The Massachusetts Department of Social Services, now with a new name and an old M.O. tried at the beginning to kill Haleigh, and almost did. Perhaps it was to harvest spare parts, and perhaps it was to make a stronger case against her assailant, nevertheless, they tried and almost succeeded.
Not to learn their lesson, stubbornly they cling to the child as if she were their very personal property, and doing so, exceed the bounds of reason. That is how entrenched is their dark resolve even in the brunt of public exposure. Without explanation, they even refuse her natural birth mom even a glimpse at Haleigh. What is going on? We are grateful the mom has a high profile attorney like Wendy Murphy to help her.
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You see Allison Avrett meeting her two regular children, aged 7 and 8, at the school bus stop. You see her walk them to a well-kept home with Halloween decorations out front. You see her watch one child coloring at the kitchen table, then pose for pictures, everybody acting like regular families do.
Now, Allison Avrett may, in fact, be a person so horrible as to deserve her fate: first losing her eldest child to the state, then being banished even from visiting that sick child in the hospital.
But if so, the State Department of Social Services, renamed the Department of Families and Children, has not revealed documents that say so. Nor has it given Avrett a reason for severing all relations between her and that child, well known as Haleigh Poutre, 14.
Pardon my cynicism. But here’s betting that if there is a reason, we’d know it.
Most of us know Haleigh’s wrenching tale. At age 4, the department took her - wrongly, as is now apparent - from Avrett, then placed her, wrongly, with an aunt who nearly beat her to death. Then the department, wrong again, went to court to remove Haleigh from life support, reneging after doctors reported she was breathing on her own.
Avrett has long maintained she was among the first, if not the first, to notice her child’s eyes following her about her hospital room. That was when the department still let Avrett visit Haleigh. But they stopped her visits more than two years ago. The department will not say why, citing Avrett’s pending suit arguing that Haleigh was wrongly taken in the first place.
Were there no pending suit, the department would still refuse to comment. This is how it operates: hiding behind court orders and child privacy claims when typically the point is protecting itself.
And nobody seems bothered, even in this outrageous case, when the department bungled to the point of Haleigh’s death, then has the gall to blacklist a mother without producing a shred of evidence.
Pardon my cynicism. But here’s betting none of this is about helping Haleigh. It’s about a longstanding department mindset that says, ‘we do what we want because we can, no accountability.’ It’s about what’s neater and less legally risky. Haleigh’s stepfather’s trial is pending. Plus Wendy Murphy, a relentless, media-savvy lawyer, represents Avrett. That surely worries department bureaucrats: What if Murphy doesn’t give up?
You ask Allison Avrett how she copes? “Day by day,” she says. “I have two other kids who need me. But yes, I would love to see Haleigh.” If she is eventually free for adoption, “I’d love to have her, me or someone from the family.”
Avrett is not perfect. She gave birth to Haleigh at 17. Her boyfriend took off. She struggled. For a while, she concedes, she was not a good mother. That was 10 years and two more children ago, more than half of Haleigh’s lifetime.
System keeps mom, daughter apart through hardest times
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