FAILING THE CHILDREN
The Buffalo News
Jaymaya Auls was 22 months old. Jason Finkley 13 months. And Terrell Parker 2 years.
All are dead, killed at the hands of an adult, in the span of less than a year.In each case, Child Protective Services -- a county agency that is supposed to protect the young and helpless -- was notified that the child was living in danger. Two of the children were in foster care.
Family members, child welfare advocates and some local authorities are now struggling to comprehend how these deaths could have happened.
"The message is getting out that the monitoring we're doing here, maybe we can improve upon," said Erie County District Attorney Frank J. Clark. "When you have three in one year -- one you can understand. Two is bad luck. Three -- that's sending a message out."
While local child advocates hesitate to criticize or point fingers, the head of an Albany group that lobbies on behalf of children said the fatalities are extremely troubling.
"What we can all say is this is too many deaths in the system. This is not OK. Something's really wrong in Erie County," said Elie Ward, executive director of Statewide Youth Advocacy, which monitors coverage of child abuse and other issues. "I'm not understanding why the community is not up in arms. This is not normal."
Details of the county's Child Protective Services investigations into the three cases are unknown because county officials have declined to comment on them, citing confidentiality laws.
But four former county child welfare investigators and an active investigator said workers in the department have become so inundated with abuse and neglect cases that they can hardly keep up. They also say inexperienced investigators are often put into action without the proper training.
The number of allegations of abuse and neglect in Erie County climbed to 9,020 in 2001 from 7,867 in 2000, a growth of nearly 15 percent.
The increase continued in 2002, with an estimated 9,300 reports of abuse and neglect to the New York State child abuse hotline.
"There's just not enough workers to do a thorough, complete job," said Margo Maute, a child welfare investigator for more than 11 years. "Everybody is just pushed to the max there. I took a $2,000-a-year pay cut just to get out of there."
According to state guidelines, investigators should be working on no more than 30 active cases at a time.
Maute sometimes had as many as 50 or 60.
"There were people there that had 100, 120," said Maute, who left the department in December 2001.
An active investigator, a 15-year veteran who asked not to be identified, said she often is pressured to write her case reports in such a way that the cases won't be "indicated," that is, needing more attention.
The investigator said cases have grown in both number and complexity while staff size has stayed constant or shrunk.
"Somehow," she said, "the same number of people are expected to do the work."
The investigator said she closes cases and "hopes something doesn't blow up" behind her.
Pressure on investigators
Tuly Rosen, another former employee, said a supervisor instructed her to close cases she hadn't investigated.
Rosen said she was told to "sign off" on "safety assessments" for 20 reports of alleged child abuse that were supposed to be handled by a co-worker.
The colleague was behind on her caseload, according to Rosen, and state inspectors were due to check up on the county's child welfare unit in a few days. If the safety assessments remained incomplete, the cases would raise red flags, maybe even lead to a fine.
Rosen told her supervisor she couldn't close the cases, because there was nothing indicating the abuse reports had been investigated and the children found to be safe.
The supervisor didn't want to hear it, she said.
"She said, 'Just say the children are safe with the mother. Period,' " recalled Rosen. "She said, 'We don't have time. We have to do this by next week or we're going to be fined.' I said, 'You're asking me to falsify information.' "
Ultimately, Rosen did as she was told, and no fines were levied.
The safety assessments Rosen was asked to write were supposed to have been done within seven days of the initial report of alleged abuse. By then, according to state social services regulations, a child welfare investigator is expected to see and interview the child.
But Rosen said when she reviewed her colleague's list of open cases in November 2001, she discovered some of the cases were overdue for a safety assessment by as many as six months.
Rosen says she ultimately was fired after she complained to the director of the Child Protective Services unit, Robert Deisz.
The state Office of Children and Family Services dismissed her concerns, even though Rosen has documentation that cases remained uninvestigated for months.
No easy answers
In a series of interviews, Deborah Merrifield, county social services commissioner, said more child welfare investigators would help the department. But she disputed the claim that some investigators were juggling more than 100 cases or that investigators were being told to close cases without a full investigation.
A child fatality review team is examining what went wrong in each of the three deaths and will file a report with the Office of Children and Family Services.
Merrifield also met last week with staff and representatives from various agencies to discuss the recent deaths and how to prevent future problems.
Merrifield would not comment on the specifics of Child Protective Services investigations into cases involving the three dead children.
Some child welfare advocates said it's too simplistic to criticize Child Protective Services or foster care workers in the deaths, without knowing the details of each case.
Investigators may only remove children from a household if they are in "imminent risk" of being injured.
"We could have a worker out there today and see nothing. And tomorrow something terrible could happen," said Merrifield.
Merrifield acknowledged that investigators are fielding more allegations forwarded from the state's child abuse hotline.
The allegations usually have little detail and rarely are timely, she said.
Investigators sometimes get dragged into the middle of contentious child custody battles, with parents making abuse complaints in an effort to discredit each other.
