Records: 22 dead in DCF care since 2001

The children who died - 16 in 2001, six more this year - had been noted in previous reports on abuse or neglect.

©Associated Press
June 16, 2002

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Sixteen children died of abuse or neglect in 2001 while under the care of the Department of Children and Families, according to child welfare agency records.

Six more children have died this year, the agency records show. The records were released at the request of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel after the June 8 beating death of 21-month-old Briyonna Jean-Noel of Miami.

According to the records, the children who died had been the subject of previous reports on abuse or neglect.

Child welfare advocates, like John Walsh of the Palm Beach County Legal Aid Society, said the deaths prove that the state agency is unable to keep children safe.

"We can prevent the deaths of kids that we get our hands on if we have well-trained people making good decisions," Walsh said.

A DCF spokesman said the child welfare agency had excellent people working for it and did initial risk assessments on each child.

"The truth is some families are very good at concealing dysfunction or it simply doesn't exist at the time the department has contact with the families," said Jim Spencer, of the agency's death review office.

The deaths are just the latest to surface.

Earlier this year, the St. Petersburg Times reported that 10 children died in 1999 and 2000 under troubling circumstances. The statewide Florida Child Abuse Death Review Committee found that in each of the 10 cases, DCF had provided an "inadequate" response to allegations of abuse or mistreatment. The implication was that a better investigation or stronger response from DCF might have saved some of the children.

The agency also said this week that it had fired a high-ranking administrator in charge of overseeing case workers for a 5-year-old Miami girl who disappeared while under state care.

Lee C. Hickey was fired Tuesday. Hickey oversaw the unit that Rilya Wilson's foster care counselor, Deborah Muskelley, worked in at the Miami-Dade County office.

Muskelley resigned after she was accused of falsifying child visitation records.

Hickey said she wasn't surprised that the agency had let her go, but said she was being used as a scapegoat to protect upper management, including DCF secretary Kathleen Kearney.

"It's either me or Kathleen Kearney," Hickey said.

Alia Faraj, a department spokesman in Tallahassee, said Hickey and two other DCF supervisors in the Family Safety office, William T. Pratt and Maria I. Bade, were fired because they did not meet department expectations.

A fourth department worker, Jacob Ayabi, resigned in lieu of termination.

The agency is facing scrutiny for the disappearance of Rilya, who vanished 15 months before the DCF reported her missing in April.

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