster homes.

CPS Director Beverley Beasley Johnson said when the twins — Angelic and Tiffany — were placed in Stafford’s care a few months ago, the home met CPS requirements.

Stafford, 36, was arrested after police found one of the twins dead and another suffering from a 104.8-degree fever.

According to Bakersfield police detective Mary Degeare, the surviving twin had barbiturates in her system. Degeare said the coroner also found evidence of neglect on the dead baby’s body.

“There were multiple insect bites (on the baby),” Degeare said.

Police said they have found no reason to believe CPS failed Angelic, the dead baby.

Stafford is expected to be arraigned in court Friday on two counts of willful child neglect.

The investigation into Angelic’s death is continuing, KERO reported.

The surviving twin, Tiffany, is in good condition at Memorial Hospital.

 

Sept. 19, 2003:

 

Foster Parents Blame Media For Negative Image

 

Lack Of Foster Families Is Crisis In Kern County

 

http://www.turnto23.com/news/2498704/detail.html

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — A foster mother arrested Tuesday on charges stemming from the death of a baby was released Friday from police custody.

Police said they are awaiting toxicology reports on the child’s death to decide whether Sabrina Stafford should be charged with willful child neglect. Police do not know when the toxicology reports will be finished, KERO reported.

Police found one of Stafford’s foster children dead in her home Sunday morning. Another child was found with a temperature of nearly 105 degrees — she also appeared to be dehydrated.

Other foster parents said it is extremely rare for substandard parents to be allowed to foster children.

Jennifer Coffman has fostered about 16 children in the last four years. She now has three foster children. Coffman is one of the 408 foster families that support 3,000 foster children in Kern County. She said the problem is not the administration of child welfare services, but the foster family crisis.

“I think they are doing what they can with what they (have),” Coffman said.

Bobbie Rufus, a foster mother for 14 years, said there are several reasons for the shortage of foster parents. She said foster parents are not offered childcare, many of the children have behavorial problems and the media puts negative attention on the foster-care system.

“When something happens, there is an outcry in the community. Where’s the community when they need homes?” Rufus said.

There are countless success stories that are never reported, according to KERO.

Henry, a child Rufus raised since he was a baby, had severe emotional problems and was severely malnourished. Today, at the age of 16, Henry is a varsity football play at Liberty High School with a grade-point average of 3.5 and is involved in a host of school activities.

As for Coffman’s children, her home is spotless, and her children appear to be happy, playful and well-adjusted.

Foster parents said they are hoping more people in the community will reach out, so there will be more successes stories, and fewer children who currently don’t have a chance.

Child welfare officials said they have requested legislation that will provide day care for working foster parents.

 

OTHER KERN COUNTY CASES:

 

REPORT OFFERS GLIMPSE INTO TRAGIC CASE

17 NEWS INVESTIGATION: DOCUMENTS SHOW PRIOR NEGLECT

CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES: WHO’S HOLDING THEM ACCOUNTABLE?

SENATOR DEMANDS INVESTIGATION OF BLINDED BOY CASE

DEATH OF FOSTER BABY LEAVES MANY QUESTIONS

 

OTHER SACRAMENTO COUNTY CASES:

UPDATE: TAMAIYHA MOORE: FOSTER MOM SENTENCED TO 25-TO-LIFE

JURY CONVICTS SAC FOSTER MOTHER OF MURDER

TRACY TORTURE VICTIM’S DISAPPEARANCE LONG UNKNOWN TO POLICE

SACRAMENTO COUNTY SUPERVISORS READY TO HIRE GROUP TO HELP CPS

BACKGROUND CHECK BILL PROPOSED

I DON’T BELIEVE MONITORING CPS WILL BE ENOUGH

CALIFORINA CPS VENDETTA EXPOSED

“NOTHING EVER CHANGES”

LYNN FRANK STEPS DOWN AMID CPS CONTROVERSY

SACRAMENTO COUNTY SUPERVISORS URGED TO BRING IN OUTSIDE CONSULTANT

LIKE I SAID, I THINK YOU HAVE TO HAVE A CRIMINAL RECORD TO BE EMPLOYED BY CPS

BOY’S CPS RECORD ALTERED AFTER DEATH TO REFLECT LIKELY ABUSE