NORTH CAROLINA CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ILLEGAL AND UNETHICAL PRACTICES?

 

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-29636-Surry-County-CPS-Examiner~y2009m12d2-North-Carolina-Child-Protective-Services-illegal–and-unethical-practices#

Do you know a child who has died during or after a DSS investigation in North Carolina?

Do you know a child who has died after reports of abuse where made to DSS? Did DSS ignore your report and fail to protect the child?

Do you know a child who has died in foster care or after being adopted from foster care due to child abuse or neglect?

Are you the family member of a child that died during or after DSS involvement?

Are you a family member of a child who has died as a result of DSS policy violations or inaction when it came to investigating reports of abuse?

 

To read more of this article please visit the above link…more importantly, if you have a complaint against North Carolina DSS, in any county…visit the above link and contact the reporter.

A TINY BOY’S FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL

 

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/local/78126302.html

By HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Posted: November 30, 2009, 7:13 AM CST

 

His mother is in jail, and his protector is the state. His home is a hospital, and his health is nearly as fragile as the day he landed in the ER at Memorial Hermann Children’s Hospital.

Weighing just 17 pounds, 3-year-old Kayvon Lewis arrived in the emergency room last month extremely malnourished, dehydrated and at risk of heart failure and liver damage. He can neither walk nor talk. He is blind and suffers seizures, sometimes five a day.

His mother, authorities say, was starving him to death, a form of child abuse so rare that doctors almost never see it.

About 200 children each year die from abuse and neglect in Texas. Kayvon escaped death by a thread.

And as is often the case, a lengthy list of people knew about the boy’s eroding condition, but failed to intervene.

“The care Kayvon was given was pathetic,” said Gary Polland, the attorney appointed to represent Kayvon at court after ER physicians had the boy taken into temporary custody by Texas Child Protective Services.

His mother, Marcia Holliday, 30, has been charged with injury to a child causing serious bodily injury by omission, a first-degree felony.

For more than a month now, doctors slowly have introduced the boy to what’s been missing much of his short life: food.

On the night of Oct. 15, according to records, Holliday brought Kayvon to Memorial Hermann Children’s Hospital, telling the staff that her son was not eating or drinking and had not wet his diaper all day.

She seemed not to mention, records show, that he was half the size of a normal toddler, or had the head of a boy and the body of an infant — or that he could do none of the things children of his age are supposed to do.

Underlying problems

“He cannot walk, crawl, sit unsupported, pass objects between hands, reach, say ‘mama’ or ‘dada,’ wave ‘bye-bye,’ does not orient to voice,” reads a medical report after his ER exam.

Texas Child Protective Services caseworker Sandra Moy stated the case in more startling clinical terms: “Kayvon T. Lewis’ nutritional level was 9.2 when a normal level is 45 and a low level is 18.”

On the same day, pediatrician Dr. William Risser referred Kayvon’s case to the Child Abuse Resource and Education Center team, an inpatient consultation service for suspected child abuse and neglect cases.

University of Texas-Houston Medical School’s Dr. Oscar G. Larrazolo performed Kayvon’s exam, and the findings were verified by CARE team director Dr. Rebecca Giradet, an associate professor at the medical school and staff physician at Memorial Hermann.

Kayvon, the doctors’ report noted, was first diagnosed at 9 months of age with “failure to thrive” — a catch-all phrase used to describe a child’s condition, not the underlying reason why a child cannot gain weight or develop. Doctors found he had seizures, scoliosis and asthma, underlying health problems. But they told CPS those conditions could not be responsible for his starved state.

“The only reasonable explanation for his starvation is physical neglect,” their report stated.

But as is all too often in the case of abused children, there was no shortage of people who knew about the boy’s eroding condition but for one reason or another failed to intervene.

Weight loss a ‘red flag’

CPS investigated its first complaint about the boy’s care in January 2008. They found Kayvon’s mother was “intoxicated on drugs” and the child appeared to be a “failure to thrive child.” Services were ordered, including sessions with a state dietitian and physical therapist. Nothing about the boy’s small size or condition alerted workers that Kayvon was in enough danger that he should be removed from his home, according to court documents.

On March 27, 2008, while the investigation was still open, Holliday tested positive for marijuana. Still, the boy was left in the home after Holliday promised to enroll in a series of early childhood intervention classes. The case was closed on April 1, 2008.

