A little more than two months before 10-year-old Emani Moss was starved to death, allegedly at the hands of her father and stepmother, a friend of the family placed a call to child welfare officials.
Emani, the anonymous tipster reported, appeared “very slim” and emotionally distant. Her stepmother, Tiffany Moss, rarely mentioned her except to say, “There is something wrong with her,” while lavishing attention on Emani’s younger siblings, the tipster reported.
Emani’s emaciated, burned body was found stuffed in a trash earlier this month outside the Lawrenceville apartment where the family had lived since August. Tiffany Moss and the girl’s father, Eman Moss, have been charged with her murder.
The deaths of Emani and 12-year-old Eric Forbes, allegedly killed by his father in October following four reports of suspected abuse to the Cobb County DFCS, prompted Gov. Nathan Deal to propose spending $27 million over three years to hire 525 new child protection workers. Child welfare experts agree the agency needs reinforcements. But those who’ve reviewed the cases of Emani and Eric say it's doubtful additional resources would’ve saved their lives, pointing instead to insufficient DFCS protocols, workers not following the standards that do exist, a lack of training for staff members and bad judgment.
“In these cases, the people making the decisions had either the wrong priorities in mind or didn’t understand what constitutes child abuse,” said attorney Tom Rawlings, who served as the state’s child advocate from 2007-10. “A lot of what is done is a matter of good social work practices not being followed.”
That led to several missed opportunities in Emani’s case, he said.
The anonymous tipster’s call was the second time the Division of Family and Children Services had received a report from someone concerned about Emani’s welfare. Before, in 2010, the agency temporarily removed the girl from the home after substantiating allegations that Tiffany Moss had abused her stepdaughter with a belt. Moss eventually pleaded guilty and was placed on five years probation.
Both times, DFCS workers consulted the girl’s case history yet dismissed the allegations without interviewing the alleged victim or paying a visit to her home, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned after reviewing the DFCS file on Emani Moss. Among the reasons listed for dismissing the Aug. 2013 complaint: DFCS didn’t know where the Mosses were living.
In July 2012, Emani twice ran away from home. She was returned both times because Gwinnett County police officers didn’t spot any significant marks or abrasions.
“Whenever you have a girl that young running away, something’s wrong,” said Melissa Carter, director of Emory University’s Barton Child Law and Policy Center. “
The police reports didn’t go to DFCS. And the officers who returned Emani to her father and stepmother didn’t know about the May 2012 complaint. It’s unclear whether they were aware Tiffany Moss was on probation for child cruelty, though law enforcement has access to criminal history.
Fixing Georgia’s child protection system — under fire since the 1980s — goes well beyond the DFCS, said psychologist Sunaina Jain, who’s been evaluating parents and children for the agency since 1991.
“The problem is higher up. It’s at the policy level,” said Jain, director of the Pathways clinic in Decatur. “Our expectations for what constitutes a safe environment for children are fairly low.”
She regards court-mandated parenting classes, like the one Tiffany Moss and her husband were ordered to attend as part of her sentence for the child cruelty conviction, as “a joke.”
“There’s a difference between parenting and discipline,” Jain said. “Almost every parenting program is about correcting behavior, and that’s not where the emphasis should be.”
DFCS director Sharon Hill, who took charge of the agency in August, has promised sweeping changes, including instituting ongoing reviews of cases that are quickly dismissed.
“The magnitude of these decisions is such that they cannot be made by one or two people,” Hill said in a recent interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Particularly if those decisions are made by novices. With new hires making just $23,000 a year, retention is an ongoing problem for the agency, said Carter.
The case of Eric Forbes is a “textbook example” of how costly inexperience can be, she said.
In April 2012, Eric’s school notified DFCS that the 11-year-old “looks to have been badly beaten.” According to the case summary, Eric and a sibling offered varied accounts of what caused his injuries. Family members said they were a result of a fall down some stairs. The case was dismissed due in part to the inconsistent statements by the children, even though a friend told school officials that Eric confided he had been abused.
“That is chilling,” said Carter, adding that there was no apparent reason for Eric’s friend to lie.
Three more reports were made by school officials. The case worker concluded there was “not enough evidence to support abuse or neglect occurred.” In the case summary, it was noted that a parent of a child who attended the same school had sent a letter to the agency saying they observed Eric falling at football practice.
“No kid gets hurt that much,” Carter said. Case workers should maintain a “healthy skepticism,” she said, “and that appears to be missing here. … All the judgment calls were made in favor of the parents,” she said.
A review led the agency to fire two supervisors who worked on the case.
Carter said she believes the DFCS is serious about fixing what’s broken. “There’s an awareness that they need to learn from their mistakes,” she said.
“We are reviewing all of our policies as they relate to safety,” said DFCS spokeswoman Ashley Fielding. “We are not only reviewing the content of those policies but also how they are interpreted and carried out in practice.”
But, as child advocate Andrew Agatston stated, “This is not the first time this has happened.”
“These cases were predictable,” said Agatston, an attorney and board member with the Child Advocacy Centers of Georgia. “We’ve got to practice preventive medicine, so to speak, when it comes to child endangerment.”
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