Three cases of frustration and anger

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PART 4 OF THE SERIES:

Some department officials agree. They point out, however, that many children are reunited with their families not because a caseworker recommends it, but because a judge orders it. They are also bound by laws that require them to prove they've made "reasonable efforts" to keep a family together before they can break it apart.

Three stories of protest below:

Baby returned to parents — and killed

Among Beverly Read's family photos is a picture of two little boys sitting on the lap of Santa Claus. It was Christmas 1982 when Bobby Hendrick, barely a year old, was safe and happy in the Jonesboro foster home of Mrs. Read and her family. Less than two years later he was dead.

Although it has been five years since Bobby's death, Mrs. Read and her husband have not forgotten the little boy with the large brown eyes and "deep, throaty laugh."

"He was just a real bubbly, responsive baby," Mrs. Read recently recalled, adding that he was forever taking off his clothes. "Diapers, everything," she laughed.

Nor have they forgiven the child welfare department, which they blame for the child's death.

For six months, Bobby and his 2-year-old brother had lived with the Reads, placed there by the Clayton County Department of Family and Children Services after their father, James C. Hendrick, had voluntarily put them in foster care.

Mrs. Read says today that she warned caseworkers not to return the boys to their father until they had thoroughly investigated Hendrick's home. But caseworkers took the children anyway, assuring her they would keep a close eye on Bobby and his brother.

Several months later, the children were taken by their father and stepmother, Debbie C. Hendrick, to the local health department, where staff members noticed that the little boys' bodies were covered with sores and bruises; their heads had only patches of hair.

They called the child welfare department, and Phil Woodward, a caseworker, was dispatched to the Hendricks' trailer home.

Mr. Woodward would testify later - during the murder trial of Bobby's parents - that he considered the couple cooperative, found nothing unusual at the home, and subsequently "closed his notes" on the matter.

During the trial, Bobby's parents, both 23, were described by the defense attorney as "two young kids trying their darndest to make ends meet and raise three kids - an awesome responsibility." But a police officer testified that according to Debbie Hendrick's 4-year-old daughter, it was not unusual for Hendrick to pick up his baby boy and smash him against the wall.

Doctors say that when his stepmother brought him to Clayton General Hospital in the early hours of Feb. 8, 1984, Bobby's skull was cracked from the top left side of his head around to his neck cavity in back. Mrs. Hendrick told physicians Bobby had fallen out of bed.

In addition to his fractured skull, physicians noticed the toddler was covered with bruises, appeared malnourished, was missing large clumps of hair and had a misshapen arm. In all, they found 25 injuries. Among them, the doctors discovered that both of Bobby's arms were broken. They had been that way for at least three weeks, left unattended despite what the doctors said would have been the baby's obvious pain. He was pronounced dead on Feb. 10, 1984.

A year later, the Hendricks were each convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. They will be eligible for parole consideration in three years.

Within weeks of Bobby's death, Mrs. Read wrote a series of angry letters, including one to Attorney General Michael J. Bowers, asking him to investigate the county child welfare agency. She would later take the stand at the Hendricks' murder trial and criticize the department for failing to protect Bobby.

Shortly after the trial, the Reads' only remaining foster child was returned to her natural mother. After six years of having cared for more than 30 foster children and even adopting a child, the Reads have not been given another foster child since.

"Beverly Read is a very caring person," Anne T. Plant, director of the Clayton Department of Family and Children Services, recently said. "She just will not accept this agency as the legal authority in these situations."

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Family hires private eye to fill the state's shoes

In the South Georgia community of Tifton, Harry Doss is the quiet, respected county director of roads and public works. He predicts that perception could soon change.

For five years, the Dosses - parents of two grown children and a 15- year-old son - have been accepting foster children into their home. Now they've hired a private detective to help protect one of those children, something they say they've been forced to do because of the local child welfare agency's failure to do its job.

