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The death of Nixzmary Brown, the fourth death at the hands of abusive parents in recent months and whose abuse case was supposedly being investigated by the Administration for Children's Services, has led to an agency "shake-up": Three employees were suspended and three others were reassigned, with punishment to be determined. Of the employees who were suspended, one was the supervisor who let an investigation about possible abuse close, even though the 7 year old had missed 47 days of school, and the others were a supervisor and caseworker who, as Newsday puts it "oversaw the fiasco in which officials failed to gain the needed access to the victim's house." The social service workers' union rep criticized the actions, saying that more training is needed, not suspensions. ACS Commissioner John Mattingly also realigned ACS management, making his deputy commissioner the president of child safety and creating a Child Safety Task Forse.
And Brown's emotion-filled funeral was yesterday at St. Mary's Church on Grand Street. The only family memeber of Cesar Rodriguez, Brown's stepfather who police believe fatally hit Brown last week, to attend was his sister. From the city, Schools Chanceller Joel Klein and Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs (who is in charge of ACS) attended, and Reverand Robert O'Neill gave a passionate eulogy:
"She was touched by evil here in this life, but she is beyond that now...She is a witness for us to all those children ... who are suffering, not just here in New York but all around the world."Marines carried her coffin from the church and she was buried at a cemetery in Cypress Hills, Queens. Brown's grandmother, Maria Gonzalez, is looking to adopt her other five grandchildren, who are in foster care.
Photograph from Newsday
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Not to diminish the tragedy of the situation, but everyone's self-righteousness in situations like this seriously makes me sick. Everyone claims they would have been the one to step in and save this little girl. Let's be realistic. If you see something on the street you will do whatever it takes not to get involved. And the grandmother stepping up to the plate? Forgive me if I'm cynical. She was that little girl's grandmother for seven years and didn't do anything. She's raging against the city for not doing anything. Meanwhile, she saw this going on all this time in her immediate family. If anyone is at fault, it is people like her.
While I do think that more people should have done more, they'll have to live with the guilt of what's happened - especially the family. The grandmother lived in the Puerto Rico, probably believed what her daughter told her (that she was happy and with a good man?)... I don't know. Even if the city improved its child welfare, I don't know how much more it could do - the problems run so deep, especially under the shield of a family.
IMO, It's a shame that it takes something like this to shake things up. I've no idea what the ACS case load was, but 47 days missing should have been one hell of a red flag...
Any reason why Marines were involved?
MT - well-put and not minimizing in the least. You're acknowledging that we all have the capacity to look the other way. I love the public outcry about ACS, especially from Republicans who love to cut social programs and who, seriously, would last about a day as a caseworker.
ACS is in a lose-lose situation. No matter how many kids you help out of an abusive situation, it only takes one bad case to make all the media. The quiet good cases never come up.
Plus, the agency has goals which fundamentally conflict. On one hand, they have a mandate to protect children. On the other hand, they do not want to take action on the basis of speculation, malicious false reports or authentic accidents because it is traumatic to the children to be puled out of their family. The result is deaths happen where the ACS has not yet had time to either verify a complaint or make an independant assesment. While these cases are tragic, they are also unavoidable as long as fallible humans are trying to do a difficult job while understraffed and underfunded.
The grandstanding and monday morning quarterbacking which surrounds these cases is disgusting. It's easy to kick an agency with a difficult or undoable job.
"The social service workers' union rep criticized the actions, saying that more training is needed, not suspensions."
Answer me this: When was the last time any union ever spoke up for the public rather than for their members? Goddamn shifty parasites.