Search For Son Gets An Abuse Case Closed

By Rogers Worthington

ST. PAUL — When 3-year-old Dennis Craig Jurgens died on April 11, 1965, there were so many bruises on his body that the coroner said he stopped counting them.

Last week, Judge David Marsden sentenced the boy`s adoptive mother, Lois Jurgens, to up to 25 years in prison following her conviction May 30 of third degree murder. A jury had rejected Jurgens` plea of insanity.

The case finally was closed because of the efforts of Dennis` natural mother, Jerry Puckett Sherwood, to break through the secrecy surrounding adoptions and look up her son, whom the 17-year-old unwed mother had given up five days after he was born.

In 1965, the official cause of Dennis` death was given as peritonitis, an infection of the membrane lining the abdomen.

But a family friend recalled that at his funeral, not even a mortician`s touch and the crown of roses that lay over his small face could hide his bruises and scabs.

Beneath his burial clothes, Dennis was covered with more bruises; new bruises, old bruises--the coroner stopped his tally when he reached 30.

There was a gash on Dennis` forehead, skin tears behind his ears and on his penis and third-degree burn scars around his groin.

He died, according to a 1986 medical examiner`s report, as a result of a perforated bowel that had been caused by ``blunt trauma`` to the stomach.

Though Ramsey County`s then-elected coroner was convinced Dennis` death was caused by abuse, he said he deferred making a ruling because he was awaiting further evidence from the tiny police department in suburban White Bear Lake, Minn., where the Jurgens family then lived.

The police and the prosecutor, on the other hand, believed they needed a homicide ruling by the coroner before they could act, according to present Ramsey County officials.

``The whole system failed Dennis Jurgens,`` said Thomas Foley, district attorney for Ramsey County. ``No one came forward . . . Everybody said it wasn`t their responsibility.``

Then Sherwood began her search for her son. What she learned during the course of that search caused the Ramsey County medical examiner to reopen the case last fall and rule Dennis` death a homicide.

``When they took him from me, they said he would have a home, a family, all the things I couldn`t give him,`` Sherwood said during the four-week trial.

After giving Dennis up for adoption, Sherwood had four more children by Dennis` father, to whom she was married for nine years. Then there was a divorce, another marriage, another divorce, and plenty of hard, lean times in between.

Throughout those times, she kept her four children with her. But each December, on Dennis` birthday, she was overcome by depression, she said. For 17 years she lived with the belief the son she had surrendered lived somewhere happy and healthy. Her children, three girls and a boy now all adults, encouraged her to find him.

In early 1981, she was told by Ramsey County child welfare officials that her son had died of peritonitis. Later, while visiting the mortuary that buried him, she was stunned to read he had ``numerous bruises and injuries.`` ``I said, `My God! They beat my baby to death,` `` Sherwood said.

She contacted Ramsey County child welfare officials, but was told she had surrendered all legal rights and was not entitled to further information. It was in a newspaper article she read later that year that she learned Jurgens was Dennis` adopted mother.

Sherwood said she spoke by telephone with Jurgens and the woman told her that Dennis had slipped on a wet basement floor and injured himself, causing the peritonitis.

Because she hoped to get a photograph of Dennis, Sherwood said, she did not ask about the bruises. She said Jurgens promised to send her Dennis`

baptism sweater and a picture. But she never heard from her again.

When Sherwood tried to call her, the telephone number was no longer listed.

Sherwood said she made other attempts to learn more about her son from Ramsey County officials, but repeatedly met with failure, and so she gave up. Last year, a friend encouraged her to try again.

In September, she went to the White Bear Lake police and asked them to pull the files on Dennis` death. Upon rereading those documents, the police arranged for Sherwood to meet with Ramsey County prosecutors and the county medical examiner.

After reviewing the case, Ramsey County Medical Examiner Michael McGee declared Dennis` death a homicide. A county grand jury subsequently indicted Jurgens.

At the trial, Sherwood learned with pride that Dennis, at age 3, could recite the entire rosary. Then she learned with shock that Dennis` rosary lessons came as he knelt on a broomstick until he got it right.

According to testimony from Jurgens` relatives and neighbors, those were among the easier moments of Dennis` short life.

Robert Jurgens, the first child adopted by Jurgens and now a policeman in Crookston, Minn., testified that on the day before Dennis` death, he looked up and saw him literally flying down the basement steps, landing on his chest on the floor. He said that Lois Jurgens ran down the stairs and shook and screamed at Dennis.

A typically happy, bouncy baby at the time of his adoption, according to a prosecutor, Dennis at the time of his death had become a wizened little old man-boy who seldom smiled.

Dr. James Stephans, a psychiatrist called in by the defense, said Lois Jurgens and her husband Harold, who would leave the house when punishment ocurred, had told him Dennis was incapable of feeling pain. Stephans said the Jurgens told him Dennis said ``thank you`` when spanked and did not cry when injured, not even when a car door accidentally slammed on his finger.

Stephans called this belief a folie a deux, French for a delusion shared by two.

Stephans testified that Lois Jurgens had been a psychiatric patient at least a half-dozen times between 1951 and 1976, had been hospitalized four times for depression, and had received electroshock therapy twice.

Though her old medical records do not so label her, Stephans diagnosed her as a paranoid schizophrenic.

The social workers who approved Dennis` adoption in 1962 knew about Jurgens` mental health background.

But because she seemed improved and appeared to have adjusted so well to Robert, Dennis` adoption was approved after an intensive study, according to the social worker on the case.

``We didn`t think she would be a great mother, but nobody thought she would be a child abuser,`` said Gerane Park, then a 28-year-old social worker with the Ramsey County Welfare Department.

The decision was one that was much worried over, she said. But subsequent visits to the Jurgens house that first year after Dennis` placement seemed to show he had made a comfortable adjustment to the family.

Park moved to California before Dennis died.

The county held a hearing in 1965 shortly after Dennis` death and several of the Jurgens` relatives testified that the youngster had been abused. A county judge ordered Robert removed from the Jurgens` home. But four years later, in keeping with the policy that the original adoptive home was the best place for an adopted child, Robert was returned to the couple.

In 1972, the Jurgens were allowed to adopt four more children, all from the same family in Kentucky.

Both social agencies involved had access to Lois Jurgens` file, which held information about her mental problems, questions about how Dennis had died and accusations of abuse that arose during the 1965 hearing.

``When I read the file, I was horrified,`` said Carol Felix, the social worker who subsequently was assigned to investigate allegations that the Jurgenses also had abused the Kentucky youngsters.

Felix said she called Ramsey County child welfare officials, whom she said reviewed the charges, but allowed final approval of the adoption of the four children.

There was no response from the Ramsey County officials, she said.

``The system is guilty. They are the accessories,`` said Felix, now retired and living in Arizona. Minnesota child protection and adoption agency worker, and law enforcement officials now all say that Dennis Jurgens was a casualty of his time, when child abuse and the battered child syndrome were phrases yet to be coined, when the supply of homeless babies vastly outstripped demand, and when parents had an unspoken sacred right in how they chose to discipline their children. Screening requirements, training, and regulations have been vastly improved since 1963, say workers in the adoption field.

Nonetheless,

All the signals indicated Dennis was a 3-year old prisoner of terror and abuse, said county attorney Thomas Foley.

``If just one person had acted on their instincts, it may have solved the problem, and he would be alive today,`` Foley said.