A life discounted: The tragic story of Begidu Morris

by Marie Cohen

Ten-year-old Begidu Morris died more than three years ago of horrific child abuse by his parents, who adopted him from Ethiopia. But there was no avalanche of media coverage of his death, no interviews with shocked neighbors saying they had no idea the child even existed. No pyramid of teddy bears and flowers outside his home. No arrests of those who tortured and murdered Begidu, and no demonstrations demanding justice. No anguished commentaries from experts on how we failed and what could be done to prevent such tragedies in the future. There is not even a picture of Begidu by which we can remember him. If not for a child fatality summary released by the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) two years after Begidu’s death, nobody outside the family, a few neighbors, and a small group of medical, social service, and law enforcement professionals would have known that it happened.

According to the DCF child fatality summary, Begidu Morris collapsed at home in Lee County, Florida, on March 17, 2022 and was transported to Golisano Children’s Hospital. He was diagnosed with subdural hematoma, hypothermia, cardiac arrest, acute respiratory failure, retinal hemorrhages, and metabolic acidosis.Begidu was placed on life support and died on March 22, 2022. Examination showed bruising to Begidu’s head and significant scarring to his buttocks. Begidu weighed 44 pounds, which was in the 0.1 percentile for his age. An autopsy determined that the cause of death was “complications of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy due to craniocerebral trauma” and the manner of death was homicide.

The CPS investigation

Begidu lived with his adoptive parents, Jack and Consuela Morris, and their biological son. Their two other biological children were in college and returned home for vacations. Begidu and his biological sister were adopted from Ethiopia by the Morrises, when he was about two years old. His sister’s adoption with the Morris family disrupted and she was re-adopted by another family in 2019. After Begidu’s death, the family quickly obtained a lawyer and was “minimally cooperative” with the CPS and police investigations.

The family’s three-bedroom home was described by the investigator as “pristine.” In addition to the master bedroom and the teenage sibling’s room, the third bedroom served as a guest room for the two adult siblings when they returned home from college. Begidu slept in a small closet, where investigators discovered a pile of urine-soaked clothing on a rollaway bed. The door to the closet was locked from the outside and was monitored by a camera. The closet had no ventilation and there were no toys or personal possessions indicating that a child lived there. Begidu’s adoptive parents claimed that he engaged in behaviors such as temper tantrums and fecal smearing.

The CPS investigation concluded that “[a]lthough it was not able to be determined with certainty who inflicted the injury/injuries that led to this child’s death, it can be concluded that the parents either participated in the abuse that led to the child’s injuries and subsequent death, or they participated in concealing the horrific abuse and neglect that he suffered.” It found the parents Jack and Consuelo Morris responsible for Begidu’s death and for “bizarre punishments,” internal injuries, physical injuries, medical neglect, “failure to thrive/malnutrition/dehydration,” failure to protect, and inadequate supervision.

Deaths due to child abuse or neglect are the tip of the huge iceberg of child maltreatment, most of which remains unseen by the public. All of these deaths should be examined, not only to determine whether maltreatment occurred and who was responsible, but also to identify systemic issues that might suggest policy changes to protect other children. Yet, the investigation summary I received showed a complete lack of curiosity and interest by DCF in drawing lessons from this terrible case and making them available to the public.

Isolation is a common element of severe and chronic child abuse cases. Begidu was clearly isolated. He had not visited a medical provider in three years. Most neighbors were unaware that the child even existed. And perhaps most important, he was not attending school–at least not in person. The Investigation Summary contains three different statements about Begidu’s and his adoptive brother’s schooling, stating in one place that the brother was enrolled in Lee County Schools and Begidu was not, in another place that both were homeschooled, and in two different places that each was enrolled in “virtual school.” DCF did not respond to my request to know which statement was correct. Yet this is crucial information.

If Begidu was enrolled in school virtually, it would have been incumbent on the investigator to contact the school and ask about his attendance and any interactions with Begidu and his family. This would be important in establishing if there was any negligence on the part of school staff or any need for policy changes. If Begidu was not in school at all, the question would be whether the state was aware he was being homeschooled. Homeschooling parents in Florida must provide one-time notice to the local superintendent, maintain a portfolio of their children’s work, and turn in an annual assessment by standardized test or portfolio evaluation. We need to know if Begidu’s parents complied with these requirements, and how he fell through the cracks if they did not.

With the lack of protective educators to respond to Begidu’s plight, DCF should have wanted to know if there were any opportunities for his situation to be brought to the attention of other protective adults. While the Morris family had no history with CPS in Florida or in Michigan, where they adopted Begidu, there may have been an occasion when the abuse in this home could have come to light. Begidu’s sister was re-adopted by another family in Florida in 2019. One cannot help wondering if the sister was the previous target of abuse in the home, thus leading to her adoption by another family. In his medical chart from a primary care visit in 2018 or 2019, there was a note that Begidu said he was “going to be just like his sister.” (These may be the only words of Begidu’s to be recorded).

