Posted on 07/15/2002 1:40:10 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Is Florida Bad for Kids?
Another tragedy — the killing of a 2-year-old — stokes the furor over the state's broken child-welfare system
BY TIM PADGETT/MIAMI
POLK CO. SHERIFF'S OFFICE Alfredo Montez' was beaten to death by a baby sitter
Sunday, Jul. 14, 2002
Even if she had actually visited the 2-year-old's central Florida home on July 1, child-welfare caseworker Erica Jones would not have found little Alfredo Montez. He was being beaten to death in a mobile home 10 miles away, allegedly by his baby-sitter, Richard Chouquer, 23, as punishment for soiling his pants. The child was then wrapped in a bedspread, one with characters from Disney's 101 Dalmatians, and allegedly thrown into the trunk of Chouquer's gray Ford Taurus. Police say that as Chouquer and his girlfriend, Amandy Lawrence, 22, drove off to find a spot to dump Alfredo's body, they took the little boy's sister Rheyna, 4, along for the ride. The caseworker knew nothing about that. She was nowhere near to stop it.
But Jones is accused of a lie that has put her at the center of the latest crisis in Florida's Department of Children and Families (DCF)--and, by extension, the re-election campaign of Republican Governor Jeb Bush. Jones, 27, was supposed to check on Alfredo and Rheyna that same day in response to reports from neighbors of abuse that had left the children with welts and bruises. She never went, perhaps because she had been on the job less than a year, was eight months pregnant and was overwhelmed by a case load of 50 children on a $28,000 salary. Yet when news circulated on July 9 that Alfredo was missing, Jones allegedly falsified the case records to show that she had visited the children's home on July 1, scribbling into the report that Alfredo looked "happy." Alfredo's corpse was found in a ditch north of Tampa nearly two weeks later. Jones was not only fired but also charged with felony fraud under a new state law. Jones' supervisor was also fired.
The law is so new — and the scandal that inspired it still so fresh in the public's memory — that its violation has put the Governor on the defensive, even though it was Bush who pushed the measure through the legislature last spring. He had acted to defuse criticism arising from the DCF's last debacle: the case of the still vanished 5-year-old Rilya Wilson, who was missing for 15 months before her caseworkers realized it in April. Rilya's caseworkers also fudged reports and lied about visits that never took place.
The Governor had promised four years ago to fix the state's child-welfare mess. But even though Bush oversaw a 27% increase in child-protection funding, 60 children who had previous contact with the state's child-welfare system died of abuse or neglect in 1999 and 2000, and as many as 1,000 were unaccounted for. Bush's Democratic challenger, former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, who is lagging in the polls, was quick to use the tragedy against Bush. The murder, she says, "certainly indicates that Rilya Wilson's case was not an isolated incident. There is simply too much at stake to stay our current course." Says Democratic state representative Frederica Wilson, who is pressing Bush to open a grand jury investigation into the DCF's disasters: "If he doesn't stop and get a handle on this, he's going to look clueless and heartless come fall."
Bush called the tragedy "heartbreaking." The public's immediate wrath will probably focus on Bush's handpicked DCF chief, Kathleen Kearney. Critics have called for her head since April, saying she focuses too much on whisking kids into foster care and too little on repairing her agency's bureaucracy. Kearney insists that cases like Jones' "are not widespread."
Alfredo and Rheyna were not officially under state care, but Jones was assigned to investigate their situation last December, when neighbors complained to the agency about the alleged drug use of the children's mother, Jeanna Swallows, 21. (Their father is in a federal prison for drug trafficking.) DCF officials concede that although Jones went to the family's house on a couple of occasions, she never met the children or their mother. Swallows, who says she was going off to look for a job, took the children to stay with Lawrence, a high school friend who was living with Chouquer. After Chouquer and Lawrence allegedly discarded the toddler's body, the couple left Rheyna with a cousin of Lawrence's, then headed for Utah, where they were apprehended. Swallows has since been jailed for violating probation. That leaves Rheyna without a brother, mother or father. Perhaps all she will have is the DCF.
From the July 22, 2002 issue of TIME magazine
The press didn't bother to check similar stats in other states....Florida's won awards for their work and Jeb's One Florida education plan was so successful in helping the kids learn, the DNC's desperate.
Fact is, the problem with state childcare is that states can't do the job of parents, never will...and the Dems. have worked so successfully at reinventing and undermining families (including "no-fault" divorce laws Reno wrote pre-Clinton years in Fla.) that we have a national problem.
At any rate, using the kids and the tragedy of these cases to smear Jeb is low...even for AP and the Democrats.
Some real facts on missing children in America, and problems with state agencies an be found here:
The National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Thrownaway Children (NISMART): estimates that one out of every seven children will run away between the ages of 10 and 18. Nationally, 450,000 run away from home each year and 13,000 run away from juvenile facilities. Fortunately, one-half of all runaways return home within two days.
www.missingkids.com, NCMEC, a private, 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization, works in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice. It is the national resource center and clearinghouse on missing and exploited child cases.
DOJ-California, Missing Children
www.800usakids.org
2001: Florida's Lowest Crime Rate in 29 Years, check out the higher rates of family squabbles and drug busts...for kids and adults.
Finally, from Florida's police:
Alberto Millian, PBA Director of Political Affairs and a former prosecutor, said many local officers feel betrayed by Reno's actions.
"She's not liked by law enforcement," he said. "As a local prosecutor she presided over an explosion of crime down here. Drug trafficking increased, she was soft on public corruption and generally made it harder for law enforcement to do their jobs," Millian said.
"Janet Reno's legacy has been one of politicizing the law enforcement process to serve either her political constituencies, her friends or alliances or her agenda. That's not a good law enforcement official," he added.
From: Men in Blue Seeing Red Over Reno. CNSNews.com, Dec. 12, 2001
Is Florida Bad for Kids?It turned out that way for this kid.
Elian Gonzales
So if they paid her more the results would have been different?
Here is what I don't understand: 8 hour day, 20 days work/month. If they visit the kid every month, that leaves 50/20 = 2.5 hours for each visit, including drive time. Is that really being overworked? Do they really spend more than 15-20 minutes at each place? Even allowing for time spent on paperwork, is this really a heavy load for someone who is organized?
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