The following month, he was taken to his pediatrician, Dr. Niala Siddiqi. Kayvon, who was just shy of his second birthday, weighed 18 pounds, 6 ounces. Sixteen months later, on Aug. 28, 2009, his weight had dropped by more than a pound.

Siddiqi did not return calls for comment to the Houston Chronicle.

Giradet, one of the team of doctors who examined Kayvon last month in the emergency room, would not comment specifically on Kayvon’s case. However, she did say that any young child who maintained such a low weight over more than half his life was a “red flag” that starvation was occurring.

Children, particularly those in poorer circumstances, can be found to be malnourished. But starvation abuse of a child is so rare that Giradet has seen it only three times, counting Kayvon, in her decades-long career.

In interviews, Kayvon’s relatives admitted to officials that they had told Holliday to take Kayvon to the hospital on other occasions. But when she didn’t, they did not call his doctors or CPS

“Maternal grandmother and maternal aunt stated that they encouraged Kayvon’s mother, Marcia Holliday to take Kayvon to the hospital for his condition but that she failed to act,” Moy wrote.

There was a second CPS investigation in November 2008. The agency was notified the boy may not have access to his anti-seizure medication. The case, too, was closed quickly after a check found that he did have his medication.

Denies starving her son

Holliday, who was released from the Harris County Jail this past week, denies she systematically starved her son.

“Everything they say (CPS) is a lie. He wasn’t eating or drinking,” she said during a recent interview at the jail. “He has a lot of problems going on.”

Now, two months later, Kayvon’s intake of liquid formula is monitored constantly. Too much food at this stage can overwhelm the underdeveloped organs of his tiny 17-pound body. A white mesh glove has been placed over his left hand to keep him from sucking it. Kayvon was starved for so long, he had sucked his thumb raw and a sore developed.

“Since their bodies have not been seeing normal quantities of fats and carbohydrates, their bodily functions kind of shut down,” explained Giradet. “It’s very dangerous to suddenly feed a starved child normal food. They can go into liver failure, heart arrhythmia. Their pancreas does not make insulin anymore. All of those functions are not working.”

Explanation elusive

Why Kayvon was starved is hard to say.

“Typically these children come from very stressed families,” Giradet said. “It may be one child is singled out and the other ones are getting adequately fed.”

Neither Kayvon’s 6-year-old brother nor his 5-year-old sister showed signs of starvation or other abuse.

Until recently, the children lived with their mother in the Forest Pointe apartments, one of a string of low-income complexes that snake along Northborough Drive in the Greenspoint area of Houston. Both siblings are in foster care.

While Kayvon is out of intensive care, he has yet to try solid food, not even Cheerios or crackers, according to CPS.

Giradet could not say how long it will take a child like Kayvon to recover.

HOW CAN WE ALLOW THIS TO GO ON?

 

http://www.komonews.com/news/problemsolvers/70599312.html

By Tracy Vedder

SEATTLE — The most vulnerable children in our state – children who are supposed to be protected by the state – are dying at an alarming rate. The KOMO 4 Problem Solvers spent two years filing legal requests and analyzing hundreds of documents from the state’s Child Protective Services. What we’ve discovered is both startling and heartbreaking.

Three-year-old Kekoa Ravenell’s future sparkled. He sang. He golfed. He loved his baby sister, Chelsea, and his papa, Michael.

But Kekoa’s future was stolen. He was beaten and choked to death by his mother’s boyfriend.

“I wish he was still with us here,” said his father, Michael Ravenell, sobbing.

Take the anguish of Kekoa’s death and multiply it by dozens. You can’t forget their names. Sirita Sotelo was beaten to death by her stepmother. Justice and Raiden Robinson died of starvation and dehydration while their mother was passed out amidst 300 empty beer cans. Summer Phelps was killed by her father and stepmother. The list seems unending. Each child died while under the watch of the state’s Children’s Administration.

And as in Kekoa’s case, there were warning signs.

“There was no doubt,” said Michael Ravenell. “He (Kekoa) just came out and said, ‘He hit me. Noah hit me.”‘

Ravenell called Child Protective Service, not once but several times.

“Something’s wrong. There’s something wrong. She’s not, the case worker wasn’t doing her job,” he said.

