Recently, this paper reported the story of the woman who stood by while her boyfriend sexually abused her three girls. He ultimately murdered the 3-year-old by burning her with boiling water after having sex with her. This animal is now doing 60 years. The mom escaped prosecution. The Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) decided to provide her with four round-trip air trips a year to Florida to visit the surviving two kids. We represent these girls and fought against the unsupervised visits which DCFS originally sought and which the court ordered. We were able to get a stay in the appellate court from unsupervised visits.
After this paper exposed the taxpayer-supported vacations for mom, our office was deluged by calls from outraged citizens wanting to know why DCFS can get away with this kind of irresponsible behavior. We told the callers to phone or write the governor or members of the legislature. A couple of days later, the governor apparently ordered DCFS to back off its plan to send mom to Florida.
Sending the mother on four taxpayer-supported junkets a year is just the tip of the iceberg. DCFS now spends $20 million a year in a program to provide housekeepers, chauffeuring services, $500 in cash and up to $2,000 for rent subsidies to parents who abuse and neglect their children.
Recently, the legislature passed and the governor signed legislation mandating that DCFS must notify parents who abuse and neglect their children of the state’s “responsibility to offer and provide family preservation services. . . . such plans may include but are not limited to . . . homemakers; counseling; parent education; day care; emergency assistance; transportation to obtain any of the above services; and medical assistance.”
In other words, DCFS must provide for all neglectful and abusive parents the same services they now provide to a limited number of families.
In December 1991 an aunt of a 3-year-old girl phoned DCFS saying that her sister and the sister’s lover had been physically abusing the child. DCFS investigators went out and confirmed the abuse. There were bruises and rope burns on the child, who weighed just 17 pounds. Instead of bringing the case to court, however, DCFS provided family preservation services. This consisted of a housekeeper and social worker’s going into the home on at least 37 occasions in the next 90 days. The housekeeper helped the mom clean up and make dinner. Also, the social worker took the mom out to lunch and dinner on four or five occasions and took her shopping on another seven or eight occasions.
On March 7, 1992, the aunt filed a second report with DCFS claiming the child was still being physically abused, but DCFS ignored the complaint. Ultimately on March 17, 1992, the family preservation agency wrote a report closing the case and stating that the family was doing an outstanding job of raising their children. Several hours later the 3-year-old girl was brought into the hospital dead. An autopsy revealed that she had boiling water poured on her vagina and anus (both of which were almost burned away) and had received blunt trauma to the head which caused her death. Besides, there were multiple day-old, week-old and month-old scars, bruises and rope burns, and the kid weighed just 17 pounds. In retrospect it is clear that the family preservation unit was so intent on keeping the family together that it ignored clear evidence of continuing abuse.
In two other cases, DCFS placed a housekeeper in the home of a parent or parents who had physically or sexually abused their children and the child was ultimately murdered by family members. In yet other situations, DCFS provided chauffeuring services to parents who had abused their children but who did not wish to go to counseling in order to keep their kids. DCFS rewarded this irresponsible behavior by providing a car and driver to take the parents to counseling.
This type of legislation and actions by DCFS is a continuation of sloppy thinking of the ’60s and ’70s which argued we should not blame the victim. And, of course, the victim in this case is not the child who has been brutalized by a parent or by a parent’s lover but the parent who apparently was the victim of poor toilet training or perhaps came from a poverty-ridden background.
This is a patronizing view. The vast majority of poor parents do a decent job of raising their children under incredibly adverse conditions. It is the worst kind of condescension to coddle abusive parents or to excuse their behavior because they are poor. This legislation is taking the “do not blame the victim” philosophy to its ultimate irresponsible and illogical extreme. We are actually rewarding parents who abuse and neglect their children with additional services and cash grants. Other individuals both in and out of the underclass who do a heroic job of raising children under impossible circumstances do not get one farthing, much less a housekeeper to help do their cooking and cleaning and chauffeuring services to take them to do their shopping and to visit their counselor. But if you abuse your children the government rewards you.
It is this kind of flaky thinking that has gotten us into our present welfare mess. The government should not reward irresponsible behavior. If we reward anyone, it should be the parents who do a hell of a job under impossible circumstances of raising their children. This will never happen. By the philosophy espoused by DCFS and now by our state legislature, decent parents are not victims. But if the legislation described above goes into effect, you can bet the mortgage that many heretofore decent parents will become “victims.” A lot of folks will realize that all they have to do is belt the kid around the house a few times or leave him or her unattended and before long, DCFS will be at the door with a free housekeeper and $500. And maybe even a chauffeur.
