Here we go again. So far, the media has documented that there were at least six reports of child abuse to the department of social services in Gaston County before 2-year-old Addison Lanham’s horrific death.
Now, as usual, another set of county and state social services officials is assuring us that they did a simply fabulous job following up and protecting Lanham and that we would agree that their work was the stuff of wonder — if only they could show us the case file. But since they can’t release it … we’ll just have to take their word for it.
Once again, DSS officials who could be complicit in a child’s death get to hide behind state privacy laws with the help of state politicians (more on that in a minute.)
It is exactly what happened in the Zahra Baker case. The 10-year-old Hickory girl’s body was found dismembered despite at least five reports to DSS that she was in danger due to her parents’ treatment of her over the nine months before her death. Afterward, state and local DSS officials assured us they did a bang-up job on the Baker case too despite the obviously horrendous results. If they could just show us the case files, we’d agree, they said.
Then they released a sanitized summary of their involvement, case closed. And not a damn thing from the politicians in Raleigh. Given that the Zahra Baker case was featured day in and day out on national TV, you’d think the governor or someone in the state legislature would demand an outside investigation of the agency by independent investigators who would assess whether operating procedures were followed in these cases, how well they are followed in our DSS system in general and whether they need to change.
That’s step one. Then they must publish the results. A child fatality review team already automatically reviews these cases in North Carolina every time a child dies of abuse, but that’s a joke. The problem is that the way the state legislature set that up, the team always mostly consists of members from the same county DSS agencies that failed the child and the local community child protection team. They don’t even bring in folks from a different county. In other words, they are part of the same bureaucracy being investigated.
It is shocking that no true outside investigation has ever been launched, much less proposed in the Baker case. The same will happen with the Lanham case. DSS will close the books on it with assurances there was nothing else they could do and we’ll have to take their word for it — which will be good enough for the politicians in Raleigh.
My fear — and suspicion — is that DSS’s child investigations are being run as poorly as the state’s parole and probation system was. After the Raleigh News & Observer ran a series about how over 500 people had been murdered by people on parole or probation, the governor was finally forced to do an outside investigation. A federal probe found that in 80 percent of 1,400 probation cases examined, operational rules weren’t followed. What if the state’s child abuse investigations are handled that poorly?
There will be no way to know until Raleigh demands answers. The only question is how many children will die before then at the hands of abusive parents.
There just seems to be an odd pattern here. DSS is called out multiple times, finds nothing, and quickly closes the complaint. Later, after a child dies of abuse, reporters who drop in on the lives of family and neighbors somehow have no problem quickly finding people to discuss the signs of child abuse they witnessed after the fact. Take this idiot, Donna Phillips, who talked to WSOC-TV, for instance.
Shanna Lanham’s friend, Donna Phillips, said days before Addison died, she noticed bruises and scratches on the child.
“I kept asking her to let me take her to the hospital or the doctor and she wouldn’t,” Phillips said.
So Phillips was concerned enough about the little girl that she suggested Lanham’s mother take her to the hospital, but still couldn’t be bothered to call 911 herself to speed up the process? Whatever the case, if reporters can find witnesses to the abuse in an afternoon by deadline, what is the DSS excuse in these cases? In the Baker case, WBTV’s Steve Crump rolled up to Baker’s old neighborhood and found neighbors willing to talk not just about how Zahra was abused, but about how they witnessed the abuse. Crump also had no trouble finding schoolmates who said the same kinds of things.
Perhaps Zahra Baker and Addison Lanham were just surrounded by idiots and there was nothing child abuse investigators could do to save them. I hope that’s the case, but the problem is that we simply don’t know, and that is unacceptable.
