Two child welfare workers were charged in the death of a child under their care - the first such prosecution in the city's history, officials said Wednesday.
Authorities said an Administration for Children's Services case worker failed to visit the Bedford-Stuyvesant home where 4-year-old Marchella Brett-Pierce was found dead in September.
The worker, Damon Adams, was also accused of falsifying records after the girl died weighing just 18 pounds. Adams' direct supervisor, Chereece Bell, was charged for not monitoring his work on the case.
The ACS workers both resigned a month after the girl's death. They each face criminally negligent homicide charges and were expected to be arraigned late Wednesday.
The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office also announced Wednesday that the girl's grandmother, Loretta Brett, has been indicted for second-degree manslaughter for sleeping in the same room as the child "night after night as she lay tied in her bed with no food."
Brett never reported the suspected abuse. The girl's mother, Carlotta Brett-Pierce, is already facing a trial for murder.
Police said Marchella was dehydrated, beaten, starved and forced to take adult medication.
District Attorney Charles Hynes vowed to probe whether the city agency followed its own recommendations, implemented after the tragic and well-publicized death or Nixzmary Brown in 2006.
"We're going to find at long last what they're doing at ACS so there are no more children fatalities," he said.
Nothing in the world can justify the death of this child. This is not the time for pointing fingers. The bottom line is the workers are over worked with high case loads/high levels of paper work . The entire ACS program needs to be evaluated, there are no support for the workers, when serious e-mails with serrious concerns is sent to the higher ups is often left unread and deleted.Paper trails are not saving our children. The workers needs to have more time to spend with these families to make sure that their service needs are being met and that the children are safe. The lay off of so many workers has a great impact on whats going wrong with ACS today
ReplyDeleteFirst allow me to introduce myself<My name is Mr Joey Bennett it is my inspiration to write about acs for parents and the public,i am talking about exposing the truth about an agency that should have never been able to baby sit anyones children.It is a shame,a crying shame a little innocent girl has lost her life under the watch of acs.Allow them to tell it,it is the parent and grandmother along with the caseworker and supervisor,what about the acs,how are they not involved.Responding to inappropriate communication,the acs and its caseworkers and superiors are guilty for this,they do not delegate information with a passion in regards to these children.What is so difficult about making visits to a home in a timely manner,i will tell you why,it was never in the heart of this caseworker to do this kind of work.Textbooks cannot teach anyone how to deal with someone elses childrens and some trouble children. You have to be physically famaliar with living in that arena.Excuse me for not mentioning,or it has to be in ones heart,,and i mean in ones heart.It will happen soon,those up the ladder will fall,too much has happen under the watch of acs,if it would have been in the privacy of someones home their children would have been removed asap. Yet acs has been getting away with murder of children in their care to long.Public common sense a caseworker and a supervisor are the only ones that are responsible,do you really think so.
ReplyDeleteSimple solution: Everyone knows that teachers and child welfare workers make minimal pay....If you are in the profession for kudos or glory you chose the wrong field. People often make the mistake that these jobs are about them and not the children. There are always going to be budget cuts and things of that nature. Is that the children's responsibility to suffer or even die because these workers want to make excuses? My heart goes out to the children who didn't have a choice or a voice...as I was one of them. They are training these children for the prison system not life. Which makes sense considering thats where most of the money goes (to housing criminals) They run away from these abusive "foster" homes to get away from the abuse. While they are on the run they steal, rob, and prostitute themselves out because those are their survival skills. Then we punish them some more..its just a repeat cycle of abuse. Why don't we just lock all of the children up, then the "professionals" wouldn't have to complain about doing their jobs and what little pay they get and how overworked they are.
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