What he didn’t know and what the social workers didn’t check, was that the mother’s boyfriend, Noah Thomas, had a prior conviction for abusing his own children. But Ravenell’s pleas for help fell on deaf ears.

“Bottom line: the system failed me,” he said.

Similar cases lost in the files

It took more than two years, but the Problem Solvers obtained the death reports of 595 children who had some contact with the state’s Children’s Administration and who died some time between 2002 and mid-2009. We wanted to find how many of those deaths might have been prevented.

Crunching the numbers, the state ruled at least 120 children died of abuse or neglect. That’s an average of 16 kids dying a year; more than one child died of abuse or neglect every single month.

And we found another 40 cases in which the state did not find abuse or neglect connected to the death, but the Problem Solvers dug up some horrifying facts. In one case, the social worker falsified documents and claimed treatment, which hadn’t been administered, had been given. The baby girl died.

In the case of a 2-year-old boy, the case worker decided there could be immediate harm and the child should be removed, yet the case was closed and the child died.

In a third case, the parents gave their kids Benadryl so they’d sleep. One died of an overdose. And in spite of the case worker reporting the surviving children lived in filth, with feces on the walls, the agency ruled the kids should stay in the home.

And in yet another case, a medical examiner ruled a 2 month old died of unexplained, natural causes. But the report concluded, “there was concerning CPS history on this family.” Part of that history includes allegations of abuse and neglect in the home. But most startling fact was that the family had had another baby girl die three years earlier.

And then there are another large group of files in which CPS was called five times, eight times, even 13 times. The agency was called to help a child, yet the child remained in the home and later died.

“There’s (sic) resources out there to help you, and I didn’t get any help at all,” said Ravenell.

‘I am the victim of the many years of abuse’

What we can’t even begin to calculate is the number of cases that don’t wind up in death, but still leave children physically and emotionally maimed.

Few will forget this girl’s horror story.

“I am the victim of the many years of abuse Rebecca Long put upon me until just last year,” she said. Because she is the victim of abuse, KOMO News has chosen not to identify her.

Found by law enforcement at age 14, she weighed just 48 pounds. Her stepmother and her father have both been convicted of criminal mistreatment for keeping the girl locked up in their Carnation home, and so severely limiting her food and water to the point that her teeth had nearly all rotted away.

But years earlier, a teacher had reported the family to CPS. She told the judge at her stepmother’s sentencing, “This is where I desperately wished that I could contact a social worker who came to our house that one afternoon.”

But after minimal investigation, CPS closed the case and the girl spent another three years in hell.

“I could not make contact, because that was when Rebecca began keeping me barricaded into a room all day,” she said.

Then there’s little P.T., whom KOMO News has chosen not to identify beyond her initials.

“I was hoping she would live,” said her godmother, Afua Ndiaye, last December. “She had cigarette burns under her eyes and all over her body.”

P.T. was just 2 years old at the time. The now 3 year old is partially blind and may have a brain injury.

“You could just see blood and scalp,” said Ndiaye as she gulped for air. “It was really bad.”

P.T.’s godmother says she repeatedly warned CPS about the little girl’s mother and her boyfriend, who had a criminal record.

“They did nothing. It was like another case, waiting on the side,” she said. “And while it waited on the side, she almost died.”

Sen. Stevens: ‘Why can’t we get this right?’

All of this has happened since 2005 when the state began adding 465 new workers for child welfare and protection. And last spring, Gov. Christine Gregoire hired a new head for the state Department of Social and Health Services — Susan Dreyfus, who, in turn, has brought in new blood to head up Children’s Administration.

“We have to be accountable. There is no worse day in this state when a child’s not safe in their own home,” Dreyfus said.

But we’ve heard these sentiments from state leaders for years. It appears things have only gotten worse, and some lawmakers are frankly fed up.

“How can we allow this to go on?” said Rep. Mike Armstrong, R-Wenatchee.

“Why can’t we get this right?” said Sen. Val Stevens, R-Arlington.

We went to state lawmakers with some of our research, and asked what’s being done to fix the problems. In fact, they’ve passed laws and given the agency millions to force them to do a better job of protecting kids.

During a 2004 gubernatorial debate, Gregoire talked of the need to overhaul the DSHS, which oversees Children’s Administration.

“And the track record is not stellar, and we have been ravaged here in Eastern Washington by some very tragic deaths,” she said.

