NO DEFENSE FOR DEFENSELESS KIDS

Washington Post

June 6, 1992

TO HEAR D.C. Department of Human Services spokesman Larry Brown tell it, this week's tragic beating death of 2-year-old Dontray Kevin Bradley, who was under the city's protective supervision, was something unusual. Referring to the circumstances of the toddler's death, Mr

Brown said, "It was a stable living environment. The children were being cared for." Once again, DHS's public relations is out of phase with the crude reality of life for a child in its care.

"Stable living environment?" How would DHS know? Certainly Dontray and his 3-year-old brother and 11-month-old sister wouldn't know what that means. They were removed from their mother in January because her drug problem prevented her from handling the responsibilities of motherhood. At the mother's suggestion, DHS placed Dontray and his siblings with their aunt, who was pregnant at the time. Four months after transferring AFDC payment from the mother to the aunt, a DHS social worker visited the home, and that was the last time that Dontray and his siblings saw a social worker.

A DHS spokesman suggested that when the children were transferred to protective services, they became part of an intensive DHS program designed to stabilize a family. Had DHS actually been performing the duties touted by jargon in its bureaucratic manuals, e.g., "preventive and early intervention," "advocacy for service development and family focused assistance" -- or just looked in from time to time -- it would have found the following:

The aunt in the new home in which the children were placed had a boyfriend living with her who faced three assault charges and had a drug conviction.

The new location where they were living was a decaying complex in a high-crime area.

Involvement with drugs was not just a problem for their mother but for the occupants in the new home in which the children were placed.

Had the responsible DHS officials bothered to leave their in-boxes and go to court to read records filed in connection with the second-degree murder charges against the aunt's boyfriend, they would have learned that Dontray, according to the medical examiner, lay dead in that apartment for more than 24 hours from a beating that split his liver in two pieces, causing internal bleeding.

While he lay dead, the aunt and boyfriend were in and out of the house and watched a video at 2 in the morning.

Said DHS spokesman Larry Brown: "The social worker was satisfied that the maternal aunt was providing quality care for the children."

Quality care. What is the department doing to ensure -- in the here and now -- that such appalling oversight cannot occur again in relation to all the helpless children like Dontray who are under its so-called protective supervision and, as such, at its mercy