(Mass) Gov panel clears DSS in tragic beating

[brooklynite]

By Marie Szaniszlo
Wednesday, March 22, 2006 - Updated: 06:42 AM EST

Children’s advocates yesterday lambasted Gov. Mitt Romney after his hand-picked panel cleared DSS officials of blame in the botched Haleigh Poutre child abuse case.

“The harm is unacceptable, but . . . punishment is not the answer.” a three-member investigative panel appointed by Romney concluded. “We did not find carelessness or a failure to make best efforts to meet Haleigh’s needs.”

That finding - which let social workers and supervisors off the hook in the horrific beatings that left the 11-year-old girl near death - infuriated child advocates.

“They’re damned right there was no ‘carelessness’ - there was criminal recklessness,” said Wendy Murphy, lawyer for Allison Avrett, Haleigh’s biological mother.

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=131592

[ConcernedCanuk]

1. multiple child-abuse reports before she was pummeled into a coma

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"NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND"

yeah right . . . .


From the posted Article:

" Haleigh, now 12, of Westfield, is medically stable today, but suffers from brain damage, the extent of which has not been made public.

She was the subject of multiple child-abuse reports before she was pummeled into a coma, allegedly by her stepfather and adoptive mother. She was nearly removed from life support by the state but showed hopeful signs just in time to be spared.

Haleigh (Poutre)’s case highlights a frightening confluence of a health care system ignorant of abuse, and a child protective system ignorant of medicine,” Romney’s panel said.
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and 43 million without Health coverage

Nice country that

"Home of the brave and land of the free"

[Mithras61]

2. What a crock!

In the three years before her brain injury, DSS received 16 reports of abuse or neglect about Haleigh. But caseworkers believed that all her injuries were either self-inflicted or accidental, and allowed her to remain with her stepfather and adoptive mother

Uh, how many reports of child abuse are usually required to remove a child from a situation like this? If the injuries were self-inflicted, shouldn't authorities have had her in some sort of psychiatric counseling? If they were accidental, isn't 16 reports pretty damned high?

It sounds to me like the DSS is probably like so many other states' protective agencies - overworked, huge caseloads and no chance that they will be able to prevent this sort of thing from happening the first time. They may be able to keep the Stricklands from doing this to another child, but poor Haliegh has paid a mighty high price for the state's institutional incompetance.