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Boy's drowning underscores need for DCF vigilance

A 2-year-old wanders away from the house and goes missing. Your worst fears are realized when his lifeless body is pulled from a pond.

The story sends a shiver of terror through anyone who has ever been responsible for a young child and who knows that turning your back for even a minute can be disastrous.

While most people would imagine such a scenario as a momentary lapse in judgment that resulted in tragedy, few could fathom being as inattentive as Melissa Williams allegedly was on the day her son, 2-year-old Preston Quillen, drowned near their mobile home in southern Ridge Manor.

According to reports from the Hernando County Sheriff's Office and the state Department of Children and Families, Preston and his 3-year-old brother, Thomas, had wandered from their home twice Sept. 16, and attentive neighbors found them playing near a busy highway. Both times the neighbors returned the boys to their mother, whom they found asleep on a couch.

The third time they slipped off, the boys went to a nearby pond. Thomas told his mother that his younger brother was going for a swim; Preston never returned.

DCF investigators had visited the home twice in the five days before Preston's death and had documented concerns dating to November 2004. According to the DCF, locks had been installed on the doors to prevent the children from leaving the mobile home unsupervised.

But after Preston drowned, a DCF investigator said the locks on the front door did not work and that there was no new lock on the back door.

That contradiction deserves further explanation because if DCF workers actually installed the locks and someone removed them, it could strengthen the criminal case against Williams, who already is facing charges of aggravated manslaughter of a child by culpable negligence and child abuse in allegedly neglecting Thomas.

However, if the locks were not installed or were installed improperly, it contributes to speculation by neighbors, who reported several times that the children were at risk, that the DCF should have removed the youngsters already.

DCF officials said they were planning to seek court approval to place all the children in the house under the agency's care. Perhaps DCF did not do so because removing children from their homes is supposed to be a last resort. It is reasonable to ask, however: How much worse circumstances could there have been to trigger that decision?

Consider what the DCF knew about the Quillen children prior to Preston's death:

John Quillen, the boys' father, said he drank heavily and sometimes gave Thomas "half a bottle of beer to drink because he thinks it is cute and because (Thomas) likes it."

Dirty dishes crawling with maggots were piled on the kitchen table and in the sink. Williams would place the maggot-covered dishes in the oven when she knew the DCF planned to visit.

Williams and Quillen were once seen outside their home at 3 a.m. with Thomas and Preston, who wore nothing but diapers.

Living in poverty or a messy home cannot and should not alone be grounds for an abuse or a neglect charge. But many would conclude that those observations, combined with repeated incidences of the boys leaving the mobile home unnoticed, were enough to suggest intervening more decidedly and sooner.

It is impossible for the DCF or any other government agency to protect all children who are in danger. That is especially true when the parents are negligent, as it appears to be in this case.

But the story of Preston's death illustrates the difficult job child protective investigators face every day. It also underscores the responsibility they have to respond to all complaints.

In this instance, the neighbors' accusations were not enough to save Preston, but they may have greatly improved the odds for his brother, who is now in protective custody.

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[Last modified October 5, 2005, 01:14:17]