Shylae's family recalls fears

Catherine Jun

Despite her pleas, Carroll couldn't get inside the adoptive home where her 9-year-old quadriplegic sister lived. Nor could Carroll coax Shylae Thomas' adoptive mother to bring her little sister outside. And she suspected her sister was being kept long hours in bed and wasn't being properly fed.

So on April 20, Carroll placed a desperate phone call to the Michigan Department of Human Services, one that she hoped would grab someone's attention.

"I said, 'If you don't go over there, I'm going to kill that (woman)," Carroll, 20, recalled, posing a threat to hurt Lorrie Thomas, adoptive mother and aunt to the child.

That call prompted an investigation that led authorities two days later to a grim discovery: Shylae was dead of neglect and malnutrition, her body stuffed in a bin in a public storage facility in Vienna Township that the aunt had rented.

"I knew something was wrong," Carroll said. "I had a bad feeling."

As Thomas, 40, is scheduled to appear in court today on charges including second degree murder, Carroll and other relatives say there were subtle signs that Shylae was not being properly cared for. And Carroll says this wasn't the first call she made to Child Protective Services asking someone to investigate.

Thomas' court appointed attorney, Mark Clement, did not return numerous calls for comment.

Several relatives say they hadn't seen Shylae in nearly a year. Carroll and several of Shylae's relatives say they were denied access to Shylae, whom others say Thomas kept hidden upstairs in a bedroom.

"She just led us to think everything was fine with Shylae," Ebony Thomas, 35, Shylae's cousin, said.

The last time Carroll saw her sister was in June, when Shylae's biological mother managed to convince Thomas to let her take Shylae out for her ninth birthday.

And that's when they noticed how thin Shylae had become.

"Her ribs dipped in on one side," said Rachel Thomas, Shylae's biological mother, who lost her parental rights in 2000.

When asked about it, Thomas explained that Shylae had a new feeding tube that limited the amount of food she could eat.

Carroll was not allowed at the house on Pierson Street, but she'd get snippets of what happened inside from some of the other seven children who lived there, including Shylae's 11-year-old sister. Thomas did not take Shylae out of the house on hot summer days, and she denied Shylae toys for Christmas, saying she wouldn't even be able to play with them. And when Shylae's 11-year-old sister noticed Shylae was missing, Thomas told her Shylae was "at the babysitter's." During the investigation into Shylae's disappearance state social workers removed all seven children from the house.

Autopsy results show Shylae was dead for six weeks before she was found.

According to the Genesee County Prosecutor's Office, Thomas cashed a $3,336 monthly adoption subsidy check on April 13. The bulk of the amount was meant to cover expenses for Shylae, who was mentally as well as physically handicapped; about $451 was meant for her 11-year-old sister.

Carroll said she had made several calls to DHS, believing she and her mother could better care for Shylae. The department denied a Freedom of Information Act request for complaints made against Thomas.

Shylae and her sister moved from one relative's home to the next since 2000. That year, the state terminated the mother's parental rights after Shylae suffered a broken leg that a doctor said appeared to be the result of a two-story fall.

The Thomas girls ended up first living with a cousin and then were adopted by their aunt in 2003.

But the question remains whether the girls would have been placed in Thomas' care if the laws were as strict then as they are now. The state Department of Human Services has denied access to records of Thomas' pre-adoption screening.

Though relative placements are traditionally viewed by child welfare advocates as the least disruptive to the child, the state has in recent years tightened requirements for even relatives seeking to adopt family members.

As of October 2008, relatives seeking to adopt children are required to undergo foster care licensing procedures and are subject to thorough assessments of the home, including evaluation of household income as well as the number of beds and bedrooms in the home.

But as the law is written then and now, once the state confirms an adoption, it is pretty much hands off.

"The bottom line is ... when an adoption is finalized, the state really doesn't have a reason for oversight unless there is a problem that is indicated," said Janet Snyder, executive director of the Michigan Federation for Children and Families.

cjun@detnews.com (313) 222-2019