Gregoire promised to make that agency a priority. But the instances of deaths and abuse have only gotten worse.

“Children are dying at the hands of people who are not able to take care of them,” said Stevens.

Stevens has worked for years to overhaul the system, in one effort even forcing the agency to seek national accreditation. After several years of working with the National Council on Accreditation, last year the COA set a deadline for Washington to meet its standards. Children’s Administration refused to comply, and dropped out of the accreditation process.

“It was a bill that we passed and they said, ‘We’re not going to do it,”‘ Stevens said. “But too often that’s what’s happening. They are thwarting the very laws that we are passing.”

Falling behind on the national scale

Records indicate Washington’s child welfare agency scores poorly in two different national evaluations. A review by U.S. Health and Human Services found 36 states were better than Washington at meeting children’s needs and keeping them safe.

And a review by the national organization Every Child Matters shows that between 2001 and 2007, the state’s per-capita number of kids who were abused or neglected have gone up, as has the number of deaths.

Washington’s Children’s Administration contends the rise may be partially due to a difference in the way they now determine deaths by abuse.

In 2004, then-candidate Gregoire said she wanted to make Children’s Administration directly answerable to the governor.

When asked why she hadn’t been able to follow through on those promises, Gregoire said, “Well, we’ve made good progress.” Now into her second term, Gregoire still hasn’t made Children’s a separate agency or directly accountable to her.

But last spring she hired Susan Dreyfus, who used to head up Wisconsin’s Division of Children and Families.

“It’s about being accountable, and it’s about being transparent and being very upfront with people (on) where we have weaknesses, what we have to do to change, and that we are changing,” Dreyfus said.

Dreyfus has many supporters across the country. Bt the state she comes from, Wisconsin, did even worse in both those national evaluations than Washington. We asked if that wasn’t a report card on her tenure there.

“I don’t believe so, no. I’m looking at outcomes, I’m looking at how many children are in care, our permanency record,” she said.

Dreyfus has now hired Denise Revels Robinson to head up Children’s. Revels Robinson also gets high marks across the country. But she left her last post – also in Wisconsin – under a cloud after a high-profile case of a child who died under her watch.

When asked if she bears some responsibility in that case, she said, “I think the head of the agency always bears some responsibility, because as we talked about earlier, accountability is key.”

A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation of the county’s children’s services with Revels Robinson at its helm showed evidence that 22 children died of abuse or neglect under her watch.

We asked Dreyfus why she would you bring someone into our already-troubled state who has a history of running an agency that’s troubled.

“You know, it’s so funny, you’re responding to media,” Dreyfus said. “I’m not looking for media sensationalism in making my selection of who’s the right person on my team, but I am looking for someone that’s proven, passionate and has outcomes to prove it.”

But several legislators insist the only way to fix the system is to break it apart, making Children’s Administration more accountable to both the governor and, more importantly, to the citizens

“I think a lot of folks are to-the-point. They just want to get this thing fixed and start taking care of kids,” said Armstrong.

The Problem Solvers are not going to let this go. We’re taking the results of our investigation to key legislators. And we will be there when the legislative session begins next year to see if action is taken and CPS is held accountable.

DSHS death investigation reports:

- Michael-Kekoa Ravenell

- Bryce Meining

- Tiffany Marie Granquist

- Louise Hope Cowan

- Aliyah Hickson

Report from Every Child Matters:

- Child Abuse and Neglect Deaths in America

American’s dead children and Child Protective Services

America’s dead children and Child Protective Services

 

http://www.examiner.com/x-29636-Surry-County-CPS-Examiner~y2009m11d11-Americas-dead-children-and-Child-Protective-Services

The list is long and heartbreaking, the children on it have been beaten, broken, drowned, burned, strangled, starved or neglected, and all of them are dead. Headlines have drawn attention to the cases of some of them, Danieal Kelly, Erin Maxwell, Kayla Allen, and Christopher Thomas, but there are many more, Phoenix Jordan Cody-Parrish, Brandon Williams, Elizabeth Goodwin, Logan Marr and Alexis (Lexie)Agyepong-Grover, just to name a few.

The children on this list died in very different settings; some died in their own homes, some in foster care, while others were killed by their adoptive parents. Yet, all of these dead, abused, children had one thing in common, Child Protective Services.

