Nine times, people told the state that Heaven Woods or her siblings were being abused or neglected, the last time just weeks before Heaven died of blows to her abdomen.
At the time of her death, the Division of Family and Children Services was supposedly investigating the latest complaint, lodged around the end of April with the agency’s Floyd County office.
Heaven's mother, Amanda Hendrickson, and the mother's boyfriend, Roderick Buckner, are charged with murder in her May 20 death.
Details of the case, which some advocates for children called a textbook example of ineffective casework, emerged from a summary released Tuesday by DFCS in response to an open records request from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“It is very, very concerning when a child dies when there is an open investigation. You can’t get any more wrong than that,” said Kenneth Joe, former director of the Fulton County DFCS office.
“It doesn’t sound like this investigation was being actively worked,” Joe said.
During the 30 days after an investigation starts, the investigator is supposed to talk to relatives, neighbors and others about the family’s life, he said. The case summary makes no mention of such activities.
DFCS is still analyzing how the case was handled, spokeswoman Ashley Fielding said Tuesday. “Director (Bobby) Cagle is still reviewing the case and deciding what action is appropriate,” she said.
On May 1, a caseworker visited the girl’s home in Floyd County after someone phoned to report that an adult had been seen kicking Heaven hard in the back as they walked down the street. The worker who visited saw no marks on her back but apparently did find other suspicious marks, the file suggests.
(Like all case files released by DFCS, it is so heavily redacted as to be almost indecipherable. All names and other identifying information are blacked out, including personal pronouns such as “he” and “hers” that would reveal the person’s gender. Also obscured are details of what caseworkers observed, including evidence of injuries.)
On May 20, an EMS unit in Monroe County responded to a call from Buckner’s home saying Heaven was unresponsive. An autopsy found that she died of blunt force trauma to the abdomen. It also revealed evidence of several other injuries, some fresh and some old.
According to the case summary, the first six complaints about Heaven’s family — which occurred from March 2009 to October 2011 — were screened out or assigned to “diversion” with no formal investigation. Diversion means the family is referred to a social service provider for help.
In one instance, the rationale cited for screening out a report from family members was that previous reports from them had been screened out. Heaven's parents are divorced, and although the file refers to complaints coming from one "side" of the family, it's not clear which one.
Tom Rawlings, former head of the Office of State Child Advocate, said DFCS workers do sometimes become pawns in intra-family squabbles, and they may reflexively discount complaints as a result.
“But in a situation where there is an accusation of serious abuse, it’s dangerous to do that,” Rawlings said. “You have to make sure there is a thorough investigation.”
Other complaints were screened out when the child who was the subject of the report — presumably Heaven — denied being abused.
After a complaint in September, 2012, the agency did initiate an investigation of the family. Reading between the redactions in the file, it appears that there was some physical evidence of abuse. But whomever DFCS questioned in the household (the logical inference is that it was Hendrickson) claimed that the injuries occurred at day care.
According to the next entry in the file, DFCS turned its attention to the day care center but found no evidence of wrongdoing there. The case was subsequently closed.
The report of the April 29 kicking incident came from someone characterized as a “staff member” (organization unspecified) who had enough contact with Heaven to have suspected that she was being mistreated. The file says that person had asked her about it on two occasions but “never got anything from the child to support a report being made.”
“The agency visited the child on 5/1/2014 at (redaction) home and observed (redaction) but no marks on (redaction) back. Photos were taken,” the file continues.
Heaven never returned to school after that visit, the file notes. Apparently, her mother moved her into Buckner’s home in Monroe County. After Heaven’s death, Hendrickson and/or Buckner claimed she had been staying with friends in the interval, but DFCS could not substantiate that claim.
Rawlings took issue for DFCS on several points, especially putting credence in Heaven’s denial that her mother had hit her.
“It concerns me that the investigator did not take into account the family’s long record of alleged physical abuse, and that the agency took the child’s denial on face value,” he said.
Rawlings questioned whether the interview was performed correctly. In such an instance, he said, it’s imperative to separate the child from the parent in order to make the child feel safe. Sometimes taking the child into a separate room is not enough — they need to be taken, at least temporarily, to a trustworthy relative, or to a doctor’s office or to a foster home.
“You can’t talk about what mom and dad did, with mom and dad nearby,” he said.
Hendrickson’s mother, Lisa Coursey, said her daughter hid the fact that she was repeatedly reported to DFCS.
“It’s still shocking to me,” said Coursey, who lives in Adairsville. “I didn’t know she had cases.”
She said Hendrickson had only mentioned DFCS visiting her once, in early May.
“She said they just looked at Heaven, made sure the place was clean, and they closed it out,” she said.
“They should have done more,” she said. “If they had all these cases, they should have done something.”
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