Fully 19 lines of text about Begidu’s sister are redacted from the Investigation Summary, which says only that she lives in another state and had no contact with Begidu or the Morris family. It is likely that the redacted information concerned the circumstances behind the disruption of the sister’s adoption. Did the sister report any concerning treatment to her new adoptive parents? Did anyone involved in the second adoption have information that should have been reported and investigated? Was a coverup part of the new adoption arrangement? Unfortunately, DCF denied my request for this information. DCF appears to have no interest in learning from Begidu’s death and sharing the implications of what they have learned with the wider community in the interests of protecting children in the future.

Whatever the flaws of the investigation were in terms of uncovering systemic issues, DCF ultimately found Begidu’s parents to be responsible for Begidu’s death and the horrific abuse and neglect that preceded it. But shockingly, the agency decided not to remove Begidu’s adoptive brother from the home. According to the case summary, the teenager reported feeling safe in the home, and “sources familiar with the child” reported no concerns for his safety. (One wonders who these sources were and what they knew about Begidu’s abuse.) The investigator also noted that the teen “appeared physically healthy, was enrolled in virtual school, and was visible in the community, including attending a Mixed Martial Arts program several times weekly. He had his own fully furnished bedroom, and he was allowed to have relationships with others outside the home, including his adult siblings who were away at college.” It is clear that this decision did not come easily. According to the investigation summary, “[W]hile it is concerning that [Begidu’s sibling] remains in the home, it should be noted that he does not share the same vulnerabilities that were present with his younger sibling.” This is quite a statement. Apparently, this child was considered “safe” in the home of where his brother suffered unspeakable abuse and died, because he himself was not ill-treated. There was not even a services case opened to make sure that he received therapy for the trauma he has endured.

The criminal investigation

Three years after Begidu’s death, the police have made no arrests in the case. The DCF Investigation Summary states that CPS was involved in multiple meetings, including with the State Attorney’s Office (SAO) and that

“[u]ltimately no action was taken by the SAO as the perpetrator of abuse could not be determined based on the information that was available at the time of their staffing. There were two individuals (the mother and [the brother]) in the home capable of causing the head trauma to the child; the individual responsible for the abuse could not be determined.

The lack of charges is almost incredible. If they could not have charged anyone with the actual homicide, it is hard not to understand how the parents could not have been charged with multiple counts of child abuse, charges that surely exist in Florida as they do in other states. It is hard not to ask the question, as one child advocate put it, could this happen if Begidu were White? The State’s Attorney denied my request for the investigation records on the grounds that “there is still an active investigation.” But it is hard to believe that the police are still seriously working on this case.

Adoptions and Severe Abuse

Begidu’s story has similarities with the stories of other children adopted from overseas or from foster care. Few readers could have forgotten the six Hart children, adopted from foster care in Texas, who were starved, beaten, and eventually killed in a 2018 murder-suicide by one of their adoptive mothers. In 2013, a Washington State couple were convicted and sentenced to decades in prison in the death of their Ethiopian adopted daughter, Hanna Williams, who died of hypothermia in 2011 after being forced to sleep outside in the rain. Her malnourished body was covered with bruises and scratches and her brother testified that their adoptive parents beat them and deprived them of food. A Pittsburgh couple was sentenced in 2014 for endangering the welfare of two children they adopted from Ethiopia through withholding food from their six-year-old son and causing abusive head trauma to their 18-month-old daughter. In a dispiriting echo of Begidu’s case, the adoptive mother was sentenced to six to 12 months in jail with daily work release to enable her to go home and care for her biological children. The mother who re-adopted these children saw this sentence as “an indication that the court viewed adopted children as different, since it decided that a woman who abused her adopted kids could be trusted with her biological children.” In 2021, a woman in Washington was charged with second-degree criminal maltreatment for beating and starving a 12-year-old boy that she and her husband adopted from Ethiopia. The prosecution decided to drop the case, as reported by KUOW, stating that the boy had “suffered mental health challenges which will prevent him from testifying.” The child had been re-adopted by one of his schoolteachers, who saw his abuse and came to an agreement with his parents–a possible hint to what may have happened with Begidu’s sister.

