Foster mom guilty in death of 2-year-old Isaac Lethbridge.

Foster mom guilty in death of 2-year-old Isaac Lethbridge.

June 18, 2007

Jack Kresnak

Free Press

A Wayne County Circuit Court jury found Charlsie Adams-Rogers guilty today of involuntary manslaughter and felony child abuse in the death of 2-year-old Isaac Lethbridge, a foster child who was in her care.

Adams-Rogers, 60, was found not guilty of a misdemeanor child abuse charge involving Isaac's 4-year-old sister.

She faces up to 15 years in prison on the manslaughter charge when she is sentenced July 2. She could receive up to four years in prison on the child abuse charge. She was remanded to Wayne County Jail without bond.

Isaac and his 4-year-old sister entered Michigan's foster care system in September 2005 after being found by Westland police in a dangerously filthy home rented by their parents, Matt and Jennifer Lethbridge. The Lethbridges had previously lost permanent custody of seven other foster children in Washtenaw County due to environmental and medical neglect.

But because Isaac and his sister were in Wayne County, they were placed in foster care through the Wayne County Department of Human Services, which mostly contracts with private, nonprofit foster care agencies to provide supervision for thousands of children removed from their parents' care because of abuse or neglect.

Foster children entering care in Wayne County are assigned to the private agencies on a rotating basis. On the day Isaac and his sister needed foster care, it was the Lula Belle Stewart Center's turn to accept children.

An investigation by the Free Press that began after Isaac was found beaten to death in Adams-Rogers' northwest Detroit home on Aug. 16, 2006, showed that the Lula Belle agency had placed him and his sister in three troubled foster homes in 11 months. None of the foster homes appeared to be suitable, according to records obtained by the Free Press.

After their first foster mother closed her home to move out of state, Isaac and his sister were sent to the licensed foster home of Patricia Kennedy in Detroit, where other young children or teenagers often supervised them. While at the home, Isaac's sister tested positive for hepatitis B, a disease commonly spread through sexual contact or intravenous drug abuse.

On June 29, 2006, Isaac and his sister were removed from Kennedy's foster home based on the suspicion that someone there had sexually abused the girl.

That same day, Lula Belle foster care worker Karl Troy took the children to Adams-Rogers' home on Greenlawn in northwest Detroit. According to testimony, Troy handed over the Lethbridge children to Adams-Rogers in the driveway of her home and did not go inside to see the condition of the home or how many people were living there.

Troy testified that he was told by licensing workers at Lula Belle to place the children with Adams-Rogers because there were available beds. But the Free Press found there already were several people living in Adams-Rogers' 3-bedroom home, including two teenaged foster girls, a 1-year-old girl she was adopting and 18-year-old and 12-year-old girls that she already had adopted.

The 12-year-old, now 13, is an emotionally disturbed child whom Adams-Rogers herself had reported as violent and acting out sexually. In intake papers for a 2003 psychiatric hospitalization for the girl, Adams-Rogers said the girl had spoken of injuring or killing other children. The girl, who has not been charged with any crime, is suspected of causing Isaac's fatal injuries. She told investigators that she was playing with Isaac, tossing him on a mattress, when he missed and landed on the floor.

According to his autopsy, Isaac had brain hemorrhaging, a broken right collarbone and many bruises and abrasions. Medical experts testified during the trial that the second-degree burns on Isaac's torso could have come from a hot iron and the internal bleeding was likely caused by being struck by a fist, kicked or hit with an object. He was 3 feet tall and weighed 21 pounds.

Friends, relatives and other foster children testified that Adams-Rogers gave the responsibility of caring for Isaac and his sister to the 13-year-old who, witnesses said, had forced the children to sit on a toilet seat after they soiled themselves and hit them with her hands, a belt and a television remote control. After Isaac's killing, Adams-Rogers lost her parental rights to that girl and the 1-year-old.

Isaac's parents had complained that Troy did not monitor their children well in the three foster homes and that they frequently had trouble getting him to return their phone calls.

Troy, who no longer works at Lula Belle, testified under a grant of immunity, meaning the prosecutor's office has promised he will not be prosecuted for failing to report suspected child abuse to Child Protective Services, a 93-day misdemeanor.

Nearly two weeks before Isaac's death, Troy said he saw bruises on the boy, but that he believed Adams-Rogers when she said a doctor had determined that the bruises were not caused by abuse. Troy admitted he did not call the doctor to verify Adams-Rogers' story.

Adams-Rogers' attorney, Warren Harris, said during his closing comments that Troy and the doctors who examined Isaac had slanted their testimony against Adams-Rogers because they may be culpable in a civil lawsuit filed by the Lethbridges.

But Harris spoke more about himself than Adams-Rogers in his closing statements, even telling a joke about lawyers, remarking that he didn't know his son was violent as a child until he happened to see a fight one day and saying that as a grandfather he carefully