EMMA SUSPECT NOW ACCUSED OF RAPING HER

 

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6703970.html

 

By TERRI LANGFORD

Lucas Coe, the 27-year-old Magnolia man accused of injury to a child in the death of 4-year-old Emma Thompson, now faces a new charge: that he also raped the young girl before her death in June.

Coe and Emma’s mother, registered nurse Abigail Young, were arrested and charged with serious bodily injury to a child after the girl’s June 27 death. At the time, Emma had a skull fracture, vaginal tearing and more than 80 bruises covering her body. She died two weeks after Texas Child Protective Services discovered the girl had tested positive for genital herpes.

On Oct. 29, Harris County grand jurors returned an indictment against Coe, accusing him of Emma’s sexual assault. If convicted, he would face a minimum of 25 years in prison because the victim was under the age of 6.

The indictment comes about a month after the Harris County District Attorney’s Office secured a sample of Coe’s blood. It is not known if DNA from the blood ties Coe to the girl or whether prosecutors are using other evidence to support the indictment.

Emma was one of 91 children who died of abuse in Texas this year whose families had been previously investigated by CPS, according to a Houston Chronicle review. Roughly half of those children also were living with families known to CPS as having potential problems.

Coe’s attorney says there is no evidence that connects his client to the sexual assault.

“I saw nothing in the file that would indicate how he could have perpetuated the crime he was indicted for,” said Bert Steinmann, Coe’s attorney. “I am clueless as to how they are connecting him with committing the sexual assault.”

Donna Hawkins, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors, declined to comment on the case.

Young, Coe’s girlfriend, also has genital herpes, according to the 33-year-old’s attorney, Colin Amann.

“She does not know where she got it,” he said. “She may have gotten it from Emma.”

Neither Amann nor Coe’s attorney would say whether Coe also has genital herpes, though Steinmann said “medical records from previous doctors” don’t indicate that he does.

Coe is in the Harris County Jail in lieu of $300,000 bail. No trial date in this case has been set.

Steinmann has asked that state District Judge Mary Lou Keel remove herself from the trial because the defense team believes there is a perception of bias in the case. A hearing on that motion is tentatively set for Nov. 12.

On Wednesday, state District Judge Suzanne Stovall in Montgomery County set a Feb. 1 trial date for Coe in an unrelated 2007 case involving a child related to a previous relationship.

In that matter, Coe is charged with injuring another child.

Young, free on $50,000 bail, has said that before she left her three girls with Coe so she could go shopping at a supermarket, Emma was fine. Young said when she returned, Coe met her at the door with Emma in his arms. He said that Emma was sick, Young said.

She has said she took the girl, put her in the car and began driving to the hospital. When Emma became unresponsive, Young said she called 911 and an ambulance met her car, down the street from her house.

As soon as Young and Emma left for the hospital, Coe took Young’s other two children and his daughter to the next-door neighbor, where he left them and then left the family’s Spring home.

terri.langford@chron.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

JUDGE CONSIDERS WHETHER DC MOM WHO KILLED 4 GIRLS SHOULD HAVE BEEN FORCED TO PLEAD INSANITY

 

http://blog.taragana.com/law/2009/10/16/judge-considers-whether-dc-mom-who-killed-4-girls-should-have-been-forced-to-plead-insanity-14569/

By Sarah Karush

 

Conviction in doubt for DC mom who killed 4 girls

 

WASHINGTON — A woman who was expected to be sentenced Friday to life in prison for murdering her four daughters could instead walk free under a scenario outlined by the judge who found her guilty, though such an outcome still faces several legal hurdles.

The decomposing bodies of Banita Jacks’ daughters — ages 5 to 16 — were discovered in January 2008 when U.S. Marshals came to evict Jacks from her southeast Washington rowhouse. In July, D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick H. Weisberg found Jacks guilty of four counts of felony murder, three counts of premeditated first-degree murder and four counts of first-degree child cruelty.

Jacks was scheduled to be sentenced Friday but Weisberg postponed it while he considers issues related to her refusal to use an insanity defense. Jacks rejected the defense against the advice of her lawyers, who are now asking Weisberg to appoint an independent counsel to investigate whether she was competent to make such a decision.

If the defense is successful, it could lead to a new trial and Jacks, 34, could be found not guilty by reason of insanity. That course of events could end with Jacks walking free, Weisberg said.