The vast majority of adoptive families provide loving homes, and a study from the Netherlands suggests that adoptive families are less likely to maltreat their children than birth families. Nevertheless, observers have noted clusters of cases of severe abuse of adopted children. Such a cluster was noted in the State of Washington at the time of Hanna Williams’ death. A committee led by Washington’s child welfare agency and children’s ombudsman in 2012 published a Severe Abuse of Adopted Children Committee Report, which discussed 15 cases of adopted children who had suffered abuse at the hands of their adoptive families. There was a common pattern of concerning parenting practices in these cases, including physical confinement, withholding food, isolation (including withdrawal from school), forcing the child to remain outside the home; and disparaging remarks about the child. The committee observed that these cases tend to occur “when an adoptive family is ill-prepared or ill matched with a child that suffers from unidentified and/or untreated trauma, abuse, and/or neglect.” The analysis suggests that families may respond to their adopted children’s difficult behaviors caused by past trauma by using punishments like sending a child to bed without dinner, which in turn triggers further behaviors, leading to a vicious cycle of behaviors and punishments culminating in egregious abuse.

The Washington committee made multiple recommendations for avoiding such tragedies in the future, including better oversight of child-placing agencies, strengthening the assessment of prospective adoptive families, and improved training for parents and adoption professionals, and post-adoption support services for families. Some of these recommendations required legislation and other required agency action, and it is not clear whether any of them were implemented.

The trial of Larry and Carri Williams for the death of their adopted daughter, Hannah, was a major event in Washington, with Seattle-area Ethiopians attending proceedings every day, “almost as a vigil” as the Seattle Times described it. But with no arrests in Begidu’s case and no media coverage until two years later, Florida’s Ethiopian community may not even be aware of it. Holding Begidu’s adoptive parents accountable won’t bring him back, but the lack of any meaningful response to his death is an offense to all child victims of abuse and neglect and those who care about them. The only thing that can be done now is to hold his torturers and murderers responsible and learn from his suffering to prevent other children from sharing it.

This blog was updated on April 25, 26, 27 and 29.

Lethal reunifications: two children dead in New York and Florida

Sources: trinityfuneralchapel.com, nydailynews.com

Their names were Rashid Bryant and Julissia Battles). She was seven years old and he had lived for only 22 months. He lived in Opa-Locka, Florida, and she lived in the Bronx. They were both taken into state care at birth. Julissia had a life of safety and love with her grandmother, occasionally punctuated by disturbing visits with her mother, until the age of six, when she was dropped off for a visit that ended in her death. Rashid knew 14 months of safety and care starting at birth, before the months of torture began. An inexplicable drive to reunify families, regardless of the lack of change in the parent’ ability to care for their children, is behind both of these tragic stories.

The 694 days of Rashid Bryant

By the time Rashid Bryant was born, on December 13, 2018, his parents were already known to the Florida Department of Children and Families, according to Carol Miller of the Miami Herald, whose articles from May 10 and July 8 are the basis of this account. Rashid’s parents, Jabora Deris and Christopher Bryant of Opa-Locka, had first come to the attention of the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) in 2013 and were reported at least 16 times to DCF. The allegations included parental drug abuse, physical injury, domestic violence, and inadequate supervision of their many children. The reports alleged that Deris smoked marijuana with her older children, that most of her children did not to school, that her home had no running water and that the children were hungry and losing weight. An allegation that Bryant had thrown one of his children into a car when escaping from police finally resulted in court-ordered in-home supervision of this family by DCF. When Deris and her newest child tested positive for marijuana, all of the children were removed but were soon returned to the family in August 2018.

By that time, Deris and Bryant had eight children including two younger than two and a hotline report said that the couple were leaving a 15-year-old in charge of several younger siblings, including a two-year-old who was seen outside naked. In October and November 2018, DCF received seven new reports, including drug abuse, inadequate supervision and “environmental hazards.” The couple’s children were taken into custody around Nov. 22, 2018 and were placed with relatives and foster parents. Less than a month later, their ninth child, Rashid, was born and was immediately taken into state care.

The 14 months from his birth in December 13, 2018 until his return “home” on February 2 may have been the only time that Rashid received the love and care he deserved. But the system had reunification on its mind. By August 2019 the parents were given unsupervised visitation, which was revoked after they suddenly moved without notifying the court, but was restarted again in January 2020. That same month, a supervisor with a private case management agency handling the case for the state of Florida stated that conditions for the children’s return had been met. But records reviewed by the Herald show that DCF did not agree, stating that “This determination was not supported, given that the reason for removal had not been remedied.”

On February 28, 2020 14-month-old Rashid and three brothers were returned to their mother by the court, despite the fact that DCF had asked the judge to return the children gradually, starting with one older child. According to agency records reviewed by the Herald, the children were sent home without supportive services to assist the mother with her four young children. As if that were not enough, the judge also saw fit to give “liberal, unsupervised visitation” to Deris with her other five children.

