In the year before 12-year-old Eric Forbes died in October, allegedly at the hands of his father, teachers at his Cobb County elementary school reported at least three separate cases of suspected abuse.
The Cobb Division of Family and Children Services was called in to investigate but according to a summary of Eric’s case file obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, there was insufficient evidence to support abuse or neglect.
In July 2012, just a few months after Forbes’ teachers reported the fifth-grader’s “badly beaten” face, a 9-year-old Gwinnett County girl who had run away from home told a police officer her stepmother placed her under a cold shower, “tied to a chair with two belts.”
Emani Moss, whose stepmother and father are charged with starving her to death after her charred body was found stuffed in a trash can early Saturday morning, showed no signs of abuse, the officer wrote in his incident report. She was returned home. A few weeks later, she ran away and was returned home a second time. Neither police incident report mentions that Emani’s stepmother, Tiffany Moss, was on probation for beating the girl in 2010.
DFCS’ involvement in Emani’s home life was limited. In early 2011, DFCS, satisfied that Tiffany and Eman Moss had attended parenting classes, closed its case file. In subsequent years, Tiffany’s grandmother, Robin Moss, told the AJC she reported her concerns to police and DFCS but no action was taken.
‘They kept dropping the ball,” said her attorney, Mike Jones.
These latest cases have brought renewed scrutiny to Georgia’s child welfare system. A recent investigation by the AJC found dozens of Georgia children die from maltreatment each year despite intervention by the DFCS. In 2012 alone, the Journal-Constitution found, workers from the agency did not detect or did not act on signs that foretold the deaths of at least 25 children.
The deaths of Eric and Emani appear to reveal plenty of missed opportunities.
“The fact that a little girl would run away from home two times in the same month should’ve been warning enough that something wasn’t right,” said Melissa Carter, director of the Barton Child Law and Policy Center at Emory University’s School of Law.
Sharon Hill, director of the Department of Human Services Division of Family and Children Services, said in a statement released Tuesday the agency is conducting an internal review to examine its handling of the two cases.
“The Department of Human Services Division of Family and Children Services and the Department of Human Services Office of Inspector General will continue to investigate the agency’s involvement in the lives of these two children, and DFCS’ actions after every report of abuse will be under the toughest scrutiny,” Hill said.
But psychologist Andy Gothard, who has performed more than 5,000 evaluations of foster children and parents for DFCS, said the agency — which has a mandate to keep families intact — is often placed in impossible situations.
‘DFCS is damned if they do, and they are damned if they don’t,” Gothard said. “DFCS is characterized as either baby killers if they do not remove children from their homes when the worst-case scenario occurs or they are called baby-snatchers or kidnappers if they are overzealous.”
Gothard acknowledged the agency is far from perfect, noting DFCS is underfunded and understaffed.
The Forbes case was resolved quickly despite the numerous complaints from Eric’s school. A case worker finally visited the family’s home in Aug. 2012, interviewing Eric, his parents and younger sister, all of whom denied any abuse. Eric’s pediatrician was also interviewed and the case worker, satisfied the child was not in any danger, closed the investigation with “no further involvement from the agency,” according to the DFCS summary.
Six days later, the Forbes’ moved to the same Paulding County home where police say Eric was killed by his father.
Gothard said such cases are rare.
“What you do not hear about in the media are the thousands of children who do not fall on those extreme ends of the spectrum, the thousands of cases where DFCS made the correct decisions using appropriate degrees of prudence and caution,” he said.
Staff writer Alexis Stevens contributed to this article.
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