How Could You? Hall of Shame – Marchella Brett-Pierce case-Child Death UPDATED
This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.
From Brooklyn, New York, “Child welfare workers have been charged in connection with the death of an emaciated four-year-old girl who was repeatedly starved, beaten and drugged and weighed only 18 pounds when she died.”
Though 4-year-old Marchella’s mother, Carlotta, is accused of “tying Marchella to her bed, beating her with a belt and video casette tape, depriving her of food and water, and force-feeding her medication including Claritin and a generic form of Benadryl, “the girl’s grandmother Loretta Brett has been charged with manslaughter for failing to intervene in the September 2010 death of Marchella.
Also, in a first-of-its-kind case “New York Administration for Children’s Services caseworker Damon Adams and his former supervisor Chereece Bell, were both charged with criminally negligent homicide, official misconduct and endangering the welfare of a child.” They were contracted to assist the family but failed to recognized or ignored signs that the mother was unable to care for the child. Furthermore, the “report also expressed doubts that child welfare workers made visits to the home that they said they had made. Adams is also being charged with the tampering of public records and falsifying business records, as it was found he postdated an entry to make it appear as though he had visited the Brett-Pierce family when he had not.” The supervisor is charged with neglecting to oversee his work. Both face 4 to 7 years in prison.
It is refreshing to see that there may be some true accountability!
Child care workers charged with negligent homicide over death of emaciated toddler who was beaten, starved and drugged
[Daily Mail 3/23/11]
Update: On Marchella’s abuse: “According to prosecutors, Marchella’s mother tied her to her bed, beat her with a belt and a videocassette tape, deprived her of food and water, and force-fed her medication. Marchella died on Sept. 2 of child abuse syndrome, along with acute drug poisoning, blunt impact injuries, malnutrition and dehydration, prosecutors said.
Her life had never been easy. She was born more than three months prematurely, with underdeveloped lungs, and had spent most of her four years in hospitals. She returned home in February 2010, with a tracheal tube to help her breathing. The city became involved in her home life the previous month, when Ms. Brett-Pierce gave birth to a son and was found to have drugs in her system. ”
On the grandmother’s involvement: “Ms. Kagan, the prosecutor, said that Ms. Brett had acted as a second parent to Marchella — her father was not involved in the family — and that she had acknowledged to the police that Marchella had been bound regularly since May, “basically day and night,” by her hands and feet. Ms. Brett has tried to get custody of her daughter’s other two children — the infant and a 5-year-old boy — though she has tested positive for marijuana use, Ms. Kagan said. Those boys have been removed from the home
On the caseworker specifics: “Prosecutors said agency workers indicated “significant concerns” a year ago after Marchella’s mother, Carlotta Brett-Pierce, who had a history of drug abuse, left her alone in an emergency room and acted inappropriately.
Between then and the child’s death half a year later, Mr. Adams made two entries in agency computers, recording a phone call in March and an attempted home visit in June. After her death, he made five entries, saying that he had had contact with the family in March, April, June and August, and that in August he had observed her head, neck and torso and had seen no changes from previous visits. ”
“Jacqueline Kagan, a prosecutor, said at Mr. Adams’s arraignment on Wednesday that signs of malnourishment would have been obvious by then, and that the entries had been falsified. Even if he had made the visits, she said, they would have been insufficient, because biweekly visits were required.
After Marchella’s death, Ms. Bell made several entries saying she had met with Mr. Adams on the case, prosecutors said.”
Welfare Worker and Supervisor Charged in Death of Child
[The New York Times 3/24/11 by Mosi Secret]
Update 2: “The Administration of Children’s Services supervisor accused of criminally negligent homicide in the death of a Brooklyn toddler asked a judge Wednesday to toss the charge, with her lawyer arguing the law is being misused.”
“The judge will make her ruling when Bell is back in court June 1.”
Caseworker accused of negligent homicide in death of 4-year-old asks judge to toss charge
[New York Daily News 5/4/11 by Oren Yaniv]
REFORM Puzzle Piece
Update 3: “The autopsy photos show a horribly emaciated girl, ribs almost poking through her skin, cheeks deeply sunken, with abrasions on her ankles and bruises on her face. When the police had stepped inside the family’s apartment early that morning, they’d found her already dead, lying in the same bedroom where a SpongeBob toddler bed stood with ropes tied to each end. There was a jump rope attached to the head of the bed, dark twine at the bottom.
According to a police report, the mother admitted she’d tied down her daughter the day before because she wouldn’t take a nap: “She was acting crazy and her little ass was wilding out.” Prosecutors later accused the mother of also force-feeding her daughter Benadryl and Claritin, beating her with a belt and a DVD case, and depriving her of food. Marchella had weighed 26 pounds when she returned to her family in February. When she died seven months later, she weighed just eighteen pounds.
