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Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category

An Unspeakable and Hidden Horror: DCF Records Reveal Florida Children Suffering ‘Untold Story of Abuse and Neglect’

August 18th, 2013   No Comments   Abuse, Commentary, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

Florida child advocates, guardians and attorneys who represent and protect the state’s most vulnerable children from physical abuse, sexual abuse and other harm were horrified with the spate of seven deaths in recent months – children all under the watch of Florida Department of Children and Families.

It appears that was a fraction of the horror happening to the state’s at-risk children.

The deaths of 20 children in recent months – all of whom were known to DCF reiterates the fact that the agency lacks any transparency, quality assurance, data and accountability. It further reinforces the belief of advocates that, as implemented, privatization of services has been a failure – and that DCF has hidden horrific outcomes.

The latest news comes from a Miami Herald investigation that uncovered the deaths of 20 children, all of whom had been reported to DCF as having been abused or living amid potentially violent circumstances.

The news of seven deaths cost former DCF Chief David Wilkins his job. How will DCF respond to the actual tally: That 20 children with child protection histories have died since April?

We applaud Florida Senator Eleanor Sobel for being out front on this situation and calling for this Tuesday’s hearings on this egregious situation. What her committee will discover is that these deaths are the tip of the iceberg. We are still seeing an epidemic of physical and sexual abuse.

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‘Transformation’ at Florida Department of Children and Families Ineffective in Protecting State’s At-Risk Youth from Harm, Death

August 15th, 2013   No Comments   Advocacy, Commentary

Florida children’s rights attorneys and child advocates who work to protect at-risk children from sexual abuse, physical abuse and wrongful death have recoiled in horror at the deaths of four children in as many months. That the children died at the hands of caregivers or family is sad. What’s worse is that all were known to administrators at Florida Department of Children and Families and their contracted community-based care providers as being in risky situations. All their cases were closed without remedy.

Now, DCF is promising a “transformation” of its practices.

The missing component here is any lack of coherent protective services for the children. There have been no long-term involvement to ensure the children’s ongoing safety or removal from risky situations. All this, even though investigators in every case identified the risks to the children.

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Does DCF Chief Shake-Up Mean Change Is Coming For Florida’s At-Risk Kids?

July 21st, 2013   No Comments   Advocacy, Commentary, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

It’s been a deadly time for children under the watch of the Florida Department of Children and Families and the community-based care or “lead” agencies charged with keeping kids safe. Four children have died from abuse or neglect in the last three months.

In the cases of 5-month-old Bryan Osceola, 2-year-old Ezra Raphael, 4-year-old Antwan Hope, and 1-year-old Fernando Barahona, DCF or its contracted agencies knew about threats to health or safety in the children’s homes. Yet, caseworkers and investigators approved visits or the children’s continued placement in dangerous settings. Some caseworkers falsified reports; some weren’t even certified to work for the agencies. Read Howard Talenfeld’s Letter to the Tampa Bay Times.

Now – finally – there’s hope that things may change. On Thursday, embattled DCF Secretary David Wilkins resigned. He was replaced by interim Secretary Esther Jacobo, who most recently served as DCF regional managing director for Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.

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South Florida Child Abuse Attorney: Rise in Children Removed From Homes Leaves Advocates Puzzled

July 8th, 2013   No Comments   Advocacy, Commentary

Across Broward County, child advocates and children’s rights attorneys are puzzled by the growing number of children who are being removed from their homes over concerns of physical abuse and sexual abuse. Those who know the situation realize the matter likely extends beyond Fort Lauderdale to Miami and West Palm Beach.

To some advocates and attorneys who represent foster children and other at-risk kids in personal injury and damages cases, the numbers are disturbing.

“When they take a child from a family they are harmed. It’s traumatic,” Howard Talenfeld, president of advocacy group Florida’s Children First, told the Sun-Sentinel. “There are lots of things we hope they are doing before they take the children away.”

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Credentials, Transparency Lacking With Florida Department of Children and Families Investigators

July 4th, 2013   No Comments   Abuse, Commentary, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

The deaths of several children under the watch of the Florida Department of Children and Families have raised serious issues regarding the credentials – or lack thereof – of DCF investigators.