Ordinarily, a defendant who successfully uses an insanity defense gets committed to a psychiatric institution. But that’s not the case in the District of Columbia if the insanity defense is imposed against the person’s wishes, Weisberg said. Civil commitment proceedings could still be held, but there’s no guarantee they would be successful, he added.

“It’s by no means clear to me that Jacks would be civilly committable in those circumstances, despite the horrific crimes of which I have found her guilty,” Weisberg said.

Jacks reiterated to the judge that she didn’t want to use an insanity defense.

Jacks previously told police her daughters were possessed by demons and inexplicably died one by one in their sleep. She believed they would be resurrected.

The extreme decomposition made it difficult for experts to determine exactly how and when the girls died, but medical examiners said the three youngest children were most likely strangled and 16-year-old Brittany was probably stabbed.

Jacks has insisted she is not mentally ill. But “the inability to recognize one’s illness” is common among the mentally ill, her lawyers said.

Prosecutors portrayed the motion as a ploy to win a new trial and questioned the timing.

Weisberg scheduled another hearing for Dec. 18.

MANY CHILD DEATHS COME DESPITE CPS VISITS

 

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6679660.html

By TERRI LANGFORD Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle

Oct. 21, 2009, 11:12PM

Nearly half of all Texas children killed by abuse belonged to families previously investigated by Texas Child Protective Services — a statistic that has shown no improvement since 2004, despite efforts to save more children, records show.

Each year, about 200 children die of abuse or neglect in Texas — at least1,227 since 2004, according to records obtained by the Houston Chronicle. That’s 516 children who died who came from families with CPS histories.

They include Kati Earnest, 5, dead on July 4, from a beating.

Darrell “Tre” Singleton III, 1, left unattended for hours in a car on Sept. 3. Dead from exposure to 95 degree heat.

Emma Thompson, 4, sexually abused. Dead on June 27 from a beating.

In these child deaths, just three among the hundreds, prior visits to their families and homes by CPS investigators failed to detect potentially fatal warning signs.

“They are worrisome to me,” state Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, and member of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, said of the increase in child deaths among families with a CPS history. “They should be worrisome to anybody.”

On their face, the numbers of these troubled families with deadly outcomes seem to point to a worsening problem for CPS, one that the agency hopes to get a handle on with a better realignment of its work force in four regions of the state.

About 700 caseworkers and support staff in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and the Rio Grande Valley will be reassigned to more critical jobs within CPS’ investigative force and Family Based Safety Services, the department charged with monitoring families once they come to the agency’s attention. It is this department that works with families where a CPS investigation indicates potential problems but doesn’t merit removing children from the home.

“Obviously, our goal is to bring those numbers down,” said Anne Heiligenstein, commissioner of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, which includes CPS. “That has to be our goal.”

Study: Texas tops U.S.

The national advocacy group Every Child Matters released a study Wednesday showing Texas leads the nation in child abuse deaths from 2001 to 2007.

The deaths among repeat CPS complaints represent less than 1 percent of the 165,000 child abuse investigations completed by the agency each year. However, the growing incidence of child deaths coming from families with prior CPS histories, particularly in Houston, has prompted a review here and in Dallas of child abuse investigations.

Lawmakers are also looking for more answers about why certain families can’t be located more quickly before a child dies.

Such deaths continue to occur despite a $248 million infusion to CPS in 2005, which brought in 2,500 additional caseworkers and support staff, along with better equipment like digital cameras and more laptop computers, so workers could enter information about a child more quickly.

The additional money, equipment and staff did reduce the $1 billion-a-year agency’s crippling investigation caseload. The number of investigations per worker fell from 43 in 2004 to 22 cases today.

But the reforms, aimed at improving child abuse investigations, have done little to break chronic households from a cycle of abuse.

“The fact CPS had previous contact with the family doesn’t automatically mean that CPS could have prevented that death,” said Patrick Crimmins, spokesman for CPS.

Ultimately the person who killed the child — and in 77 percent of Texas cases, that’s a parent — is responsible for these deaths.

“I think we’re all accountable and CPS as well,” Sen. Uresti said. “(But) we don’t want to lose sight of the fact that someone killed these children, and they should be held accountable.”

The recent cases

In several cases among the 189 children who died by fiscal year’s end on Aug. 31, there are stories of missed chances that continue to nag at the agency charged with protecting children while the public asks what it would take to stop missing the signs that something is amiss.

