How Could You? Hall of Shame-CPS worker and Supervisor Rachel Qualls and Paul Kim Myers 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 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, “a  DHS child welfare worker and her supervisor have been charged with criminal wrongdoing after a police investigation into the 2013 death of a special-needs teenager.

Rachel Qualls and supervisor Paul Kim Myers were charged Friday in Oklahoma County District Court.

Both are accused of failing to properly investigate a sister’s concerns the boy was being neglected at his Oklahoma City home. The supervisor also is accused of falsifying computer records after the boy died in an attempt to cover up their failures.

The boy’s father, Michael David Wood, meanwhile, has been charged with child neglect.

Quinten Wood died Jan. 4, 2013, of acute pneumonia. He was 15.

Sister’s petition

His death attracted widespread attention when the sister, Valerie Wood-Harber, delivered a petition with more than 460,000 electronic signatures to the governor’s office in January.

The petition expressed “outrage at the dysfunction” in Oklahoma’s child welfare system.

“I called DHS 22 times in between the dates of Dec. 17, 2012, and Jan. 3, 2013,” the sister, who lives in Arkansas, said in January. “My reports of neglect went uninvestigated by DHS. They went unreported by his public school that he attended. I was told that I needed to mind my own business, that he was fine, when he was dying.”

The Oklahoma Department of Human Services in February announced it had initiated steps to fire the two employees. Both are now on paid leave.

“Unfortunately in this case, a thorough and comprehensive review of the facts and circumstances of Quinten’s death led us to the difficult and sad conclusion that the individual actions of two employees associated with this case clearly violated agency policies and reasonable child protection practices,” DHS Director Ed Lake said.

Qualls, 24, of Oklahoma City, is charged with a misdemeanor, willful neglect to perform a duty. She has worked at DHS since October 2011.

If convicted, she faces up to a year in jail.

Myers, 57, of Edmond, is charged with the same misdemeanor and also with a felony, unlawful use of a computer. He has worked at DHS since March 2007.

If convicted, he faces up to a year in jail on the misdemeanor and five years in prison on the computer crime.

Neither responded Sunday to messages left by phone for comment.

Quinten’s sister, Wood-Harber, said Sunday of the charges, “I think it’s very appropriate. I’m fully in support of the DA.”

Qualls admitted she never went to Quinten’s home after being assigned to investigate his sister’s concerns, police reported.

Quinten lived in a trailer house with a younger brother, Cameron, and their father.

The DHS worker did see Quinten at school in Midwest City on Dec. 19, 2012, two days after the sister first called. She also talked to his teachers and to Cameron, at school, records show.

She said she drove by the boy’s trailer that day but did not stop, records show. She also said she he never went back and never contacted the boy’s father.”

Oklahoma DHS worker, supervisor face criminal charges[The Oklahoman 3/17/14 by Nolan Clay]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

 

Update:”A former Department of Human Services child welfare supervisor has begun two years on probation for deleting information from computer records after a special-needs teenager died during an investigation.

Paul Kim Myers, 58, of Edmond, accepted a plea deal this month that makes him a convicted felon.

Prosecutors alleged he falsified DHS computer records to cover up his failures as a supervisor in an effort to save his job. He contended he was correcting mistakes.

“I did it without authorization or permission,” he wrote in a statement to the judge. “Whether my motives were pure or selfish or perhaps both in these particular circumstances, I know today that what I did was a crime.”

The teenager, Quinten Wood, died on Jan. 4, 2013, of acute pneumonia inside a filthy Oklahoma City trailer home. He was 15.

The boy died almost three weeks after DHS began an investigation into reports he and his younger brother, Cameron Wood, were being neglected by their father. The DHS child welfare specialist assigned to the case did see both boys at school but only drove by their trailer home and never went up to it.

She also never contacted the boys’ father.

The specialist, Rachel Qualls, 25, of Oklahoma City, was fired in March. She now is serving a year on probation for willful neglect to perform a duty of public trust.

Myers pleaded guilty Dec. 17 in Oklahoma County District Court to unlawful use of a computer network, a felony. He also pleaded guilty to willful neglect to perform a duty of public trust, a misdemeanor.

Myers was going to let the judge decide his punishment. His defense attorney, Bob Wyatt, already had asked the judge for a deferred sentence — a type of probation that would not leave him with a criminal conviction on his record.

Instead, Myers accepted a deal with prosecutors for a suspended sentence — a type of probation that does make him a convicted felon. He accepted the deal after corrections officials recommended in a report to the judge that he be incarcerated. His attorney said he did not want to risk going to prison.

He is banned from holding any job involving public trust while on probation. He was ordered to pay $100 in fines and $90 to a victims’ fund.

Sister’s petition

Quinten suffered from a rare chromosomal abnormality that left him unable to care for most basic needs. He wore diapers, needed help to eat and clean himself, and had the mental capacity of an infant or a toddler, records show.

His death attracted widespread attention when his sister, Valerie Wood-Harber, delivered a petition with more than 460,000 electronic signatures to the governor’s office in January.

The petition expressed “outrage at the dysfunction” in Oklahoma’s child welfare system.

I called DHS 22 times in between the dates of Dec. 17, 2012, and Jan. 3, 2013,” the sister, who lives in Arkansas, said in January. “My reports of neglect went uninvestigated by DHS.”

In his guilty plea, Myers admitted he failed to supervise Qualls properly and that he altered her official report on the computer network. In his statement to the judge, he claimed he had directed Qualls to conduct a home visit and to contact the father. He claimed he assumed she had followed his directive.

“I have no excuse for not following up on this investigation,” he wrote. “What those boys endured was horrible and should not have happened. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of what those boys went through.”

He also wrote he will never forget how DHS could have intervened and perhaps saved Quinten’s life.

In the statement to the judge, Myers specifically acknowledged that he deleted Qualls’ notes about her attempt at a home visit and about physical abuse Cameron had told her about in the interview at school.

“I…altered or deleted Rachel’s comments that the father threw the bowl of spaghetti at C.W.’s head and that the father disciplined him with choke holds,” he wrote. “I know that it seems I did this to protect my job. In the back of my mind, that may be true.”

Wood left DHS in April after seven years in the child welfare division. DHS officials said he was fired. He said he resigned.

In his termination letter, DHS said: “You directed a child welfare worker to input false documentation into a client’s record after learning of the client’s death; you were untruthful in answering questions in an official investigation; you deleted critical information from an official case file after learning of the death of that child; and you failed to ensure safety of children, provide appropriate oversight, properly supervise staff and provide guidance in a case of alleged abuse and neglect.”

Quinten’s sister said Tuesday she is satisfied with the outcome of Myers’ criminal case.

“The way I look at (it) is that he was held accountable. It wasn’t slipped under the rug,” Wood-Harber said. “He’s not going to be in a position where he can do that again….That’s the important thing. That’s the goal in all this — to keep it from happening again.”

Oklahoma City police described the trailer home as being in disarray.

“The boys lived with their father in a trailer filled with trash (and) animal feces scattered about,” a police detective reported in a court affidavit. “This residence seemed to be unsanitary for children and/or adults.”

The father, Michael David Wood, 48, of Midwest City, is charged with child neglect. His preliminary hearing is set for next week.”

Former Oklahoma Department of Human Services child welfare supervisor on probation for altering computer records after boy’s death[The Oklahoman 12/31/14 by Nolan Clay]