In one case, the Miami Herald reports that “The Miami child abuse investigator who resigned under pressure last May after an infant she declared ‘safe’ was later baked to death in a sweltering car had been working for two years without required certification — a violation of state law.”

In an editorial entitled, “DCF, Heal Thyself,” the Miami Herald wrote, “Something is horribly wrong with the Florida Department of Children & Families’ investigative process. Four children have died in the past six weeks alone. Their troubled parents all were known to DCF. But all four tots died while in the custody of supposed caretakers.

“In each instance, DCF had the chance to remove the child from potential danger. Instead, the agency’s overarching priority of keeping families together (too often without adequate resources or supervision) is putting kids in harm’s way….DCF Secretary David Wilkins acknowledges that mistakes were made in some of those cases. But where’s the urgency to stop returning children to abusive households? Why does this keep happening? The problems lie within DCF itself. Its investigator training lacks accountability, the quality of investigators’ work and their judgment-making ability remains hampered by Mr. Wilkins’ top-down rigidity…”

Things must change – or the pattern of children’s deaths will not.

Florida Child Advocate Attorney: Commission Needed to Review Child’s Death

July 1st, 2013   No Comments   Advocacy, Commentary

Watch Florida child advocate and Florida’s Children First founder Howard Talenfeld discuss one in the recent spate of deaths of children under the watch of investigators from the Florida Department of Children and Families. He calls for an “outside commission, not an inside commission” to review at least one of the deaths – in hopes of stopping even more.

Advocates Wonder About Another Lost in South Florida Child Protection Maze

January 11th, 2013   No Comments   Commentary, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

Several years ago, Rilya Wilson went missing while under the care of a foster parent – and the apparent watchful eyes of Florida Department of Children and Families case workers. Now, word has emerged that Dontrell Melvin hasn’t been seen by county and regional child protective services since summer 2011.

Another child slipped through the cracks and is lost. The news raises serious questions about the Florida Department of Children and Families, its children hotline and the wisdom of recent budget cuts. To be sure, these two cases are dissimilar. Rilya was in foster care; Dontrell is more a case of investigative woes by the Broward Sheriff’s Office and Child Net’s failure to provide protective services.

Yet, the end result is the same. A child is missing – and no one knows where he or she is. Read the story here.

More to the point, in the case of little Dontrell, no one even looked for about 18 months. Now, Hallandale Beach Police are on the hunt.

Unlike Rilya’s case, where her foster mother, Geralyn Graham is being tried in Rilya’s purported death (as no body ever has been found), one can only hope for a positive outcome. UPDATE: Police on Friday reportedly found human remains in the Melvin yard.

Still, police are asking anyone who knows anything of Dontrell’s whereabouts or details to call 954-457-1400 or Broward County Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477.

A Child Advocate Attorney Considers Sandy Hook’s Legacy and the Commitment to Real Change

January 7th, 2013   No Comments   Advocacy, Commentary

North Florida and Gainesville foster child advocate attorney and Florida’s Children First Board Member Gloria Fletcher wrote the following commentary on the lasting impact of December’s Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting – and the need to press for real change in the laws and statutes that can better protect Americans.

Newtown, Aurora, Sanford, Tucson, Blacksburg, Fort Hood, Littleton. The names of these towns and locations – and the haunted memories of the killings committed there – have been seared into the collective American consciousness like scars on our psyches. As a North Florida and Gainesville foster child advocate attorney who’s seen the abuse of at-risk and foster children, I’m as saddened and heartbroken as any witness anywhere.

We’re all left to find solace. To soothe our pain and even our guilt following each, we promise change – to gun laws, to access to firearms by those deemed incompetent by the courts or physicians, to information-sharing and protections that may help prevent such incidents from ever happening again. We’re emboldened by a purpose-driven mission to right our course.

Then, over time, our outrage fades. Inevitably, something else – a “fiscal cliff” debate, a bowl season, the malaise of summer, the deceptive healing power of time itself – overtakes our seemingly limited capacity to sustain outrage and follow through on our demands for change.