In the case of Kati Earnest, the Vernon girl died after two previous investigations failed to verify the callers’ complaints that she was neglected and possibly abused. Fifteen months after the second complaint, she was dead. Her mother said the girl drowned, but she was covered in bruises. Authorities say the mother finally admitted to beating her five times with a closed fist. She’s now charged with capital murder.

Emma Thompson, 4, died after suffering a fractured skull and more than 80 bruises. The Spring girl was also sexually assaulted. Her mother tried to say her child had fallen. CPS was in the middle of an investigation into possible sexual assault of the girl after she tested positive for genital herpes. Because it can be transmitted in a nonsexual manner in rare cases, CPS let the girl stay with her mother. Three weeks later, Emma was dead.

And in Arlington, CPS workers considered the mother of 1-year-old Darrell Singleton “a pathological liar” and mentally ill from their prior visits, which included the removal of an older sibling because of abuse. But he remained in his mother’s care. He died when he was left in a car all day while she worked in a nearby office.

Reaching more children?

According to Scott McCown, executive director for the Center for Public Policy Priorities, the number of chronic CPS families could indicate the agency’s investigations may finally be zeroing in on the most troubled families in their system.

“More of the children are being reached by CPS,” he said.

While the loss of a single child is unacceptable, McCown said, he reasons that “the fact that more of the murders this year than last year had some kind of involvement with CPS could be evidence of a good thing. It means the system is more vigorous.”

Just last week, Kayvon Lewis, 3, turned up in a Houston emergency room. He could not walk or talk and weighed just 17 pounds, about half of what a child his age should. On two previous visits to Kayvon’s home, neither of the two CPS investigators, who were both with the agency less than a year, detected anything wrong with the child. A third call came from the hospital staff when his mother brought him to the ER.

Admitted in critical condition, he is still alive.

terri.langford@chron.com

CPS INVESTIGATING CASE OF 17-POUND TODDLER

 

http://www.khou.com/news/local/stories/khou091020_mp_cps-starving-boy.2379f740a.html

By Shern-Min Chow / 11 News

HOUSTON — Child Protective Services is investigating the case of a 3-year-old boy who weighs just 17 pounds, which is about the size of a typical 6-month-old. But while CPS is looking into his family, the agency may have to answer some questions itself.

At last word, the little boy was in critical condition at Memorial Hermann Children’s Hospital. His mother, 30-year-old Marcia Holliday, has been charged with felony injury to child. Her bail was set at $20,000.

Officials say his mother brought the boy to the hospital Friday, October 16, and told them “he wasn’t right.” Holliday’s neighbor believes the boy’s mother didn’t intentionally starve him.

“He wouldn’t eat. She tried, she tried. He wouldn’t eat,” said Kathy Scott, Holliday’s neighbor.

Scott has known the family for two months. They live in the same northwest side apartment complex.

“She did all she could for him. The reason I know is I watched the other kids while she took care of them,” said Scott.

Holliday’s son suffers from seizures and other health problems, but doctors say that’s unrelated to his body’s starvation.

“There really is no medical reason why he’s not eating or gaining weight. He does have some issues but nothing that would make him malnourished,” Child Protective Services spokesperson Estella Olguin said.

CPS has investigated the family twice before.

In January and November of 2008, CPS looked into allegations of neglect with the Holliday family but found no signs of problems. Now, with the boy sick and in the hospital, officials are looking into the organization.

This is because the toddler’s hospitalization comes after the deaths of three children this year. All died after CPS investigated the families. Now state CPS officials are investigating CPS in Southeast Texas, an area called Region 6.

“(A review team) randomly pulled 200 cases to look at patterns and trends of some areas that we feel workers need maybe additional training in,” said Olguin.

The result of that state investigation should be in by the end of October.

“We know this is an issue we’re struggling with in these cases where there’s been previous history with CPS. What is it we’re not capturing?” said Olguin.

Holliday’s 6-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter were also living with her. Both children have been placed into foster care. CPS indicated a grandmother and aunt live nearby and knew of the youngest brother’s severe malnutrition but did not actively intervene.

The boy’s siblings will also undergo full medical exams to determine their health. Both are considered small for their age.

“They might be kind of small for their age, but she cooked for them,” said Scott.

They, too, have developmental problems. None of the children has attended school.

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