Carlotta Brett-Pierce was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. (Later, the girl’s grandmother Loretta Brett would be arrested too and charged with manslaughter.) At the same time, the higher-ups at ACS launched their own investigation. But when they went into the computer system to find out what their workers had been doing, they found almost nothing—just a couple brief entries from the caseworker and no notes from the supervisor.
It was every ACS worker’s worst nightmare: A child dies on your caseload, the bosses comb through the file and find it seriously lacking. Or, as in this case, nearly nonexistent. Everybody knows that when a child dies, all that matters is what actions you recorded in the central computer system—not what actions you may have taken. The agency’s unofficial mantra: “If it’s not documented, it didn’t happen.”
“As soon as she heard the news about Marchella’s death, Bell called Adams. “Of course I was absolutely hysterical,” she says. “We were both crying. We cried the whole day.” Within hours, the two were interrogated by their bosses—and the interrogation continued over the next few days. Adams said he had gone to Marchella’s home on March 3, April 6, June 9, July 23, and August 12, although he had not entered notes for these visits into the computer. Bell produced a spiral notebook with just a few handwritten notes about the case.
As it turned out, the outside agency that was supposed to be monitoring Marchella’s family had failed to make all its required visits, too. It had lost its contract with ACS three months earlier because of “performance issues,” according to a subsequent report. Instead of transferring the family’s case directly to another outside agency for monitoring, ACS’s managers had kept it in the overtaxed Hospital Unit.
But no matter what explanations Bell could offer, she knew it was only a matter of time until she was out of a job. As the agency saying goes, “You’re only as good as your last case.” And this case—a horrific death that had made the news, combined with no notes in the computer—was a career-killer, no matter how well respected a supervisor she might be. What she never could have anticipated—what she never could have imagined, since it had never happened before—was that she’d end up being arrested, too, imprisoned along with Marchella’s mother and grandmother in the women’s jail on Rikers Island.”
“Meanwhile, Bell’s life remains in limbo. It’s hard to make plans for the future when you don’t know if you’re going to prison. No trial date has been set, and her case could crawl along for another year. This past spring [2011], she graduated with a master’s degree in psychology from Long Island University. Now she’s swimming in student loans, worrying about whether she’ll ever be able to get a job in this field. She still talks to friends at 185 Marcy, and not long ago, she heard that the Hospital Unit there finally got what she always needed: a Sup 1″
[New York Magazine 9/11/11 ]
“The monster mom convicted of abusing and starving her little daughter to death was sentenced to 32 years to life in prison Wednesday — but not before she claimed she was a good parent.
“I want people to see I’m a loving and caring mother of three,” Carlotta Brett Pierce, 32, said, referring to her 4-year-old girl — who died with only a kernel of corn in her belly — and her two surviving sons who are now in foster care.
“By no means am I a malicious or vindictive person.”
“DiMango also gave the maximum sentence to the tot’s grandmother Loretta Brett, 57, who was convicted of manslaughter for failing to prevent the death.The grandma, who slept in the same room as Marchella, was sent upstate for 5 to 15 years.”
Monster mom of 4-year-old Marchella Brett Pierce gets max sentence of 32 years to life in prison
“The case against Chereece Bell and Damon Adams, two child welfare workers accused of homicide in the 2010 death of a New York City child, will head back to court this summer [2013]. The case is believed by many to be the first in which caseworkers stand criminally responsible for the death of a child known to the system.There is fear among some child welfare leaders that convictions of the two caseworkers could create a precedent that threatens caseworker recruitment and push abuse and neglect investigators to rely more on foster care placements.
“I don’t know of anyone knowledgeable about the system who supports these prosecutions,” said Mike Arsham, executive director of the New York-based Child Welfare Organizing Project.
Conviction of either worker will have a “chilling effect on the recruitment and retention of child welfare workers,” said Yolanda Tumarejo, executive vice president of the New York Social Service Employees Union Local 371, which represents Bell and Adams.
That is a concern shared by Administration for Children, Youth and Families Commissioner Bryan Samuels, one of President Barack Obama’s top appointed official on child welfare.
“The child welfare system in this country struggles to find good people and struggles to keep good people,” Samuels told Chronicle of Social Change Editor-in-Chief John Kelly during a 2011 interview, just after Bell and Adams had been indicted. “When you have something like what happened in New York happen, it has a chilling effect on a system’s ability to get and keep good people.”
The two workers are charged with criminally negligent homicide in the death of four-year-old Marchella Pierce.