We let our guard down. We forget. And it happens again.

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Teen’s Death in Senior Nursing Home a ‘Travesty,’ Leads Florida Department of Children and Families to Alter Policy

December 6th, 2012   No Comments   Advocacy, Commentary, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

In the wake of the death of Marie Freyre – the 14-year-old Tampa child with cerebral palsy forcibly removed from her home and placed in an adult nursing home, where she soon died – the Florida Department of Children and Families now is pushing to curb the practice of steering foster kids to such institutionalized care.

Administrators are demanding “high-level approval” before kids can be admitted to a nursing home or moved from one to another. The agency also will recruit foster parents with the skills to care for the state’s most fragile and at-risk children.

Christina Spudeas, executive director at Florida’s Children First, the state’s premier child advocacy organization, told the paper that DCF must do more than slow the move of kids into nursing homes. It must remove them all children from such institutions.

“It’s a travesty,” Spudeas told the Herald. “There is no doubt at all that children need proper supports in the home environment.”

The original policies not only seemingly made little sense – in Marie’s case, taking her from her mother, who’d provided care for all her life. In-home care and oversight can be far less expensive than in-facility services.

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Rilya Wilson’s Death: Lessons Learned 10 Years On…

December 3rd, 2012   No Comments   Abuse, Commentary

Gainesville, Florida, child advocate attorney Gloria Fletcher’s letter to the editor regarding Rilya Wilson’s senseless death was widely published. It raises key questions regarding the child abuse and wrongful death likely suffered by the young girl. The text of the letter follows…

Ten years after the disappearance of little Rilya Wilson, what have Floridians learned about her fate and the future of others in state’s child welfare system? What do we know about the system itself – and whether reforms have made kids any more safe?

It’s hard to say what we’ve learned. As the first-degree murder trial of her Rilya’s caretaker, Geralyn Graham, gets underway in Miami this week, too many questions linger about Rilya, Graham and the Department of Children and Families.

The state will plead its case for charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and aggravated child abuse against Graham, who in 2000 took in the 4-year-old foster child.

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A Decade Later, Missing Child Rilya Wilson a Lesson For Us All

November 5th, 2012   No Comments   Commentary, Court Cases

Little Rilya Wilson was born in 1996 to a homeless cocaine addict. Within two months, she was in state custody. Within a few years, she was living with Geralyn Graham and Pamela Graham (who are unrelated). By 2002, the state realized Rilya was no longer at the house. She would never been seen alive again by Florida child welfare officials. But does her lesson endure?

Rilya Wilson - Photo Credit AP

That’s the question some will ask as jury selection begins this week in the state’s case against Geralyn Graham. Rilya was living with Graham, now 66, when the child was last seen. Graham has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. She insists she’s innocent. A jury will decide.

But a decade on, what has society learned from the tale of Rilya and so many kids like her? If not for the news of Graham’s case, would any Floridians even remember Rilya’s story? Thousands of kids live in the Florida child care system. Some a treated well by loving, caring foster families. Others, suffer lives and fates unknown. We owe them better than that.

Rilya’s name is an acronym for “remember I love you always.” We may never learn Rilya’s true fate. But we should always remember their needs and support their rights to safe, loving lives.

Boy Scouts of America ‘Perversion Files’ Show Depth of Sexual Abuse, Personal Injury Group’s Personnel Perpetrated on Kids

October 20th, 2012   No Comments   Commentary, Court Cases, Damage Claims, Sexual Abuse

The similarities between the Boy Scouts of America, the Catholic Church and the coaching staff and administration at Penn State University are chilling – and reprehensible. All three had pedophiles in their midst, perpetrating unspeakable sexual assault, personal injury, and pain and suffering on child victims and youths in their care.

And to avoid damage claims, all three worked diligently to hide the sexual assault, personal injury, and pain and suffering of child victims from parents, outsiders and authorities.

As child advocates and child care attorneys now learn of the more than 14,500 pages of previously confidential documents released by the Boy Scouts of America regarding child sexual abuse, observers and authorities are left to wonder how this could happen so deeply in the organization – and for so long.

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