Jfcblog’s Blog

In August of 1994, ABC’s PrimeTime featured Texas CPS and three of Justice for Children’s cases in its lead story entitled, “A State of Neglect.” In November, TIME magazine ran a cover story on the murder of 6-year-old Elisa Izquierdo by her mom despite numerous prior reports.
The headlines are endless. We want to and often do turn away from them because they are too hard for us to face. But, they are a constant reminder that the problem of child abuse will not go away and is getting worse. And, they tell us that the institutions that we have funded and put in charge of addressing this problem continue to fail children in epidemic proportions. Since we know that all child abusers come from abusive backgrounds, by failing to timely intervene on behalf of these children, we are literally breeding a growing army of adults who continue the abuse and populate our prisons, homeless shelters, and public welfare rolls.
Yet, despite countless preventable deaths and local, state and national publicity about the failures at CPS, law enforcement, prosecutor’s offices, and our Family Courts, institutional progress has been slow, to say the least.
Justice for Children’s review of cases in Harris County reveals an incredible bureaucracy at work that processes cases but accomplishes little else. In our review of court records, we found in a recent one year period that of the roughly 70,000 reports of abuse and neglect to CPS, only 27,000 were deemed to be “bonafide” reports according to CPS involving 35,000 children at risk. Out of this population, CPS investigated only 15,000 cases involving 22,000 children and confirmed only 4,200 cases involving 6,000 children. Even more amazing, out of 1,600 charges accepted by the District Attorney’s Office, 1200 were later dismissed or the perpetrator given “deferred adjudication” which leaves only 400 child abusers that received any time in the jail or penitentiary — less than ½ of 1% of all reports of abuse and neglect made in our county that year. On top of this, The Houston Chronicle reported that the State Child Abuse Hotline failed to answer roughly 200,000 phone calls.
Fundamental to understanding why we are failing children is the fact that children who are victims of violent crimes are treated differently from all other crime victims. It is only in cases of crimes against children that we allow social workers lacking law enforcement training, experience, and priorities to receive the initial report of abuse, perform the initial investigation of the crime, and dictate the progress of the criminal case.

Randy Burton

Following Jesse’s death and a number of high profile child fatalities in Harris County, we convinced Senator Chet Brooks to convene statewide hearings into the problems at CPS. In February of 1989, following a year-long investigation, the Texas Senate Health and Human Services Committee published a highly critical report, which described CPS as an agency whose effectiveness and credibility had deteriorated to crisis levels. Later that same year, the Texas Performance Review Team recognized the inherent contradiction between the missions of child protection and family preservation in the same agency.
In 1994, this issue reached critical mass. After years of making the case for reform in testimony before Congress, state legislatures, and in the courtroom, we began to see the development of a national consensus that “family preservation” was responsible for placing countless children at risk. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll found that, “The USA overwhelmingly favors removing children from homes where they’re abused or neglected.” In April of that year, Newsweek featured a story entitled, “Why leave children with bad parents?”
Also in 1994, a year-long expose in the Chicago Tribune called “Killing our Children” sparked policy makers to review Illinois’ child welfare laws, particularly those making reunification of families a priority. In Chicago, as in Houston, the catalyst was the murder of a 3-year-old boy, Joseph Wallace, by his psychotic mother. This is his story:
In hindsight, everyone agrees that Joseph Wallace’s death was preventable and that he died because the system placed a parent’s rights above a child’s. Amanda [his mother] could never have been a “normal” parent. She had been a ward of the state since the age of 8, the victim of physical and sexual abuse. Yet 11 months after Joseph was born, a [CPS] caseworker and a public defender persuaded a Cook County juvenile court judge to give him back to Amanda, returning him from one of the six foster homes he would live in.
Over the next two years, caseworkers twice removed Joseph after Amanda attempted suicide. But a [CPS] report recommended that she and Joseph again be reunited. Based on this report, Joseph Wallace was sent home for the last time by a judge who had no measure of Amanda’s past.
On the last night of Joseph Wallace’s life, police say that Amanda Wallace was visiting relatives with 3-year-old Joseph and his 1-year-old brother, Joshua, when she began raving that Joseph was nothing but trouble and threatened to kill him. Amanda’s mother, Bonnie, offered to keep the boy overnight, but Amanda refused. So, Bonnie drove them to their apartment on Chicago’s impoverished West Side. It’s unclear what forced Amanda’s hand, but authorities tell a harrowing tale: at about 1:30 a.m., she stuffed a sock into Joseph’s mouth and secured it with medical tape. Then, she went into the kitchen, retrieved a brown extension cord and wrapped it around Joseph’s neck several times. She carried her son to the living room, stood him on a chair, and then looped the cord around the metal crank arm over the door. In the last act of his life, Joseph waved goodbye to his mother.

