Foster parent charged with shaking child: 2-year-old suffered brain damage, will need long-term nursing care
The Dallas Morning News
Jun. 30--AUSTIN -- Police have arrested a Waco foster parent on accusations he shook a toddler, causing severe head trauma.
Matthew Lewis Anderson, 51, has been charged with first-degree injury to a child last spring.
"This is going to be a shaken-baby-syndrome type deal," Waco Police Department spokesman Steve Anderson, who is not related, said Friday.
Matthew Anderson was arrested Wednesday and released after posting a $10,000 bond.
According to an arrest warrant affidavit, he told police that when he tried to wake up a 2-year-old foster girl on April 2, she "rolled over and had a tear in her eye."
Mr. Anderson said he then "picked up the victim, and started to shake her telling her she did not need to cry." The affidavit quotes him as saying the girl's head slumped backward and "her eyes rolled up into her head."
Police say Mr. Anderson's wife, Cassiopia, 26, was at work at the time and has not been charged.
The girl's younger sister, then 4 months old, was removed and the foster home in north Waco has been shut down, said Patrick Crimmins, spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
The affidavit says the girl suffered "abusive head trauma," with bleeding under the brain's protective covering and in the eyes.
Mr. Crimmins said the toddler "suffered significant brain damage" and after a lengthy hospitalization in Temple is now in a foster home and will need long-term nursing care.
The sisters had been in the Waco couple's care since December, he said. It was their first placement. It's unclear where their birth parents live or why the girls were removed from their original home.
According to court records, the Andersons were married in McLennan County in September 2004. Mr. Crimmins said they were "verified" as foster parents in July 2005 by Lutheran Social Services of the South Inc., an Austin-based child-placing agency that is the state's largest foster-care contractor, caring for more than 1,500 youngsters.
Last month, the state Child Care Licensing division cited Lutheran for four violations of state foster care standards. They include abuse and neglect; failing to treat the girl's vomiting and lethargy for "several days;" failure by the foster father to exercise "self control" and "prudent judgment;" and delays that occurred when he took a shower and tried to give the girl over-the-counter medications before calling EMS.
Court records show Mr. Anderson was convicted of drunken driving in Waco in 1984. Under state foster care standards, alcohol-related offenses more than 10 years old do not automatically disqualify a prospective foster parent.
Mr. Crimmins said the Andersons "cared for three other children in their home before these two siblings arrived, without incident."
Lutheran Social Services spokeswoman Katherine Kerr said her agency has cooperated fully with police
"If there had been any indication of a problem, we would not have verified the family," she said.