The charges arose when Marchella, a child whose case was being monitored by the New York Administration for Children’s Services, was found dead in her home in September 2010. She was severely underweight, and had 60 doses of Claritin and 30 doses of Benadryl in her system.
Marchella’s mother, Carlotta Brett-Pierce, was convicted in 2012 and sentenced to 25 years to life for the murder. Marchella’s grandmother, Loretta Brett, was convicted of manslaughter.
The moment is near for the continued proceedings of Bell and Adams. The next step in the process will be a preliminary hearing on June 21, 2013. Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes has charged the ACS workers with multiple charges alongside the top charge of criminally negligent homicide, a charge predicated on the assumption that both workers could have anticipated the outcome of Marchella’s death and neglected to take steps toward protecting her.
Hynes, who has served as D.A. of Brooklyn for the past 23 years, said the workers falsified documents to cover up potential missteps in the case work.
The union is “outraged that the D.A. is moving forward with the charges” against the workers, Tumarejo said. She said the case reflects “grey” systemic issues with the child welfare process in places where rising caseloads and numerous other factors impact the ability of child welfare workers.
When asked to describe these systemic problems, Tumarejo and Shirley Gray, executive assistant of Local 371, both noted the same issue of high caseloads, as well as further demands for administrative work.
The job is now “more paperwork than social work,” Gray said, resulting in high levels of stress for child welfare workers and less time spent on cases. Tumarejo targets the amount of paperwork, coupled with technology that does not meet the needs of ACS workers, as a significant barrier to worker success.
Arsham said CWOP, which exists to help families advocate for themselves when they’re accused of abuse and neglect, opposes the prosecution in this case because it could drive decision making against parents.
“Falsifying case records is against the law,” Arsham said. “Prosecute them for that. Unnecessary removals of children from their families seem more likely if workers fear they may face criminal charges due to failure to remove.”
New York paper The Village Voice ran a scathing critique of Hynes in January of 2013, including comments from union leaders and anonymous sources close to the Marchella Pierce case, all of which suggested the Hynes was prosecuting the two caseworkers for political gain.
Hynes, in a letter responding to the Voice article, dismissed that notion:
“The only people who accused me of politics in this case have been the defendants themselves and the union that represents them.
…ACS workers complain they are afraid that if they fail to properly do their job and a child is killed, they could be held responsible. If they fail to do their jobs properly and as a direct result a child dies, they will be held criminally responsible, especially if they falsify records to cover their wrongdoing. This case should be and will be resolved in a Court of Law.”
Arsham said that might be the appropriate view if a child died in foster care with circumstances similar to Marchella.
“When the state presumes to take custody of a child for protective reasons, isn’t there a heightened obligation to provide a safer setting than that from which the child was removed?” Arsham said. “Depending upon the specifics, CWOP members might see this as calling for some serious criminal charges.””
Update 4:”A popular judge credited with clearing much of the criminal case backlog in the Bronx returned to her Brooklyn stomping grounds for a day, ironically to preside over an adjournment in her biggest case.Supreme Court Justice Patricia DiMango, wearing a summery violet dress, was greeted with hugs and waves from court personnel Tuesday as she took the bench in Brooklyn Supreme Court in the case of two Administration of Children’s Services workers charged with negligent homicide in the 2010 death of a 4-year-old girl.
She has been on loan to the Bronx courts for the past 8 months to headline a “SWAT Team” of judges tasked with alleviating persistent delays.
Since January, she has negotiated deals in close to 700 misdemeanor and felony cases, she said. The stockpile of old, unresolved cases has been cut by nearly a half, according to court officials.
Tanned and blond, the 50-something-old judge is known for her brash, take-no-prisoners style. Unlike most jurists, she often talks directly with suspects and, sometimes, their relatives.
“I do exactly what I did here, which is hearing both sides of the case in detail,” DiMango told the Daily News. “My strength is that I convey it to the defendants in a way that they hear it.”
The Bronx still has more cases that are two years or older than all other boroughs combined, data shows, but DiMango said the culture of deferment is slowly changing.
She returned to Brooklyn to do something she rarely does in her new assignment: Push back a case by a couple of months.
It involves the first time in state history that caseworkers at the Administration of Children’s Services were charged in the death of a child. Damon Adams and Chereece Bell have been waiting for nearly two and a half years for their day in court, but their case won’t be tried before winter.
The case was pushed back to October after prosecutors turned over emails, investigation notes and other material.
But the main reason for the lengthy hold-up, sources said, is an investigative grand jury that has been looking into systemic failures in ACS and can potentially implicate higher-ups in the city agency.
A judge is currently reviewing the findings of the panel,” said a law enforcement source.
