Foster father stabs child to death in barn

Amy Johnson Conner

Lawyers USA

The state of Ohio removed Connre Dixon and her siblings from their home after their baby brother was born addicted to heroin.

Things went downhill from there.

After staying a while with an aunt, the state placed Connre with foster parents Paul Efaw and his wife. In a barn one night, a bizarre struggle broke out and Efaw fatally stabbed the 11-year-old girl five times. He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and given the minimum sentence of three years in prison.

While the defense at his civil trial maintained this was an unforeseeable event, plaintiff's attorney Jim Martin said all the state had to do was check its own files to see that Efaw had a record of child abuse with the Department of Job and Family Services. He argued that the department had a duty to look beyond the "perfunctory" state guidelines for approval of foster parents to find someone like Efaw who had a record that clearly indicated children would be at risk in his care.

Jurors agreed and awarded $600,000 for the child's death.

The amount may seem low for the grisly murder of a child, but Martin explained that, sadly, no one wanted this little girl to begin with, so there was no loved one to receive a substantial award. During deliberations, jurors asked whether they could award the damages to a school or a park instead of the child's biological father, who had abandoned the family. One juror told the local media they would have awarded more money if this had been possible.

Grisly murder

In April 2004, the Huron County Department of Job and Family Services approved the foster parent application of Paul Efaw and his wife, and placed 11-year-old Connre Dixon in their care.

Connre's mother had recently committed suicide, her father had abandoned her and moved to Georgia and she had been thrown out of her aunt's house for disruptive behavior. Connre saw a psychologist twice each week to help manage anger and depression, and she'd recently seen a psychiatrist to determine whether she needed medication.

On October 18, Efaw and Dixon had a physical struggle in the barn when Efaw tried the take a knife away from the girl which he claimed she had been using to threaten other children in the home. He sustained a serious wound to his arm that penetrated to the bone and responded by stabbing Connre five times, lacerating her heart, a lung and her stomach.

Connre died from her injuries. Efaw was arrested and eventually convicted of voluntary manslaughter. A judge sentenced him to three years in jail.

Civil rights claims

Martin filed suit claiming the state violated Connre's civil rights by subjecting her to bodily harm in the home of a known abuser. He noted that records showed Efaw had abused his own children, including one substantiated claim of sexual abuse.

"He'd done bizarre things to his step-children," said Martin, noting that his stepdaughter told a social worker in another county that Efaw had defecated on her head once to punish her.

Huron County records also showed Efaw was fired from his job as a county humane officer for euthanizing 41 animals in a month. The records show the county suspected him of stealing and had sent him to an anger management course.

The social worker in charge of approving Efaw as a foster parent did call his own children, who are now in their 20s, to ask about the abuse claims. But Martin said the social worker never asked them about the specific incidents of alleged abuse. Instead, she asked a series of open-ended, vague questions such as "Do you feel your parents loved you?" and "Do you think your parents ever played mind games with you?"

The county never interviewed the stepdaughter about Efaw's bizarre disciplinary technique, according to Martin.

Defense attorney Joan Szuberla, who tried the case with colleague Jim Jeffery, said the physical abuse claim is on the books because Efaw admitted spanking his own son with a paddle.

She also noted that social workers ask open-ended questions to give interview subjects the opportunity to say whatever they want to say.

"If they had had a problem with their father I think [the social worker] could have reasonably expected them to say, 'Dad hit me.' Who knows? For all intents and purposes, [these were] intelligent adults and given the opportunity to talk about their father in a negative way, they didn't," she said.

Szuberla further noted that the Efaw's daughter told the social worker her parents watch her own children, and the daughter was listed as the department-approved caregiver for the foster children in the event the Efaws had to leave them.

"That shows, in my mind, a continuing close relationship with the stepdaughter he supposedly abused," she said.

Records focus

During voir dire, Martin developed the theme of his case by spending 90 minutes exploring the duty of department social workers to ask the right questions.