About a month later, Deris’ tenth child was born, to the “complete surprise” of caseworkers, who reported that she had denied in court that she was pregnant. Three weeks after the birth of her tenth child, the judge saw fit to return her remaining four children, leaving the new mother with the custody of ten children including five that were younger than five years old. Oversight of Rashid and the three brothers sent home with him ended in August of 2020, and all monitoring of the family end by October of that year at the judge’s order.

We don’t know when Rashid’s suffering began. We do know that he injured his leg around June 2020, but his mother waited two days to seek medical help, leaving the hospital with Rashid after refusing to allow an X-Rray. It appears Rashid spent the last five months of his life mostly in bed. At a June 22 pool party at the house of an aunt, Rashid and his father never left the car, according to the aunt. When she tried to pick him up from his car seat, she reported that Rashid began to cry. She never saw him again. Rashid’s maternal grandfather, who frequently visited the home, reported not seeing Rashid for about two months. (Why these family members did nothing in view of these red flags is another question.) Rashid’s brother, then 16, told police that he noticed something wrong with Rashid’s leg two months before he died because the little boy cringed and cried when it was touched. The teen described another incident where Rashid vomited all over his bed and then lay still and shaking with his legs up in the air. The teen could not remember if his mother sought medical attention after either of these incidents. After that incident, reported the teen, Rashid could not move his right arm. Four days before he died, a sister saw Rashid vomit after eating. She reported that the right side of his body appeared limp and his eyes were moving in different directions.

On November 6, 2020, two weeks after DCF closed the case on the family by court order, Rashid was dead. He had lived 694 days. The arrest warrant said that Rashid had suffered two seizures in the month before his death but his mother had never bothered to take him to a pediatrician. On the morning of Rashid fatal seizure, Deris called her sister saying he was unresponsive and “foaming from his nose and mouth.” Her sister told her to take him to the hospital. Deris did call for an ambulance–83 minutes later.

The Medical Examiner reported that in the months before his death Rashid had suffered two cracks to his skull — one healing, the other fresh. He also had a healing rib fracture and a recently broken leg. The cause of Rashid’s death was “complications of acute and chronic blunt force injuries.” The contributory cause was “parental neglect.” Deris and Bryant were arrested within a week of Rashid’s death and are awaiting trial on manslaughter and aggravated child abuse.

But somehow, DCF has not decided whether Rashid died of abuse or neglect–so they refuse to release the case files that they are required to release by law when a child dies of abuse or neglect by a caregiver . That requirement is in a state law that was passed requiring such revelations in the wake of the Miami Herald’s publication in 2014 of, Innocents Lost, detailing the deaths of about 500 children after DCF involvement. The Herald has filed suit against DCF and has been joined in the suit by a dozen media companies and advocacy groups.

Julissia Batties: from home to hell

On August 10, police and medics were summoned to the 10th-floor Bronx apartment where Julissia Batties lived with her mother, Navasia Jones, her 17-year-old half-brother, and one-year-old brother, as reported by the New York Times and many other media. Her mother gave inconsistent accounts to the police but it appears that after finding Julissia “vomiting and urinating on herself” at 5am, she waited three hours, and went to the store and the bank, before she called for emergency services shortly after 8:00 AM. Julissia was pronounced dead shortly after 9am. Julissia’s 17-year-old half-brother later told police that he had punched Julissia in the face eight times that morning because he thought she had taken some snacks. But those were not the injuries that killed Julissia. The medical examiner found injuries all over her body. On Friday her death was ruled a homicide caused by blunt force trauma to the abdomen. There have been no arrests so far.

Records show that Julissia’s mother had a long history of involvement with ACS and police. In 2013, the year before Julissia was born, Jones lost custody of her four older children. When Julissia was born in April 2014, she was immediately removed from her mother’s custody and placed with her paternal grandmother, Yolanda Davis. A family court judge initially granted Jones’ motion for custody of the new baby, but ACS appealed, and the appeals court stayed enforcement of the custody transfer pending their decision on the appeal. In 2015, the appellate court agreed with ACS, stating that “the mother had failed to address or acknowledge the circumstances that led to the removal of the child.” The court stated that although the mother complied with the services required by her case plan, “she was still prone to unpredictable emotional outbursts, even during visits with the children, and she was easily provoked and agitated. Indeed, the case planner testified that she had not seen any improvement in the mother’s conduct even after the mother participated in the mandated services.” The court concluded that “until the mother is able to successfully address and acknowledge the circumstances that led to the removal of the other children, we cannot agree that the return of the subject child to the mother’s custody, even with the safeguards imposed by the Family Court, would not present an imminent risk to the subject child’s life or health.” Wise words indeed. Julissia remained with her grandmother, Yolanda Davis, until being returned to her mother on March 2020, when she was almost six years old.

