The Chicago police went into the West Side apartment Wednesday looking for drug dealers, but what they found was more disturbing: 19 kids living in filthy conditions as their parents seemed to pay no attention.
The kids, from 1 to 14 years old, were clustered on bare mattresses or lying or playing on the floor. Some were taking turns with a dog chewing on a bone.
The floor was littered with dog poop, rotting food, cockroaches and dirty clothes. There were also some signs of possible physical abuse.
Officer Patricia Warner said that while she was helping one of the kids get dressed, the child said, “Will you be my mommy? I want to go home with you.”
Seven adults – five of the kids’ seven mothers, a father and an uncle – were arrested and charged with neglect, and one mother was charged with cruelty to a child. One of the mothers was in the hospital having another baby, which was born with drugs in its system. Police said the adults didn’t seem to understand what they had done wrong.
The next day, President Clinton expressed his disgust that kids would live this way in the U.S. What happened? And what happens to the kids now?
Several factors contributed to the bad situation. The families were all poor, and the mother who was renting the apartment let her sisters bring their kids when they needed a place to go. Another factor was drugs. At least three of the mothers had a record of drug problems, and the area was filled with dealers.
Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy said welfare money for the kids was “probably either going up someone’s nose or into someone’s arm. There is just a drug epidemic hitting our very poor areas, so a lot of kids are not being taken care of.”
Finally, the system didn’t work. The state’s Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has a hotline to report child abuse. The department got calls about the apartment, but a DCFS worker reportedly visited the home three times but was turned away and left. Critics said the worker should have gotten police to check on the kids. That worker was suspended last week. Now the DCFS has custody of the kids, including the newborn, and is responsible for putting them into better care. The department usually tries to place kids with family members, though they may start off at a different foster home for a while.
The DCFS was placing the kids in several different foster homes last week. What happens next “depends on the investigation,” said DCFS spokeswoman Deborah Folga. If the parents are “rehabilitated” and judged to be fit, the kids could eventually go back to them. The kids could also continue to live in foster care while the state oversees their care. Or, if any of the parents actually lose their parental rights in court, the kids could be adopted.
Perhaps the saddest part of the story is that it is only unusual because of the number of kids involved.
“We get five cases every day with 19 kids in different places as bad as this one,” Murphy said.
If you know of someone in an abusive or dangerous situation, you can call the DCFS hotline at 1-800-25-ABUSE.
