CPS Fail Illinois-Child Death-Gizzell Ford case UPDATED Now Lawsuit

“A Chicago woman is charged with viciously beating and strangling her 8-year old granddaughter.

A judge denied bond for Helen Ford, 51, Saturday morning. Gizzell Ford was found dead Friday in her home in the 5200 block of W. Adams. Her paternal grandmother was the primary care giver and her father is bed-ridden, prosecutors said.

Gizzell had bruises, burn marks, puncture wounds, and lacerations all over her body. Maggots hatched in untreated lacerations in her head, while she was still alive, prosecutors said. Police recovered evidence from the home including a pole, twine, and cables, some of which had blood on them.

Relatives on Gizzell’s mother’s side say her father was granted custody in November.  Gizzell’s aunt, Frances Mercado, says the family notified the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services  several times while they tried to regain custody of the child.

“The way they left her and killed her, they could have given her away to anybody and not destroyed her the way they did,” says Mercado.

A spokesperson for DCFS says the agency was not involved in the child custody case and has no record of prior abuse allegations involving Gizzell. Following her death, DCFS launched investigations into allegations of neglect and abuse against Gizzell’s father and her grandmother, Helen Ford. Two siblings in the home were placed into protective custody.

Relatives say Gizzell was very smart and loved to read. The 8-year old weighed only 30 pounds when she died, Mercado said.

The family is asking for donations to help with funeral expenses. For more information, log on to http://www.gofundme.com/3kvjg8”

Grandmother charged with girl’s murder; Report details horrific conditions

[WGN TV 7/15/13 by Gaynor Hall]

“he excuses started as far back as Easter. Relatives said there always seemed a reason why they couldn’t visit 8-year-old Gizzell Kiara Ford, who was living with her grandmother.

“Gizzell can’t talk, she’s in the shower or on punishment. It was an excuse every time we called,” said Gizzell’s uncle, Osvaldo J. Mercado.

On Sunday, Mercado and other relatives struggled with anger and disbelief as the grandmother, Helen M. Ford, 51, was charged with murder in the death of the little girl. Prosecutors accused Ford of strangling Gizzell on Friday, but they said the grandmother had been beating, cutting and burning Gizzell over a period of time.

Chicago firefighters found the girl’s body around 11 a.m. Friday, lying face up in a room with her bedridden father at Ford’s home in the 5200 block of West Adams Street, according to police and Assistant State’s Attorney Amanda Pillsbury.

The prosecutor said Gizzell had injuries old and new over her entire body: Cuts, bruises and scratches to her face, ears and lips, bruises and puncture wounds on her back, chest and abdomen and bruises on her arms and legs.

Her neck showed signs of hemorrhaging and fractures and broken cartilage, Pillsbury said. The girl also suffered deep lacerations to her buttocks and had ligature marks on her ankles and wrists, as well as circular burns on her body that may have been cigarette burns, Pillsbury said.

When they examined the home for evidence, police took a pole, twine and cables, some of them smeared with blood. In the bedroom where the girl was found, investigators found blood splattered near her body, Pillsbury said.

Investigators also determined that Gizzell had suffered trauma to her head long enough ago that maggots had hatched in the cuts and spread to the front of her scalp while she was still alive.

“Everybody is in shock,” said Mercado, 30, who lives in Schiller Park.

“We want justice and we want answers.”

Two of the girl’s brothers, 9 and 12, also lived in the home and have been placed in foster care, according to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. The agency said it is investigating both the grandmother and the father.

When the girl’s body was discovered, Ford told police that Gizzell had hurt herself because she was upset her mother was not visiting her. Ford said the girl would run into furniture and bang her head on things, according to a police report. The girl also told Helen Ford she was being abused by her mother’s boyfriend, the report said.

On Friday, according to the grandmother, the girl asked for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich around 11 a.m. While she was eating it, she couldn’t move and was “really sore,” Ford said, according to the report. The grandmother told her she needed to sit in a hot bath and when she gave her water to drink, the child stopped breathing, the police report said.

When police arrived, the child’s body was “cold,” according to the report.

Mercado, the girl’s uncle, said Gizzell was expected to go on a camping trip with an aunt on Friday but Ford would not allow her to go. “Helen blocked everybody,” he said.

Mercado said “Gizzy” was a smart, chatty girl who loved ribs.

“She was outgoing, she spoke to everybody. She had a brain, she had manners,” Mercado said. “It was like one big party when she got together with her cousins.””

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-grandmother-murder-girl-8-20130715,0,4895614.story

[Chicago Tribune 7/15/13 by Rosemary Regina Sobol and Geoff Ziezulewicz]

Update: “Police officers, community leaders and Austin residents gathered last week in the 5200 block of West Adams Street to remember Gizzell Ford, an 8-year-old girl whose death was ruled a homicide due to strangulation, multiple blunt injuries and child neglect, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner.

Gizzell was living with her grandmother Helen Ford and her father, who is bedridden, at the time she died, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Authorities have since charged Ford with murder and ordered her to be held without bail, according to the Cook County Sheriff’s office.

David Clarkin, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, said Helen Ford was under investigation for the possible neglect of Gizzell and two other relatives, who had also been living in the Austin home.