It appears that the COVID-19 pandemic had some role in the transformation of a weekend visit into a custody change that resulted in a child’s death. Davis told a local TV station, PIX-11, that a caseworker told her the visit had been extended due to the pandemic, and the extension never ended. Sources told the New York Post that the mother was officially granted custody in June 2021, though the circumstances are unclear. The decision to return Julissia to her mother appears to have been made at the recommendation of SCO Family of Services, a foster care nonprofit that was managing the case for ACS. After the first month or so, Julissia was not even granted visits with her grandmother, which would have been a much-needed respite and could have saved her, had the grandmother seen or reported injuries or other concerns. The New York Daily News reported that in May 2020, Davis was denied visits with Julissia because she had allowed the child to see her own father, Davis’ son. The motivation behind denying a child visits with the only parent she had known for six years are truly hard to understand.

There were many indications that all was not well in Navasia Jones’ household in the months before Julissia’s death. A neighbor told the Times that “there was always a lot of commotion, always yelling, always screaming” in the apartment. As recently as August 6, his girlfriend had called authorities to report that Julissia had a black eye. The neighbor told the Times that he had spoken to police and ACS staff about the family several times. Police reported to the Times that officers had filed at least nine domestic abuse reports on the family and responded to five reports of a person needing medical attention.

The decision to send Julissia home with her mother after six years apart is particularly strange because the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) requires that a state must file for termination of parental rights after a child has spent 15 of the last 22 months in foster care. The requirement was written into law because children were languishing for years in foster care without a plan for permanency. It was recognized that children need permanency and stability and it is hard to understand why ACS and its contractor would want to move a thriving child from the grandmother who had parented her from birth to age six.

Much needs to be clarified to understand how this child was returned to the family that would kill her. ACS and SCO have declined to comment on the case, citing confidentiality. ACS did issue a statement that “its top priority is protecting the safety and wellbeing of all children in New York City.” But it is clear that other priorities took a front seat in Julissia’s case.

Factors Contributing to lethal reunifications

What explains the adamant determination on the part of some agency personnel and judges to return children to biological parents who have shown no sign of changing the behaviors that caused the system to remove them in the first place? To some extent, it reflects an ideology–one that is becoming increasingly dominant in the nation– that is committed to family preservation and family reunification at almost any cost. Child welfare is known for pendulum shifts in the emphasis on child safety as opposed to family preservation and reunification, but the latter is clearly in the ascendant right now. Extreme deference to this ideology can blind agency employees and judges to what is right in front of their faces: the failure of a parent to change the behaviors and attitudes that resulted in the initial removal of a child.

The obsession with family reunification at all costs can be encoded into social worker evaluations. In Tennessee, a recent survey of social workers suggests that they are being judged by whether they close cases in a timely manner, regardless of child safety. As one worker put it, “Children are returned home or exiting custody to relatives quickly to lower the number of cases without regard to whether the children will be truly safe and the parents ready to parent again.”

The current emphasis on family preservation and reunification is often justified as a way to ratify racial imbalances in child welfare involvement. A growing movement urges drastically scaling down or eliminating current child welfare services on the grounds that the overrepresentation of Black children in care compared to White children is a consequence of racism. Supporters call for elimination of the “disproportionality” between removals of Black and White children from their parents, while disregarding higher rates of poverty and historical trauma that result in more child maltreatment among Black families. To say that Black children need to stay with, or return to, abusive parents in order to equalize the percentages of White and Black children in care is to devalue children and reduce them to nothing more than their race, a strange position for an anti-racist movement to take. As described in a document entitled How we endUP: A Future without Family Policing, parts of this movement are fighting for repeal of ASFA, which would eliminate timelines and encourage jurisdictions to reunify children with their birth parents years after they had established parental bonds with other caregivers, such as grandmothers or former foster parents.

Racial considerations are not the only factor driving systems to support reunification at all calls. Lethal reunifications occur in states like Maine, where 88 percent of the children in foster care are White. Maine’s Office of the Child Advocate recently reported that the state’s child welfare system continues to struggle to make good decisions around two critical points–the initial safety assessment of a child and the finding that it is safe to reunify the child with her parents. In its review of seven cases closed through reunification, the OCA found multiple incidents where children were sent home with insufficient evidence that they would be safe. In one case, the parents had not been visited for a year-and-a-half despite the fact that home conditions were a reason for the original removal. In another case, providers were not contacted or given the information they needed to treat the issues that had resulted in the removal. In another case, the parent “failed to understand or agree to the reasons the children entered custody, but this was not considered significant.” In yet another case, the trial home placement started too soon and the parent never completed required substance abuse treatment. The child was sent home two months after the parent had a positive toxicology screen.