And a report by an anonymous caller is especially frustrating, because it gives an investigator little information on which to proceed.
"It's a common problem," Merrifield said. "Anonymous reports don't help us enough. If we can't get back to that eyewitness, we have nothing. People can call confidentially. We won't share their names with the family they're calling about."
In the most recent child fatality, Buffalo police determined that the death of Terrell Parker on Aug. 6 was a homicide, the result of blunt force trauma. They have yet to charge anyone in the killing.
Terrell lived with his brother, Terrence, 4, in the upstairs apartment of foster parent Angela Dozier of 709 Linwood Ave.
Police said Terrence also suffered injuries.
The county terminated the parental rights of Tracy Parker, Terrell and Terrence's mother, because she had a drug addiction, according to Katherine Parker, the boys' grandmother.
Terrell was separated from his mother at birth and lived for more than a year in Collins with Jack and Mary Blasdell, longtime foster parents.
The Blasdells considered adopting Terrell, but the couple are both in their 50s and they wanted the boy to have younger parents.
A typical 2-year-old
Jack Blasdell described Terrell as a typical 2-year-old. He was constantly in motion and loved to eat.
He was growing so fast and was so energetic that some people said he was going to be the next Bruce Smith, a reference to the former Buffalo Bills star defensive end, recalled Blasdell.
Terrell "loved to dance" and his face lit up with a smile even for people he didn't know, said Katherine Parker.
Terrence lived with another longtime foster parent, Lateyfah Fareed, who is 71 and figured it was in the child's best interest not to try to adopt him.
The county was able to reunite the two brothers in one home when Dozier, who is single, agreed to be their foster parent, with the intention of adopting.
Blasdell remembered remarking to a caseworker that a single mother would "have her hands full" with the pair.
Nonetheless, the boys started living with Dozier in November.
Signs of abuse
Blasdell last saw Terrell alive in January or February. He noticed only that Terrell and his brother seemed much quieter in their new household.
Fareed said she became concerned about Terrence as far back as March, when her friend visited the Dozier home on business and noticed that the boy had lost weight and had a broken arm.
She contacted a caseworker at Gateway-Longview, the agency that oversaw the Dozier home, and was told Terrence was doing fine.
In hindsight, said Fareed, "I think the red flag was up all the time."
Katherine Parker said she was not allowed to visit Terrell and Terrence in their new foster home and hadn't seen them for months.
She believes the boys had been abused more than once. When she visited Terrence in Women's and Children's Hospital, he had bumps on his head and scars on his back. His leg was in a cast and he looked skinny and frail, Parker said.
Terrell was always a chubby toddler, said Blasdell. At the funeral, Blasdell couldn't help but notice how much weight the child appeared to have lost.
"This boy's hands looked like bone," he said.
The signs of abuse and neglect were everywhere and should have been noticed by anyone making regular visits to the home, said Parker.
"If Terrell hadn't sacrificed his life, both of those children would've been dead," said Parker. "The Three Stooges could have told you those children were being abused. Anybody could see it."
A representative with Gateway-Longview would not comment on the case.
She said it is an agency requirement to have a caseworker making a minimum of biweekly visits to a foster home.
"It's sometimes more than that. It would not have been less than that," said Jessie Kaye, chief operating officer.
Child Protective Services was contacted in May for an allegation of abuse or neglect regarding Terrence, the older brother, said Clark, the district attorney, who didn't have details about the child welfare investigator's findings.
Despite the allegation, the two brothers stayed in the foster home.
"I could have kept my grandbaby. He would be alive," said Katherine Parker, who said Family Court denied her the opportunity to get custody of her two grandsons because she had a serious illness and a criminal record from decades ago. "Every time I think about it, I get choked up."
Protective Services received a report of alleged abuse of Jaymaya Auls and her 3-year-old sister, Kayshonna, and investigators opted not to remove those children from the foster home of Arthurlein Holcomb.
Holcomb, 36, was later convicted of beating Jaymaya to death and sentenced to 15 years in state prison.
Jaymaya's great-grandmother, Josephine Fleming, who cared for the girl before she went into a foster home, is pushing forward with a wrongful death suit against the county.
"They didn't do anything to prevent what was happening, and it's not like they didn't know about it," said Fleming.
Last August, the county's Child Clark also confirmed that child welfare investigators had been notified about alleged abuse or neglect of Jason Finkley prior to his death last September.
Finkley's mother was sentenced in July to 18 years in prison. Authorities said she had thrown the boy against a wall in her Bailey Avenue apartment in an attempt to stop him from crying.
Last week, Merrifield put out a plea for parents and foster parents to avoid disciplining young children with physical punishment. She also encouraged parents to use the services available to them if they're having a difficult time with a child.
The county, for example, has a network of foster parents who will help each other take breaks from their foster kids.
Jack Blasdell only wishes somebody had requested that he and his wife take Terrell back into their home for a few days.
e-mail: jtokasz@buffnews.com