EPIC Fail Florida DCF

Years ago, William DeJesus had his parental rights from a prior marriage severed in New York. Fast forward to 2007, when he and Deanna Beauchamp were raising two boys in Florida. Jeshiah was 4, and suffered from autism. His brother was 2, and was also being tested for a developmental disability.”

“DCF’s child-abuse hotline received a report on Sept. 18, 2007. During a drinking binge, DeJesus had choked his wife, and punched his children’s bedroom door, leaving a hole. And it wasn’t the first time:

An investigator noted the couple had placed a picture of the children over an older hole in the children’s bedroom wall.

A police report on the incident said DeJesus had a handgun on the couch when officers arrived. Beauchamp was crying. “Thank you, thank you,” she said. “You saved me.”

The abuse had gone on, Beauchamp said, for eight years, and she showed an investigator scars to prove it. Beauchamp said DeJesus had stabbed her, punched her in the stomach, causing a miscarriage, and pushed her in the bathtub, leading to a back injury.

DCF filed a dependency petition in court, asking a judge to order the family to accept the agency’s help and supervision, but the children were not taken into protective custody. “There is no evidence of physical or sexual abuse to the children, nor is any suspected,” an investigator wrote.

But the evidence soon followed. In February 2008, after Beauchamp left DeJesus and went to a domestic-violence shelter, she told authorities that both parents had been molesting the children, both in New York, where they had lived previously, and in Florida.

DeJesus, she said, “had been fondling the children for a long time,” a report said. “She stated that he had told her that his family had shown their love by touching the children’s privates. The mother stated that the father would touch the children every other day when the children had their Pampers off. The mother also disclosed that the children’s father told her to touch the children, and she states that it did not feel right, but she did it anyway because she loves her children. He had made her believe that this was the way to show the children their love.”

And, she told investigators, there was another reason she molested her own children: “She was afraid William would kill her if she refused.”

When asked if he had evidence Jeshiah had been sexually abused, the boy’s psychiatrist said he had once pulled his pants down in a waiting room and fondled himself.

A child-abuse investigator took custody of the two boys immediately.

While the children were in foster care, new allegations arose. A therapist and a court-appointed guardian both reported seeing DeJesus repeatedly touch the boys between their legs while engaging in “rough” play during a supervised visit on May 26, 2009. The younger boy disclosed that his father had hurt him and touched “his pee pee,” records say, but investigators wrote they could not be certain whether that touching occurred during the May visit, or sometime in the past.

But the agency soon confronted a serious obstacle: Beauchamp was once again living with DeJesus and she now recanted the molestation allegations.

Beauchamp insisted authorities had been able to manipulate her into making the earlier statement because her husband “was not present to protect her.”

Records provided to The Herald do not make clear why the children were returned to Beauchamp and DeJesus, but a July 2009 notation in the file says the agency required “clear and convincing evidence” that the parents were unfit, and such evidence was “not present.”

Follick, the agency spokesman, said: “We took the steps necessary to remove the children from the house, and the mother recanted her accusations. At that point in the process, there were no physical signs of abuse with the children….Within the bounds of the law, there were no grounds to remove the children at that point.”

The boys’ foster parents were outraged, telling case workers “the department does not care about the children and are just concerned about saving money.”

Having decided to reunite the family, child welfare administrators and a judge in Daytona Beach, where the family was living at the time, turned to another thorny question: how to begin visitation as the children transitioned back to their parents. A therapist for the boys testified in court that the children’s odd behavior did not result from their disabilities, but “was due to severe abuse and neglect.” She also warned that “exposing” the boys to their parents again would be “traumatic for them.”

For the next two years, though, the couple was given, first, supervised visits with the children, and, later, unsupervised contact while they completed parenting classes and counseling.

When the visits began, there were, once again, troubling signs: In August 2009, the younger boy told his foster mother that the “Monster” was going to kill him. The younger boy experienced a “significant decline” in his behavior. Both a therapist and court-appointed guardian reported the two children were “terrified” of their father — and the younger boy appeared to be afraid of all men. The younger boy began touching himself inappropriately after the visits began. And Jeshiah took all his clothes off at an after-school program in May 2010.

During the three-year separation, DeJesus became anxious, as well. He told a case manager in July 2009 he was worried that his children were “lacking affection.” He cried during a visit with the children when he noticed the younger boy’s hands were “chapped” from cold weather. He told a caseworker in April 2010 he would complain to the presiding judge because “he felt like it was taking too long for the children to come home.”

DCF ended its involvement with the family on Dec. 20, 2010. An Oct. 9, 2010, notation said the couple was receiving help to cope with the boys’ “tantrums and manipulations.”

“They show love for the children,” a worker wrote Oct. 29, 2010.”

Heinous Ending

“Two weeks ago, the 41-year-old Broward man drove his family to a Deerfield Beach trailer home, killed the occupant, and held police at bay for seven hours while he stabbed each member of his family before killing himself. DeJesus’ oldest son, 9-year-old Jeshiah, was pronounced dead at the scene; born disabled, he had never uttered a word in his short life. His brother, 7, was hospitalized with a knife blade stuck in his head.

He remained impaled for a day before a surgeon could remove it. Both he and his mother, Deanna Beauchamp, 37, are now recovering.

In the weeks since Jeshiah’s death, Broward Sheriff’s Office detectives have tried to figure out both why DeJesus chose to “execute” the man in the quiet Broward neighborhood and why he tried to wipe out his own family.”

“The inquiry centers on a petition the Department of Children & Families filed — and later withdrew — seeking to permanently sever the rights of DeJesus and Beauchamp to their young sons.”

Florida boys returned by DCF to parents are stabbed by dad
[Bradenton Herald 2/22/12 by Carol Marbin Miller/Miami Herald]

REFORM Puzzle Piece