In responding to the criticisms of Maine’s OCA, OCFS admitted that “staff have been challenged with the current workload based on the increase in the number of calls, assessments, and children in care.” It is clear that insufficient of resources lead to excessive caseloads around the country, endangering children. In Tennesseee, for example, while caseloads are not allowed to exceed an average of 20 (a very high number in the experience of this former social worker) data obtained by the Tennessee Lookout, indicated that 30% of caseworkers had caseloads of more than 20, and that many had 30, 40 or even 50 cases. Insufficient funding often means low pay and a difficulty in attracting people with the education and critical thinking skills required for the job. High caseloads and poor pay lead to high turnover, resulting in a loss of institutional memory about specific cases that may drag on for years, such as those discussed here. In turn, high turnover leads to high caseloads as social workers have to pick up cases from those who leave. Such factors may or may not have contributed to the deaths of Rashid and Julissia; they have certainly contributed to other child deaths around the country. Most taxpayers don’t want to think about these systems or fund them; it is easy to avoid reading about the consequences when they occur.

And cost considerations drive reunifications in another way as well. Reunifications save money for cash-strapped child welfare systems. Once a child is sent home and the case is closed, the jurisdiction incurs no more expenditures for foster care. If the child is instead placed in guardianship or adoption with a relative or foster parent, the jurisdiction may end up paying a monthly stipend to the caregiver until the child turns 21. Of course, many relatives who step up to the plate like Julissia’s grandmother are not paid, due to the same budget concerns. giving rise to the current outcry and debate around hidden foster care.

Family court problems contribute to lethal reunifications as well. Rashid’s death appears to be primarily due to a judge who insisted against agency protests on the return of nine children in the space of two months, during which the mother also gave birth to a tenth child. The information available suggests that Florida DCF staff proposed a much slower reunification process. We don’t know what influenced the judge’s decision, but we do know that family courts are overwhelmed and in crisis, resulting too often in the deaths of children in both custody and child protection cases. These courts are inundated with cases, judges often lack the training they need, delays are all too frequent and were worsened by the pandemic. Judges rarely see consequences for decisions that lead to an innocent child’s death, and I have never heard of a judge being removed for the death of a child that was placed in a lethal home against all the evidence. The judge who sent Rashid to his death probably continues to endanger other children daily. This judge must be named, punished, removed and never again allowed to send children to their deaths.

The degree to which the pandemic contributed to Julissia’s and Rashid’s deaths is impossible to estimate. Julissia’s irregular reunification was justified to her grandmother on the grounds of the pandemic. Both Rashid and Julissia should have been visited regularly at least monthly once they were placed with their original families, depending on state regulations. Visits to Rashid should have occurred until the judge terminated them in August, well after the leg injury that left him bedridden, and he should have also been seen in the visits to his siblings that terminated in October. Even if the case managers were visiting (virtually or in real life) only the four children whose cases had not been closed, they should have had the curiosity to ask about little Rashid. For Julissia, there should have been visits throughout her 16 months in hell. Were these visits conducted at all, virtually, or in person? What information was gathered at these visits? This information that must be revealed.

This is not my first post about a lethal reunification in Florida. In January 2019, I wrote about Jordan Belliveau, who was murdered by his mother eight months after being reunified with her, even while a agency in Pinellas County was still monitoring the family. A caseworker for the agency and later resigned told News Channel Eight that the system “puts far too much weight on reuniting kids with unfit parents and makes it nearly impossible for caseworkers to terminate parental rights.” It does not appear that the state learned from Jordan’s death.

I could have written about other lethal reunifications in New Mexico, Ohio, and elsewhere. But I often resist writing about the deaths of a specific child or children known to the system that was supposed to protect them. There are so many reports of such cases, and they are only the tip of the iceberg. Why choose one and not another? I cried for Rashid but I did not write about him until I read about Julissia. Then I knew that I had to write about both, because they represent so many others whose names we will never know. Some of these children’s names may never be known to the general public because there was no outraged grandmother to speak out, no determination of the cause of death, no charges by police, or no alert reporter to reads a crime report and ask questions. But others are unknown because they are suffering in silence and darkness. Because death is not the worst thing that can happen to a child whose life is one of unremitting pain.

Hidden child maltreatment: One more reason to vaccinate teachers and open schools

With the end of the holiday break, about half the nation’s public students are not returning to school buildings but instead are continuing with virtual education. The impacts of school building closures on education, the economy and student mental health have been widely covered. But there is another consequence of virtual education that has not been as widely reported–the loss of the protective eye on children that their teachers and other school staff provide. Now that the COVID vaccine is becoming available, it is urgent that we get teachers vaccinated and students back to school.

