Girl Found in Trash Truck Lived in Filth, Officials Say

By LESLIE KAUFMAN AND MICHAEL BRICK

Prosecutors said yesterday that a severely disabled 8-year-old whose body was found in a garbage truck on Wednesday had lived in a foster home that was covered with feces and infested with maggots.

They also said that the child, Stephanie Ramos, who was blind and wheelchair-bound and had cerebral palsy, had probably been ill for a long time and had lingered painfully.

The home was ''the most despicable, filthy, horrible situation a person can imagine,'' said Joan Illuzzi-Orbin, an assistant Manhattan district attorney, at the arraignment yesterday of the girl's foster mother, Renee Johnson, 50, of Queens. Ms. Johnson, a tiny woman dressed in a black sweat suit and white sneakers, was charged with two misdemeanors, improper disposal of a body and falsely reporting an incident, and one felony, tampering with evidence. She was in jail yesterday with bail set at $50,000.

On Wednesday, Ms. Johnson, who also cared for two other children, told the police that after Stephanie died from an illness, she panicked and disposed of the body by putting it in a trash bag and placing it on an Upper East Side sidewalk.

But in Manhattan Criminal Court, Ms. Illuzzi-Orbin indicated that the police investigation would almost certainly result in further charges. The prosecutor told the court that Ms. Johnson's home was covered in fecal matter, vomit and clumps of hair matted with bugs and maggots on the floor. The temperature was more than 100 degrees when detectives entered, and bags of clothing covered every surface, including the children's beds, she said.

Ms. Illuzzi-Orbin said that Stephanie had been sick for a while, but that Ms. Johnson did not call a doctor, perhaps because she was embarrassed about the condition of her home and feared that she would be blamed for the illness. As a result, the prosecutor said, Stephanie, who weighed just 28 pounds, lingered for days and then died in the home. Ms. Johnson then transported the girl's body by livery cab to Manhattan for disposal, Ms. Illuzzi-Orbin said. The cabdriver reported that Ms. Johnson made idle chitchat during the trip, she added.

When the police found the body on a garbage truck in the Bronx, it had been ''broken and crushed'' by the truck, Ms. Illuzzi-Orbin said. She called the death and the callous discarding of the girl's body an ''unthinkable act by a person who showed no compassion whatsoever.'' The other two foster children have been removed from Ms. Johnson's home.

Officials at the Administration for Children's Services seemed stunned by the new developments in the case. Through yesterday morning, officials had said the institutions involved in placing Stephanie Ramos with Ms. Johnson had met their duties in supervising the home. Maclean Guthrie, a children's services spokeswoman, said that no complaints had been filed against Ms. Johnson and that the child was getting more than adequate care through the Association to Benefit Children, the nonprofit agency that had a city contract to place the girl in a foster home.

''Stephanie was attending a 12-month daily special-education program,'' Ms. Guthrie said. ''She had funding to go to a private physician whenever needed, and the foster mother was provided with car services for any transportation she needed. In addition, the foster mother had been using in-home nursing services but asked that it be canceled in November.''

But by yesterday afternoon, Lisa Parrish, the child welfare agency's deputy commissioner for foster care and preventive services, admitted that the agency was getting ''very conflicting information.''

No one from the Association to Benefit Children, or the Variety/Cody Gifford House for Children with Special Needs, the arm of the association responsible for the child, responded to repeated telephone messages yesterday. The Association to Benefit Children is one of four foster care contractors the city has identified as needing improvement.

A law enforcement official said investigators would be examining Ms. Johnson's relationship with the Variety/Cody Gifford House, because proper inspections would have turned up the problems. ''The place was a hole,'' the official said.

Child advocates and city officials not with the administration wondered how signs like the filth and the child's alarmingly low weight went unnoticed or unchallenged. And an official with Children's Services acknowledged that a caseworker had not visited the home since May, a violation of a policy requiring monthly visits.

''That is clearly out of compliance,'' said Hank Orenstein, director of the child welfare project in the public advocate's office.

A city official said a nurse visited the home as recently as June 5 but apparently did not report the conditions. The charges against Ms. Johnson yesterday were filed by the Manhattan district attorney. Because investigators believe the child died in Queens, any charges relating to her death would be brought by the the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown.