CPS runaround in baby's case is revealing [opinion]

CPS runaround in baby's case is revealing

  by Laurie Roberts, columnist - Sept. 14, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

The Department of Economic Security has once again thwarted my quest to find out what happened to baby Josephine, the 4-month-old who wound up with 14 broken bones and other injuries while in the care of a CPS-approved "safety monitor."

The third time requesting the records wasn't the charm, but it certainly was revealing.

The state has no intention of letting the public know what steps Child Protective Services took to keep this baby safe.

As the bureaucrats see it, we aren't entitled to know whether the CPS checked the background of Angelica Jimenez or her live-in felon boyfriend, Steven Saldana, before handing over the infant.

Just as they believe we aren't entitled to know what the CPS did when called to come to the aid of a 10-year-old Gilbert boy - before his hands and feet were bound and he was forced to eat dog poop. Before he was repeatedly sodomized and his penis burned. The attacks came to light on Friday after his adoptive mother,

, was arrested.

According to Gilbert police, the CPS received multiple reports about the boy. Just don't dare ask what the agency did.

Like Arizona State University football, the CPS is embracing the blackout.

Never mind the 2008 law passed by the Arizona Legislature, the one aimed at prying open the windows over at the CPS on the theory that with sunshine comes the ability to see what's wrong and to fix it.

Of course, it's the fashion these days to chalk up any CPS foul-up to budget cuts. In fact, woeful funding is a part of what ails the agency.

But it is not the only thing that ails this agency, as Liana Sandoval could attest, if she were still alive. As

and

and so many other babies, long gone now, could tell you.

I've been writing for years about children who slip through the CPS' fingers, often greased by laws and policies more geared to protecting the right of a parent to a second or third chance than protecting the right of a child to a second or third birthday.

DES Director Clarence Carter has acknowledged that changes are needed, and he's vowed to pull the agency out of its bunker, where it has for decades operated out of public view and impervious to reform.

Not surprisingly, the knives are already out for Carter in what appears to be the beginnings of a campaign to lay the agency's troubles at his feet - a guy who didn't even arrive in Arizona until March.

Clearly, he's not making much headway, because these people won't even obey the law requiring the CPS to promptly release records in any case of abuse or neglect "that has resulted in a fatality or near fatality."

Baby Josephine stopped breathing in the dead of night on Aug. 3. She was having seizures when she arrived at Cardon Children's Medical Center sporting 14 broken bones, bruises all over her face and a cigarette burn on her arm.

According to Chandler police, "Forensic doctors stated the child had suffered a near-death episode and the injuries were non-accidental trauma."

Near death, that is, until I began asking for the records. CPS bureaucrats turned me down flat, then went looking for a doctor who would back them up and certify that the baby was not all that badly hurt.

"As we previously informed you, information regarding the CPS investigation involving Angelica Jimenez does not meet the qualifications for release because the incident that is the subject to your client's public records request was not determined to be a near fatality caused by abuse or neglect," Todd Stone, DES public-records-request coordinator, wrote on Monday to The Republic's attorney, David Bodney, rejecting this, our third request for the records. "This determination was made by the same forensic doctor who evaluated the child after the child was brought to the hospital."

Note that Stone doesn't say the decision was made by the "forensic doctors" who treated the child in the emergency room and talked to Chandler police.

By the way, both state and federal law define "near fatality" as "an act that, as certified by a physician, places a child in serious or critical condition."

It defies understanding how the injuries to this baby - burned, broken, bruised and at one point not breathing - could be considered anything but serious.

Turns out for an Arizona child, that's apparently considered fair condition.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8635.