“I wanted to make sure that everybody was okay with what is going on; to let everybody see it wasn’t a delay without a purpose,” DiMango said of her decision to make a one-day trip to her home borough.
The outcome of the case, she added, “Will really have an impact on so many employees and their agencies.”
She presided over the trial of the girl’s mother and grandmother – who were convicted of killing 4-year-old Marchella Brett Pierce by starving and drugging the little girl to death in September 2010.
She also wrote a 22-page decision sustaining the controversial indictment against the former ACS employees who stand accused of failing to prevent the tragedy. A conviction, critics said, can have a chilling effect on workers who deal with life-or-death situations.
Bell’s defense attorney Joshua Horowitz said that even though his client has been out of a job with a felony hanging over her head, they accepted a delay to review new discovery papers.
“She thinks they all point to her innocence,” he said. “We look forward to clearing her name.”
After the hearing was over, DiMango was enjoying her brief Brooklyn comeback.
“It’s like going home,” she said. “It’s nice to feel welcome.”
Perhaps a victim of her own success, the judge, who was appointed to the bench in 1995, will remain in the Bronx indefinitely and didn’t know when she would return full-time.
“I was told initially six months,” she said, “but, as you can see, I’m still there.””
The employees, Damon T. Adams, a caseworker with the Administration for Children’s Services, and Chereece M. Bell, his supervisor, were initially indicted on charges of criminally negligent homicide, a felony, in the death of the girl, Marchella Pierce. But under the agreement with the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, all charges will probably be dismissed.
The pleas mark the final chapter of a tragic case that outraged the city, focused a new light on a troubled agency and on the district attorney’s office, which, for the first time, filed homicide charges against caseworkers for the death of a child under their supervision.
Under the agreement, Mr. Adams pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts of falsifying business records, official misconduct and endangering the welfare of a child, and an additional count of disorderly conduct, which is a violation, not a crime. Ms. Bell pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child and a disorderly conduct violation. If Mr. Adams and Ms. Bell fulfill community service requirements and avoid arrest for a year, the misdemeanors and violations will be dismissed and the cases sealed.
A lawyer for Mr. Adams, Anthony Grandinette, called the pleas a “fiction to accomplish a goal” and “a little bit of saving face” on the part of the district attorney’s office. Mr. Adams noted that he was “definitely relieved,” but added that the real tragedy was with Marchella’s family. Ms. Bell declined to comment, but her lawyer, Joshua Horowitz, said the caseworkers had been singled out and the results were a “tremendous vindication.” He called the original charges an abomination.
The district attorney’s office declined to comment.
In September 2010, the police found Marchella, who was sick most of her short life, in her apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, after her mother called 911 and reported that she was unresponsive. She weighed just 19 pounds, half of what doctors said she should have weighed, and was covered with bruises and marks indicating she had been tied up. An autopsy later found that she had dozens of adult doses of Claritin and Benadryl in her system.
Prosecutors charged her mother, Carlotta Brett-Pierce, with murder, and her grandmother, Loretta Brett, who helped care for Marchella, with manslaughter; each was convicted at trial. Ms. Brett-Pierce is serving a sentence of 32 years to life and Ms. Brett is serving up to 15 years.
The troubled family, plagued by drug abuse, was known to the city, and Mr. Adams was supposed to regularly check on Marchella. After her death, agency records revealed that Mr. Adams had missed visits and lied about making them, entering false notes in the agency computer system. Ms. Bell, his supervisor, failed to catch the lapses, prosecutors said.
In March 2011, Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, announced an indictment against them on felony homicide charges, a move that provoked outcry and protests from other caseworkers and their union, who said that Mr. Adams and Ms. Bell were being used as scapegoats. Mr. Hynes also announced a grand jury investigation into “evidence of alleged systemic failures” at the Administration for Children’s Services.
The grand jury released a 102-page report in October laying much of the blame for the deaths of Marchella and 18 other children since 2007 on the agency, saying that it needed to hire workers in sufficient numbers, rigorously train them and provide them with resources and supervision so that they could protect children.
In State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Tuesday, a prosecutor, Jacqueline Kagan, said the offer was predicated on the grand jury’s findings and the willingness of Mr. Adams and Ms. Bell to accept responsibility. “While the D.A. maintains one’s workplace makes it easier to commit a crime, it is still an individual’s responsibility when they commit that crime,” Ms. Kagan said.
Justice Patricia M. DiMango, who has presided over the case, turned first to Mr. Adams and asked if he was pleading guilty to each of the charges. He said yes to each question, clenching his jaw each time. When the question was repeated to Ms. Bell, she sat silent for several seconds. So Justice DiMango asked again, and Ms. Bell quietly answered yes.”
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