Clarkin said the state’s investigation began July 12 after police were called to the home and found Gizzell. He urged people to call the state’s hotline in they suspect any child is being abused or neglected.

“There are warning signs of child abuse or neglect, including never seeing the children,” Clarkin said. “And when you do see the children in warm weather, they’re wearing long sleeves to cover bruises and marks.”

During the July 18th vigil, about 20 attendees held hands and said a prayer in front of a memorial erected in Gizzell’s memory. Community members say they’re still in shock about the girl’s death.

An Austin resident who attended the 45-minute vigil and asked not to be named said she was acquainted with Ford but had no idea anything may have been amiss in the household.

Ford “walked up and down the block and spoke to everybody . . . That’s why it was such a shock. We knew there were two boys there, but we didn’t know the little girl was there.””

Austin residents remember 8-year-old girl

[Austin Talks 7/24/13 by Tatiana Walk-Morris]

Update 2:”The families of two deceased girls have filed wrongful-death lawsuits against the state’s child-welfare agency that accuses officials of missing obvious warning signs that the children had been placed with other relatives in abusive households.

The mother and maternal grandfather of 8-year-old Gizzell Ford — whom prosecutors say had been tortured in a garbage-strewn home on Chicago’s West Side before she died in July 2013 — sued the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services in Cook County Circuit Court late Friday. The paternal grandfather of 3-year-old Gina Presley, found dead in her aunt’s house in Oak Forest in March 2013, sued DCFS in federal court on April 30.

Gina’s case was profiled in a series of Chicago Sun-Times/WBEZ reports last year that found that the number of children dying while being investigated or monitored by DCFS had been on the rise.

 

Gina’s paternal grandfather, James Fountas, says in court filings that the girl’s maternal grandfather reached out to DCFS and the Oak Forest Police Department several times about Gina being abused by her legal guardian’s live-in boyfriend, Jessie B. Rodriguez.

Despite this, DCFS “took no meaningful steps to prevent further harm” to Gina, Fountas alleges.

Gina died of “blunt force trauma due to child abuse,” authorities concluded. Rodriguez has been charged with murder and is awaiting trial.

Fountas’ case against the Oak Forest Police Department, which denies wrongdoing, is pending. But lawyers for DCFS argued they can’t be sued in federal court because the state has “sovereign immunity,” so Fountas’ lawyers dropped their suit against DCFS last month so they can sue the agency in the Illinois Court of Claims, said Angela Kurtz, one of Fountas’ lawyers.

Gizzell’s mother, Sandra Mercado, and maternal grandfather, Juan Mercado, claim a child-welfare caseworker visited the Austin home where the straight-A student had been living with her father, Andre Ford, and paternal grandmother, Helen Ford, weeks before she died, according to their lawsuit. Three weeks before she died, a child-abuse pediatrician identified what “looked like a healing loop mark” over Gizzell’s buttocks but didn’t report the mark and findings, which were available to DCFS officials, the lawsuit also claims.

“How the very people who are supposed to protect children could visit that home, find obvious signs of abuse and leave my granddaughter to suffer and die, I’ll never know,” said Juan Mercado in a statement released Monday by his lawyer, Martin Dolan. “We want justice for Gizzy and for all our children by making sure something as horrific as this never happens again.”

A DCFS spokesman said the agency cannot comment on pending litigation. Both Andre Ford and Helen Ford have been charged with murder.”

Families of two dead girls file lawsuits against DCFS[Chicago Sun times 7/14/14 by Chris Fusco]

Update 3:”A Chicago man awaiting trial in the violent death of his 8-year-old daughter died this morning of an apparent heart attack, sheriff’s officials said.

Andre Ford, 29, was pronounced dead shortly before 9 a.m. in the medical unit of Cook County Jail.

Ford and his mother, Helen Ford, 52, have been held without bail since the death of Gizzell, whose battered body was found in her grandmother’s Austin apartment in July 2013.  The child had been beaten and strangled, authorities said.

Charged with murder in her death, Ford and his mother were due in court again Sept. 10. Both have pleaded not guilty.

A Cook County judge had awarded custody of Gizzell to her disabled father just eight months before her death.

“He has been in poor health since his admission to the jail and has spent considerable time between the jail and (the hospital) during his time in custody,” said Cara Smith, the jail’s executive director.

A 2013 Tribune investigation into Gizzell’s death found that an investigator with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services failed to spot signs of trouble after visiting the apartment one month before the child’s death.

The newspaper also disclosed that a respected child abuse doctor who examined Gizzell weeks before her death had questioned the grandmother about a suspicious injury on the child’s buttocks. But he did not call the DCFS hotline, according to agency reports.

The only government intervention in the girl’s short life came eight months before her death when a Cook County judge awarded temporary custody to Andre Ford, an unemployed felon who lived with his mother and used a wheelchair due to his debilitating illness.

The child’s mother, Sandra Mercado, recently filed a lawsuit accusing DCFS and the doctor of failing to protect Gizzell.

Anger over the girl’s death sparked a legislative hearing in winter 2013 in which DCFS disclosed it made mistakes in recording statistics related for child maltreatment deaths”

Man held in daughter’s death dies of heart attack: authorities[Chicago Tribune 8/19/14 by Christy Gutkowski]