Journey Ann Cowart’s journey on earth was brief and harsh.
During her year of life, she endured injuries that appalled a veteran lawman and left a judge sleepless. Her death in January made two families second-guess what more they could have done.
Last summer, her mother’s uncle contacted the state with worries about Journey Ann. He reported that her mother, who was lacking as a parent, was possibly doing drugs and had disappeared with her infant daughter.
The worker from the Department of Family and Children Services never located the child and, according to court testimony, didn’t bother to create a case file.
This month, Georgia legislators passed a bill that will help shine more light on DFCS investigations in the deaths of children. State Rep. Christian Coomer, R- Cartersville, had written the bill before Journey Ann died; he put her name on it to personalize the legislation.
The Legislature acted after a series of articles in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution documented Georgia’s failure to adequately protect children from abuse or neglect.
But even as legislators worked to improve the system, one child after another was allegedly beaten to death or severely injured. Since Journey Ann’s death Jan. 21, three other young children in and around metro Atlanta have been killed and another hospitalized with life-threatening head injuries.
Journey Ann’s wounds, according to an autopsy, included a fractured skull and blunt-force trauma to the body. A leg and ribs had been broken months before and had healed. Her mother, Brandy Ann Boyd, 25, and her boyfriend, Austin Levi Payne, 25, have been charged with murder and remain without bond in Bartow County jail.
Samir Patel, Boyd’s lawyer, said she told investigators she did not hurt the baby. People who know Payne say the charges are out of character for him.
But Bartow County Sheriff Clark Millsap called the abuse “systematic” and said it’s the most troubling case he’s seen in 30 years of law enforcement.
Associate Juvenile Court Judge Jamie Averett had several sleepless nights after viewing photos of the dead baby and was so angry that she castigated DFCS from the bench: “It grieves this court significantly that (DFCS) failed Journey Cowart. I don’t think there’s any other way that can be said.”
Early misgivings
Journey Ann was born in January 2013 to Brandy Boyd and Richard Blake Cowart. The two parents came from industrious local families, but both of them were troubled. Boyd had a son four years earlier, but in the opinion of relatives, she never measured up as a mom. In fact, some family members, upon hearing of her second pregnancy, hoped among themselves that she’d give up the child for adoption.
Last April, Blake Cowart went missing from the couple’s residence on the banks of the Etowah River. Authorities were told Cowart had drug problems. His body was found a month later in the river. The sheriff said his death has no connection to his daughter’s.
Billy Boyd, Brandy’s grandfather, said Cowart’s death rattled his granddaughter and the family rarely saw her or the baby after that.
Mellodie Hunt, Cowart’s mother, said she often tried to get Brandy to bring the baby to her home. In early August, Hunt kept the baby for a few days, but then Brandy picked up her up and went missing.
On Aug. 9, Boyd posted “Gone!” on her Facebook page. She posted nothing more until Aug. 25, when she posted her cellphone number, asking friends to “hit me up.”
Almost immediately, Hunt, who was monitoring the page for information on her whereabouts, wrote on Boyd’s page asking if this was her new phone number.
Alarms raised
It was around then that Dale Boyd, Brandy’s uncle, went to DFCS asking the state to help find her and Journey Ann. He told the intake worker, Lucy Simpson, he thought Brandy was using drugs, had her seven-month-old baby with her and might be at her mother’s house. Boyd said he did not have an address but gave general directions where he thought his niece might be.
In a juvenile court hearing this month, Simpson said DFCS could not locate Brandy Boyd, that she never got more information from the family to locate her, and that she did not access other databases to find the mother and child. The notes from her meeting with Dale Boyd were shredded and burned, and the case was not entered into the department’s computer system.
“That’s not real helpful for the court,” Judge Averett tartly noted.
In mid-September, Brandy resurfaced.
“Out of the blue, she texted me,” said Hunt. “She said she needed diapers, formula and that Journey had no clothes. I think that’s when it started. That’s when I believe she went back on meth.”
That also would fit the time frame for broken bones that had re-healed, said Hunt, who said she never saw any signs of abuse.
“Never in a million years did I think she was abusing my granddaughter,” said Hunt, still replaying the past year, looking for clues that she and others missed. “I just thought Brandy was lazy. I just thought she was a sorry parent. It gave her power. She never worked. It gave her power over others, over me, because I’d give her money or clothes or food whenever she wanted it.”
Hunt said she saw the baby about a week before her death. On Saturday, Jan. 18, she planned a birthday party for Journey Ann at her home. The party was set for 2 p.m., but 30 minutes before, Brandy texted to say the baby wasn’t coming. Three days later, Journey Ann was brought to the hospital, where she died.
A judge’s verdict
Earlier this month, in a custody hearing concerning Boyd’s 5-year-old son, an angry Judge Averett tore into Boyd, saying “this is the worst case of child abuse this court has ever encountered,” a tape of the hearing shows.
She noted Boyd, who faces murder charges, invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked about “blunt force trauma on your child, whether or not you broke five ribs of your child, whether or not you inflicted trauma to cause anal bleeding, whether or not you bit this child, whether or not your boyfriend beat your child, whether or not you used methamphetamines.”
She continued: “You are either responsible for the death of your child, participated in the death of your child or failed to protect your child.”
Then she aimed at DFCS: ” I don’t know that there are words to describe the frustration that this court has for the complete failure of the department to make reasonable efforts” to find the child.
She noted that the agency made no attempt to follow up with family members who reported their fears, no efforts to run down addresses or phone numbers where Brandy might be staying, and that no report was filed.
If any of those things had been done, Averett concluded, “the court believes that we may not have a dead infant.”
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