In the wake of the coronavirus emergency beginning last March, almost all public school buildings in the nation closed, with few if any reopening before the end of the term. Many systems reopened buildings for fully in-person education or “hybrid” (partially virtual) models in August or September, and others opened their buildings later. As of Labor Day, 62 percent of U.S. public school students were attending school virtually, but only 38 percent were still online-only by early November, according to a company called Burbio, which monitors 1,200 school districts around the country. However, a spike in COVID cases beginning in November resulted in many systems returning to virtual education, with 53 percent of students attending virtually by January 4, 2021. Burbio expects a decrease in this percentage over the next six weeks as systems open up again after the virus spikes abate.

Almost immediately after the school closures last spring, reports began rolling in about the failure of online education to reach many students, especially those who were poor and most at risk of school failure. Some students lacked computers or internet access; others were unable to engage remotely in education. There is deep concern about the long-term impact of school building closures on young people’s academic performance, particularly for those at most risk of poor outcomes. With the passage of time, more information began to flow in about other consequences to children of missing school, such as worrisome impacts on their mental health.

But many child welfare professionals and advocates have long shared another concern. They worried about unseen abuse and neglect among the children stuck at home with increasingly stressed parents and not being seen by teachers and other adults. This is especially concerning for younger children, who are less likely to seek help on their own. And indeed, as soon as schools closed around the country last March due to the COVID pandemic, almost every state reported large drops in calls to their child abuse and neglect hotlines. The loss of reports from teachers (who make one in five of reports nationwide) was probably the major contributor, combined with the loss of reports from other professionals, friends, and family members seeing less of children due to stay-at-home orders and physical distancing.

After the academic year ended, data became available that that allowed comparison of reports, investigations, and findings of maltreatment in the pandemic spring compared to the spring of 2019. These analyses showed a large difference between reports, investigations, and substantiations of maltreatment in 2020 relative to 2019, followed by a convergence in data during the summer when schools are normally closed. In our local blog, we analyzed data from the District of Columbia Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA). For this post we used our DC data and information from three other jurisdictions for which data was readily available: New York City, Los Angeles, and Florida.[1]

In the District of Columbia, schooling has remained virtual since the onset of the pandemic, with a small number of students joining their virtual classrooms from school buildings while supervised by non-teaching staff. Figure One shows the number of reports received at the CFSA hotline in January through September 2019 and 2020. The contrast between the two years is obvious. In the “typical” year of 2019, the number of reports increased every month until May,[2] dropped to a much lower level in July and August when schools were closed, and then bounced up in September after schools reopened. The pandemic year of 2020 looked very different. The number of calls fell from February to March with the closure of schools, followed by a much larger drop in April, and stayed fairly flat until a modest rise in September with the opening of school. It’s as if summer vacation started in March, with a slight increase of reports when virtual school started again. In every month of the pandemic, the number of hotline calls in 2020 was considerably less than its counterpart in 2019. The total number of hotline calls received between March and June and in September (roughly the period affected by COVID-19) fell from 7916 in 2019 to 4681 in FY 2020, a decrease of 40.8 percent.

Source: CFSA Data Dashboard, https://cfsadashboard.dc.gov/, data analyzed by Child Welfare Monitor DC.

New York City data show a similar picture, as shown in a report from the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) comparing hotline calls in 2020 to those in previous years. It is clear that 2020 is the outlier, with reports in 2017 through 2019 displaying similar seasonal patterns. In contrast to the previous years, reports fell in March 2020 with the schools closing on March 16 and then plunged in April during the first full month of school closure. There was a slight uptick in May and then reports remained basically flat before jumping up in October (when school buildings reopened) and falling again in November after schools closed again on November 19. ACS does not provide the numbers for each month but for January through November of 2020, there were 46,375 reports compared to 59,539 during that period in 2019. That is a difference of 22 percent; this difference would clearly be greater if we were able to look only at the weeks when schools were closed due to COVID-19.

Figure Two

Source: NYC Children, Flash Monthly Indicators Report, December 2020, available from https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/acs/pdf/data-analysis/flashReports/2020/12.pdf

Data from Los Angeles, where school buildings have not yet reopened, tell a similar story–a decline in reports in March after the pandemic emergency and school closures and then a big drop in April, the first full month when schools were closed. Referrals remained below the previous year for the rest of 2020, though the difference narrowed. The total number of referrals was 44,959 in March through November of 2020, compared to 61,515 in the same period of 2021–a decrease of 26.9 percent, and the decrease would be greater if only the weeks of school were included.

