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Re: "Child's Murder Devastates Lesbian Couple," Nov. 3

Editor's Note: There has been a tremendous response to Cheryl Romo's story in the last issue of IN about the tragic death of 2-year-old Sarah Chavez who was taken out of a loving lesbian foster family and returned to her birth family, only to be murdered shortly thereafter. In the letter below, open government expert Terry Francke suggests that such deaths of children will continue unless state law is changed to allow "sunshine" to be cast on records now serving to "cover up" what led up to their deaths. IN has forwarded Francke's letter to Equality California and the California LGBT Caucus. -- News Editor Karen Ocamb

Cheryl Romo's story ("Child's Murder Devastates Lesbian Couple") about a child's unexplained death after being removed from her foster parents and returned to blood relatives (now arrested on suspicion of criminal responsibility) notes that County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky is looking into the incident. Please, let's ask that he urge someone to introduce a bill in Sacramento that strips secrecy rules away from juvenile court/child welfare records once a ward is found to have suffered a suspect injury. Our group, and I'm sure the California First Amendment Coalition, the California Newspaper Publishers Association and others would give it strong support.

Of all the unjustifiable secrecy laws and practices I've encountered in 25 years, those that surround this area are by far the very worst -- the only ones I can think of that directly enable the suffering and death of innocent people -- and children at that. The stated concern for the children's "privacy" is a cruel, perhaps even cynical shield for intolerable neglect. Imagine a row of little tombstones, each sub-epitaphed, "At least my privacy lives on."

"Postmortem" used to denote a searching examination of what caused a death, resulting in a public report that would help reduce avoidable risks in the future. Now, instead of a constructive uncovering of the facts, we are left with what can only be thought of as their cover-up.

Nothing that's done ad hoc about whomever's responsible for this child's death will make the slightest difference for other kids. The only systemic cure will be to make the care of a particular child observable by the whole community -- at least when those lumps, bruises and fractures start showing up. If it takes a village to raise a child, the village has got to know the child's fate in time to act.

Nobody's privacy is worth the death of a single youngster.

Terry Francke
General Counsel
Californians Aware
terry@calaware.org

We appreciate IN Los Angeles' examination of the tragic death of Sarah C. (Special Report, Issue 8.19), although, we would like to clarify the statistical information in this article that misrepresents the current state of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.

When Ms. Romo stated in her article that 11 children under the department's supervision were victims of homicide from January-September 2005, she failed to mention that 10 of these tragic deaths were not caused by foster or biological parents, but by random acts of violence including drive-by shootings. Six of these children were not under the supervision of the department at the time of their deaths.

In addition, the majority of the 70 deaths reported by Ms. Romo in that same nine-month period were children who do not currently have open cases with DCFS. The Department receives reports on all child deaths in Los Angeles County and incorporates all children who have come in contact with DCFS into its statistical record keeping.

Our priority as a child protection agency is to assure that abused and neglected children are with safe, stable, permanent families. We are working on initiatives that keep children in foster care safer, including improving our safety assessment tools, partnering public health nurses with social workers and implementing medical hubs to better service children. In the last two years, we have already decreased the abuse and/or neglect rate for foster youth by approximately 31 percent.

When a child dies in care it deeply affects all of us. Our hearts go out to everyone who loved Sarah C. We are working with law enforcement as they investigate this tragedy and are conducting our own investigation to find out what happened in this case to prevent other tragedies from happening. As we move forward, we will continue to depend on the gay and lesbian community to help us foster and adopt youth in need of loving homes.

Dr. David Sanders
Director
Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services

Cheryl Romo responds:

The question asked of the Department of Children and Family Services was how many children died while under the department's supervision since January 2005. Department spokesman Stuart Riskin told me on Oct. 25 that the only DCFS figures available were from January through the month of September. He said that 70 children had died from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30, not including Sarah Chavez or other children who also may have died during the month of October. Of that number, he said that 11 of the cases were homicides, 26 were of undetermined causes, there was one suicide, and the rest were victims of accidents or natural causes. While I appreciate the department director's concern, this was the information conveyed to me. No other information was offered. Personally, I find it disappointing to learn that children are still dying while being "protected" and that DCFS seems unwilling to tell the public who they were and what happened to them.