Clear Signs Of Child Abuse In Agency Files

By RICHARD LEZIN JONES and LESLIE KAUFMAN
Published: Friday, March 14, 2003
Christian Harp was only 8 days old when he came to the attention of New Jersey's child welfare agency. Caseworkers at the Division of Youth and Family Services received a complaint that Christian's mother had not received prenatal care and had given birth to Christian and a twin in a toilet.
A private agency that contracted with the state to provide services went to check on Christian and reported that the family's home ''was dirty with rats and roaches all over.'' The division opened a file, but did not ultimately determine that the risk of neglect was real. Three months later, in December 2000, Christian died of malnutrition. Six of his brothers and sisters were also treated for malnutrition at the time.
Today, the child welfare agency provided some of the details of its handling of Christian's family, as part of its release of the case files on 82 children who died or were critically injured in the state in the last five years. Although some of the records had previously been made available to the public, most were being released for the first time in response to the intense scrutiny of the agency after the death of 7-year-old Faheem Williams.
The authorities found Faheem's malnourished remains in a locked Newark basement in January. Although his mother had been the subject of 11 reports of abuse over a decade, the agency had closed Faheem's file -- that is, stopped checking on him or his family.
The files, while far from complete, provide a window into the chaotic and frequently violent lives of many of the children who come under the care or supervision of the state. The files also suggest that it is all too common for children to fall through the gaps in the state's abuse safety net, often with deadly consequences.
Joe Delmar, the agency's spokesman, said the deaths ''run a wide gamut of tragedy'' from the accidental to the premeditated and foreseeable. ''For the child deaths where we had an open or closed case,'' he said, ''we do an internal investigation to review the decisions made.''
''Any death,'' he added, ''especially where we had an open or closed case, is very disheartening and shows we need to do a better job protecting New Jersey's children.''
The state is required to give an accounting of child fatalities under a 1997 law, the Comprehensive Child-Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. Nevertheless, state officials removed large amounts of information and details like sibling names or the nature of previous reports of abuse to preserve confidentiality, the officials said. News organizations, including The New York Times, are suing the agency in an effort to get it to make public more complete accounts of such cases.
While many of the files concern children who were unknown to the agency until they were harmed, there are many examples of children who had been mentioned in prior allegations of abuse or neglect. In many instances, then, the files raise questions about the agency's investigations and followup.
Many files are tantalizing with their absence of an explanation for the agency's failure to sense trouble. Simone Frye, for example, died in January 1998 from a cocaine overdose at the age of 7 weeks. The division had closed a file on the family before she was born. A notation in the file said simply: ''Three prior allegations of abuse and neglect unsubstantiated.''
Mr. Delmar said that from April 1994 to June 1995, there were allegations that her older siblings were being hit and being left unsupervised and that her mother was drinking. Mr. Delmar said the agency was unable to find evidence to support those charges and therefore closed the file. No other information on the agency's internal decision-making process was made available.
In a few cases, like Christian's, the signs seem to have been stark.
''This case raises major issues about the investigative work done,'' Mr. Delmar said of Christian's case. The caseworker did not see evidence of rats and roaches, he said. ''In hindsight, questions are raised as to how thorough a review of the home the worker conducted,'' he said. ''This is a case where we could have done a better job.''
Some children were severely harmed even though the agency recognized problems and was giving the family parental counseling, drug treatment or other services. On Sept. 3, 2002, Derrick Johnson, a 5-year-old boy, was admitted to the hospital with a fractured skull and rib. His mother later admitted hitting and shaking him, the report says.
The agency had received reports of neglect and abuse involving the family in the preceding year. In May 2002, the agency sent the family to a parenting-skills class and also enrolled them in a home medical treatment program for infants.
''There was no medical evidence to support a claim of physical abuse,'' Mr. Delmar said. ''Therefore it did not rise to a situation where we would remove a child.''
In several cases, it appeared that once the agency arranged for services like drug counseling, it stopped checking on the family, leaving children exposed to potential harm. Sylvester White, age 16 months, died in August 1998 when his mother smashed his head, according to the reports.
The file says tersely: ''Family has been involved with D.Y.F.S. due to allegations of physical abuse. Parents availed themselves of services offered.'' The file was closed in July 1997.
Mr. Delmar said two prior reports came from medical workers who were concerned about marks on the child, and who reported that the father said the mother was impatient with the baby and had shaken him. Still, Mr. Delmar said, the agency had not considered that enough evidence to prove physical abuse and to remove the child from the household.
Yet Mr. Delmar acknowledged that even when abuse was not substantiated, the sheer volume of allegations should have prompted some reaction. For example, Bryan Weaver, age 3 months, arrived at Morristown Memorial Hospital with broken bones, seizures, and trouble breathing in October 2002.
His father said he might have injured Bryan's arm when he ''snatched him up'' out of bed a month earlier but could not account for his other injuries. The case is still being investigated, although Bryan and three siblings have been removed to foster care.
Before the hospital visit in October, though, the extended family living in the home was the subject nine times of serious allegations, including ''medical neglect, domestic violence, house fire, lack of supervision, dirty and overcrowded housing, children poorly clothed, dental neglect.'' Some of the allegation came from family members seeking government services. ''Such a large number of referrals,'' Mr. Delmar said, ''should have raised alarms about the safety of all the children.''