Figure Three

Data from Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services, https://dcfs.lacounty.gov/resources/data-and-monthly-fact-sheets/, analyzed by Child Welfare Monitor

It is interesting to look at Florida, where the governor mandated that school buildings open in the fall semester. Florida data for last spring looks a lot like that for DC, New York City, and Los Angeles. But referrals almost matched 2019 during June and July, with the onset of summer break. August 2020 referrals were slightly lower than those in August 2019, perhaps because many schools opened virtually, but the gap narrowed again in September, October and November as more schools opened in person. And the shape of the fall curves was nearly identical in both years, with referrals rising in October.

Figure Four

Data from Florida Department of Children and Families, https://www.myflfamilies.com/programs/childwelfare/dashboard/intakes-received.shtml?Landing%20Page%20InvRec=2, analyzed by Child Welfare Monitor

Not everybody agrees that the loss of reports from school staff is a problem. Teachers have sometimes been criticized for making too many reports, and some analysts have suggested that the COVID closures might serve a useful function by eliminating frivolous or inappropriate reports. Indeed, some analyses have shown that the reports that are being made tend to be more serious or high-risk, suggesting that more of the less serious reports are being suppressed. If there was a large increase in the percentage of reports accepted for investigation or found to be substantive, there might be less reason to worry. But this does not appear to be the case.

In the District of Columbia, as shown in Table One at the bottom of the article, the percentage of reports accepted for investigation was slightly greater in 2020 than in the previous year. But as Figure Five shows, this percentage increase in accepted reports was not enough to substantially narrow the large gap between the number of accepted reports in the two years. Both the number of hotline calls accepted for investigation and the number of substantiated investigations showed the same sharp decrease as the number of reports to the hotline.
Similarly, the number of investigations in New York City showed the same precipitous drop from 2019 to 2020 as did the number of reports, as Figure Seven shows. And the percentage of investigations that “showed some credible evidence of abuse or neglect” in January through September 2020 was actually one point lower than that in the same period of 2019.
In Los Angeles, the percentage of referrals accepted for investigation actually declined during the pandemic, as indicated in Table Two below. So the year-to-year gap in number of referrals accepted for investigation (see Figure Seven) was even greater than the gap in total referrals. (Los Angeles does not provide data on substantiated reports.)
In Florida, as indicated in Table Three, there was a very slight increase in the percent of of intakes accepted for investigation during March-May 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. But as Figure Eight shows, the total numbers were much lower than in the previous year. (Florida does not provide data on the number of reports that were substantiated.)

It is clear from data in the four jurisdictions described here that reports to child abuse hotlines fell steeply in all four jurisdictions after the pandemic school closures, absolutely and relative to the same months of the previous year. In Florida, where schools reopened in September, reports increased to almost the level of the year before. It seems indisputable that measures imposed to fight COVID-19 were behind these changes and highly likely that school building closures were a large factor behind the reporting reductions. Moreover, as reports decreased, so did the numbers of reports investigated and substantiated, thus dashing any hope that only frivolous reports were being weeded out by the school closures.

Now that a vaccine is available, some Governors in states that have not reopened schools have proposed plans to prioritize teachers for vaccines and finally reopen buildings. Governor Gavin Newsom of California has offered a reopening plan including prioritization of school staff for vaccinations throughout spring 2021. West Virginia Governor Jim Justice has announced his plan to open pre-K, elementary, and middle schools for in-person learning on Tuesday, Jan 19. High school students will return to in-person school only in less-heavily-infected counties. Justice announced that the state will vaccinate all teachers and school personnel over the next two to three weeks as part of Phase One of the state’s vaccination plan.

Data from around the country clearly show that child welfare agencies received fewer reports, conducted fewer investigations, and made fewer findings of child abuse or neglect in times and places where schools were virtual. This fact adds to the many other reasons to open all closed school buildings as soon as possible. Opposition from teachers and their unions has been a major reason for keeping schools virtual. It is understandable that teachers were reluctant to return to buildings. But now, availability of vaccines makes it possible for schools to reopen throughout the country without endangering teachers–as long as all teachers are offered the vaccine before returning to classrooms. The high costs to to students of closed school buildings, among which undetected abuse should be included, mean that we should not wait any longer to bring students back to school in person.

[1]: These jurisdictions were chosen as large state or county child welfare systems that had readily available about reports, investigations and substantiations. Many other large jurisdictions do not post such data.

[2]:DC’s pattern of increasing reports from January through May is different from the other jurisdictions and may be related to its law requiring schools to report educational neglect when a student accumulates ten unexcused absences in a school year.