Media Criticism

This is the face of a child abuser. She managed to play the system for over ten years while grossly abusing a young girl who was placed in her care whom she claims is a direct relative. The abuse included the usual beatings, locking the child either outside of the apartment with other foster children, locking her in a closet, and sticking a hypodermic needle in her eye.

She was reported repeatedly to Child Protective Services, not only by her neighbors who witnessed the abuse directly, but also by school officials, counselors, family members, and the police. There were even attempts to get the agency to move on this issue by a very few people inside the system itself. Each time, however, agency officials dismissed the charges as unfounded. The woman in question claimed the complaints were all due to racism.

Finally, however, the girl in question and the others in this woman’s care are safe (we can only hope anyway) and the woman herself is on the run with her own three children. Child Protective Services claims it is looking into its processes and procedures used to evaluate foster care givers. I would like to think that things will change, but this isn’t the first example of this type of egregious incompetence by this agency and it undoubtedly will not be the last. They inflict case workers with case loads too high to ever allow them to adequately monitory everyone in their care. They assume that the children will always lie and that people who report abuses over a ten year period are also lying or mistaken. Children have died because of their policies over the years.

I heard the reporter who broke the case on the radio yesterday. When he heard of this case he asked for the information on this particular case and received over 800 pages of documentation from the girl’s file, with all identifying information redacted out. It took him some time to fit the pieces together and find out what was going on. I still believe it was only the press coverage and the very good work of one of CPS’s own that saved this child from this monster who was supposedly taking care of her and others. The reporter, however, made a couple of very good points: first, he said that CPS has perfectly good rules governing cases such as this. They simply don’t use them and the people charged with enforcing them are not adequately trained. The second point he made was even more telling. He says that there are some wonderful caregivers out there; however, these people are in the system despite the lack of supervision and oversight.

At some point the state has to realize that if they continue to approve people such as the woman pictured above, then fail to supervise them adequately, more of these high risk children will fall through the cracks and be scarred for life or worse yet, will die. There is no room for these types of errors. If teachers, law enforcement officers, etc. keep filing claims on a single individual across years, they have to take them seriously. It is absolutely not racism to stop an abuser. I don’t care what color she is.

Below are two links if you wish to read the details of this horrendous story. While you’re reading keep in mind that this is just the tip of the iceberg and represents only one abused child in only one state. It should have a very chilling effect on you if you consider how many such children there are out there and how often this abuse is being repeated daily.

Links: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/93926.html (short version)

http://www.thenewstribune.com/932/story/93111.html (detailed version)