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Deaths prove Nassau child services didn't do its job

Joye Brown

June 15, 2008

Nassau County's Child Protective Services unit bungled mightily its handling of a complaint against a New Cassel woman who police say drowned her three children, one by one, and posed their bodies resting together on her bed.

That much is clear from an internal county report issued by the county's commissioner of investigations.

But was that bungling the result of two caseworkers and a supervisor acting on their own? Or does incompetence in the unit, which is part of the county's Department of Social Services, run higher, or wider?

The 24-page report points the finger squarely at the workers and supervisor. And away from the two administrators appointed by Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi. That's to be expected, I suppose, from an investigator who works for Suozzi.

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But politics can't dilute the report's disturbing findings. Or negate the need for deeper scrutiny of CPS and its operations by Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice.

No one can say whether CPS could have saved 6-year-old Jewell Ward, 5-year-old Michael Demesyeux and 18-month-old Innocent Demesyeux. Providence had placed them with a mentally disturbed mother, who over the years had often-violent interactions with their fathers.

Two days before police say Leatrice Brewer drowned her daughter and two sons in a bathtub, her sons' father, also named Innocent, called the state child abuse hotline.

"Mother has mental health problems and delusions," according to a state worker's notes of their conversation. "Mother is threatening to put the children outside. Mother's mental state is placing the children at imminent risk of harm."

The notes included telephone numbers for the children's grandmother and their law guardian that the father had passed along.

That was at 12:26 p.m. on Feb. 22, a Friday.

The state quickly e-mailed the notes to Nassau's CPS unit, which talked to the father and then dispatched a day caseworker to the children's home. The neighbor said the family wasn't home. The caseworker didn't climb the stairs to their door to check, but she did leave a card with her telephone number.

That all happened somewhere between 2:15 and 3:30 p.m. that same day.

The investigation turned up something new for the timeline, a fact the caseworker never wrote down or told investigators: Brewer called the caseworker; the call lasted 90 seconds, according to the report.

That was at 4:18 p.m.

A night caseworker visited the home and found no one there, either.

That was at 7:39 p.m.

No one was assigned to return again that evening, although caseworkers worked until 11 p.m. No one was assigned to visit on Saturday (when seven caseworkers had 19 cases). And no one went early Sunday, either.

By then, it would have been too late. The children were drowned, and Nassau County police - who would bring trucks in to shield the three small bodies from photographers as they were carried from the house - were on the scene.

More than 48 hours had passed and CPS had no contact - other than the newly unearthed telephone call - with the mother? (Or with the children's grandmother, or their law guardian?) That looks like a violation of the state law that requires CPS to contact the mother within 24 hours of an abuse complaint.

Add to that the investigation's findings of erased e-mails, fudged time sheets, a part-time worker's taking the Fifth Amendment, and indications that a supervisor assigned no one to visit the children's home on Saturday - so he could give a part-time worker hours on Sunday - and the hairs on the back of the neck should stand.

"This is a very sad case, and the best we can do is learn from what happened here to try to do better in the future," Suozzi told me yesterday.

"There is only so much government can do to solve problems, but we have to try and do the best we can," he said. "Many people who work in this area do a great job and care about the people they serve."

But a bureaucracy can't care. It's supposed to do its job - in this case, to protect children. It failed Jewell, Michael and Innocent.