Randy Burton

According to the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, 3,000,000 new reports of child abuse or neglect are made every year, one report every ten seconds. On average, Children’s Protective Services, or “CPS,” confirms 1,000,000 of these cases; however, records show that 72% of all children who were confirmed as abused or neglected did not receive any follow-up assistance from CPS. Of those cases reported, an estimated 1,300 children die each year of abuse or neglect – most at their parent’s hands. 90% of those children were age five or younger. Almost half of these victims had a case with CPS. Many children who survive abuse are returned to dangerous homes only to be repeatedly victimized and cycle through the system.
These preventable child deaths and re-incidence of abuse are not merely the result of incompetency or excessive caseloads, but rather the direct and predictable consequence of a social agenda that has placed a higher priority on preserving the “family unit” and rehabilitating offenders than protecting children.
This agenda was derived from CPS’ parent, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. From the early 1900’s, the philosophy developed that it was more important to [QUOTE] “rescue the bad home for the child” than to “rescu[e] the child from the bad home”. While present day CPS has developed into a mammoth agency with numerous programs and agendas, the mission to “rescue the bad home” has remained the driving force behind this agency.
My introduction to this system began at the Harris County D.A.’s Office in the 1980s. It was there, as a young prosecutor, that I saw firsthand the results of leaving children with their abusive parents as part of CPS’ plan for the “family.” Besides the intimidation that led to the child’s refusal to testify, I learned about their re-abuse, and, occasionally, their death, and, decided to act. I collected evidence of the effects of this policy for over a year and submitted a report of my findings to our District Attorney, Johnny Holmes. As a result of this report, The Houston Post investigated the problems at CPS and, in May of 1987, published its findings in a series of articles entitled “Children Who Die: A System Failure.”
A few days after this series ended, the death of Jesse Wheeler brought home the point of these articles. His story reads like this:
In 1987, 2-year-old Jesse was ordered removed from a loving, foster family where he had lived since he was five months old. Although he was the youngest of the five Wheeler children in foster care, he alone was returned to his biological mother in accordance with the family preservation policy of CPS, despite knowledge by CPS and the Court that his mother had recently married a man who had been indicted for the rape of a 4-year-old.
Shortly after his return to his mother, a CPS caseworker observed bruises and black eyes on Jesse but decided to “work with family.” The police were not contacted. A few days later, Jesse was life-flighted to Texas Children’s Hospital where he died with his foster parents by his side. Police found a hole and hair in wood paneling where Jesse’s stepfather swung his little head into the wall for refusing to eat his pizza. A subsequent autopsy also revealed that Jesse had been sexually assaulted.
Like so many child murder cases, Jesse’s case involved evidence of ongoing abuse and neglect that was ignored by CPS. His death touched off a firestorm of adverse publicity for the agency and led to the formation of Justice for Children.

Randy Burton

It has been said that the Rule of Law has at least three meanings. First, the rule of law is a regulator of governmental power. Second, the rule of law means equality before the law. Third, the rule of law means procedural and formal justice. These precepts are things that we all take for granted. Yet, I submit to you that the most defenseless among us, the abused and neglected children of our society have been systematically denied both equal protection under the law and due process in the courtroom.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is an international convention establishing a basic template for the civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights of children. The Convention acknowledges that every child has certain basic rights, including the right to life, the right to his or her own name and identity, and the right to be protected from abuse or exploitation. The Convention also obliges signatory countries to provide separate legal representation for a child in any judicial dispute concerning their care, ask that the child’s viewpoint be heard in such cases, and act in the best interests of the child. This approach is fundamentally different from the common law approach found in many countries that treated children and wives as possessions or chattels.
193 countries are party to the Convention, including all the members of the United Nations with the exception of two: Somalia and the United States. The Bush administration explicitly stated its opposition to the treaty as follows:
“The Convention on the Rights of the Child may be a positive tool for promoting child welfare for those countries that have adopted it. But we believe the text goes too far when it asserts entitlements based on economic, social and cultural rights. … The human rights-based approach … poses significant problems as used in this text.”

It is shameful that the United States has not adopted this Convention. Besides the moral leadership which we should demonstrate on such matters, it signals to the international community that we do not value even the symbolic right of a child to be safe in their own home, much less seriously address this issue and commit the resources to this principle that it deserves. Do we honestly believe that our current system of governmental agencies, laws, and procedures works so well that it can stand no improvement?

Randy Burton