He came back to this same theme in closing, asking jurors to remember when he asked them how they were today and they said, "Fine." He then told the jury, "These are the kinds of questions they asked. The questions you ask determine what answers you're going to get."

During trial, Martin focused on presenting the department's own records on Efaw, including his job records, the documented allegations of abuse and a letter from 1988 in which the department informed him the allegation of abuse against him had been substantiated. Martin also presented the records from another county that contained the allegations of abuse by his stepdaughter.

Martin said his cross-examination of Efaw was another key point in the trial.

"He came across as a complete liar," he said.

Rather than ask specific questions Martin knew Efaw would lie about, Martin made him out to be a liar about little things, which jurors could then use as evidence he might lie about bigger things, too.

Martin asked if Efaw had ever received a letter from the department about the substantiated abuse. He said he hadn't. He denied the situations in which the abuse was alleged ever took place.

Martin also asked why Efaw had been fired from his previous job as a county humane officer. Efaw testified it was due to a lack of funding, but then Martin called as a rebuttal witness Efaw's former boss, who said Efaw had been fired because he was suspected of stealing, had killed 41 animals in one month and was not keeping animal facilities clean, Martin said.

"The best thing to do is establish for all time that he's a liar. I didn't bother trying to confront him on the facts. He's not going to admit he killed this girl," Martin said.

Unforeseeable event

In its case, the defense argued there was no indication Connre would act out violently.

"Our point was this was a horrible event, totally unexpected of Connre and Mr. Efaw, who responded to violence with violence and killed this child," said Szuberla.

She called Efaw to testify. He denied the abuse took place, as did his son, the supposed victim of the abuse, Szuberla said. The defense also called the social worker who approved the Efaws as foster parents. She testified about the highly regulated process the state requires for evaluating potential foster parents.

Ohio requires potential foster parents to obtain five letters of recommendation, have a physical by a doctor and a criminal background check.

This social worker further testified about her interviews with the Efaws' adult children, who strongly denied ever having been abused, Szuberla said. The social worker also pointed out that no one on Ohio's long list of mandated reporters ever filed a report about abuse of the Efaw children.

The defense also offered the testimony of the social worker assigned to Connre's case, who said that although Connre was a troubled child, there didn't seem to be any problems with her in the Efaw home.

Difficult verdict

Although Martin expected the verdict to be much larger, he noted that the trial was held in a rural Ohio county not prone to large awards. He said he was also prevented from entering evidence about Connre's potential lifespan, thus making it impossible to argue for any economic damages

These factors, coupled with the fact that the money would go to the father, who had abandoned the family, greatly restricted the size of the verdict, according to Martin.

Szuberla sees the plaintiff's verdict as the result of a handful of extenuating circumstances, not the least of which was the high-profile, "kids in cages" trial that took place in the same county just three months earlier. That case involved state-sanctioned foster parents who kept eight of their 11 foster and adopted children in 3-foot by 3-foot enclosed boxes without any blankets or pillows. They claimed it was for the children's protection, but were found guilty of child endangerment and sentenced to two years in prison.

"Those were adopted children, not through our agency, but it seemed to reflect badly on our agency because there were assertions that our agency knew about the conditions of these children a couple years before they took custody of them," Szuberla said. "The [defendants] were sentenced shortly before our trial so that all this information was swirling around in the court about foster kids and adopted kids and problems with their placement ... We think that's what influenced the jury to do what they did."

Efaw's high-profile criminal trial also made it difficult for jurors to focus on the "fairly obscure constitutional law issues they were supposed to look at," said Szuberla.

"I think constitutional law is difficult to understand and the jury instructions were clear, but they certainly weren't simple. You've got a dead child in a county where there's been some bad publicity and I think that is the explanation," she said.

Plaintiff's attorney: Jim Martin in Willard, Ohio

Defense attorneys: Joan Szuberla and James Jeffery of Spengler Nathanson in Toledo, Ohio.

The case: Dixon v. Huron County Department of Job Family Services; March 23, 2007; Huron County Common Pleas Court; Judge Judith Cross.