The focus of their efforts is a little girl who was abandoned by her parents when she was 2 and brought to the Dosses' home on July 4, 1987, by the Tift County Department of Family and Children Services.

"She was the dirtiest child I'd ever seen in my life," Charlotte Doss recently recalled of the red-haired toddler. "I bathed her three times that afternoon."

The couple felt the little girl was underweight for her age, and when they took her to the pediatrician for a physical, the doctor wrote in his records that he suspected that the lesions on her buttocks were cigarette burns.

"She was absolutely terrified of men," Mrs. Doss said. "My husband couldn't pick her up. And she had these godawful nightmares."

Their concerns grew after the department found the child's natural father, Walter F. Byrd, and began staging visits between the two. After one visit, as they changed her diaper, the Dosses noticed abrasions on her inner thighs and a small tear between her anus and vagina. They also felt the child was using inappropriate sexual terminology for her age.

According to an affidavit the Dosses would give to a Superior Court judge, she cried continuously after one visit, patting her diaper in front and saying, "hurts - right here."

Finally, to convince the caseworker that their fears were justified, Mrs. Doss says she staged a "before and after" diaper change in the caseworker's presence. Before the visit, the little girl had no vaginal tear. After the visit she did, according to the affidavit. The caseworker suggested the tear may have occurred while the child's father was straddling her on his knee.

They registered their final complaint Oct. 17, 1988, after a weekend visit at the home of the little girl's paternal grandparents, where her father also lived. Shortly afterward, the child welfare department notified them that the child was being removed from their home and returned to her paternal grandparents.

The Dosses were stunned and promptly wrote a letter to Rodney Griffin, director of the county Department of Family and Children Services. They pointed out that only a year earlier, Mr. Byrd had been charged with the felony of abusing his daughter. That charge is still pending, according to Tift County District Attorney David E. Perry.

"They had this father arrested for cruelty to this child and now they've gone and put her back in the home," Mrs. Doss said.

What particularly angers the Dosses is that a Superior Court judge in neighboring Cook County had a year earlier found the man an unfit parent for his two older children, based on the alleged abuse of his younger child.

Mr. Griffin of the local child welfare agency recently defended his caseworkers' decision to return the little girl to her grandparents' home. "This was not a decision we arrived at overnight," he said. "It was arrived at after careful study."

He described the grandparents as "a very good, loving couple" who are financially well-off and well-respected in the community.

"It's our policy and philosophy to always try and keep children in some part of their extended family if placement with the natural parent is not possible," he said. "We worked very hard to try to minimize the disruptions in this child's life."

Based in part on the Dosses' complaint, however, a Juvenile Court judge has ordered that Mr. Byrd move out of his parents' home. The Dosses have hired a detective to make sure he does.

The court also granted Mr. Byrd visitation privileges, but ordered that the visits with his daughter be supervised by his parents. "They love their son," Mr. Griffin said of the grandparents. "But they understand they must protect their granddaughter, and they will be very good at doing that."

The Dosses are not so sure. Nor are they confident the child welfare agency will be aggressive enough in monitoring the child's situation.

They say their experience has convinced them that the laws of Georgia are in dire need of being changed.

"As it is, the system keeps children for a period of time that have been reported as abused or neglected, then returns them to an environment without the parents ever having done anything to change the situation," Mr. Doss said.

Both the Dosses say parenting classes should be required for parents who have been found guilty of abusing their children. "I do feel if the parents can prove they're capable of being with the child, that's where the child should be, no doubt about it," Mr. Doss said. "But once they're reported for abuse, the burden of proof should be on them to prove they are capable."

In the meantime, Mr. Doss says he can't help but worry about his former foster child. "I think about her every day," he said. "Every day."

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Children sheltered — but never for long

S. David Doss of Rome never wanted to be the one who sued the child welfare agency, but he could find no one else to do it.

"I said at the time, if I never do anything else in my life, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure this doesn't happen to another child," he said.

What happened in Floyd County, says Mr. Doss, is beyond his comprehension. Mr. Doss is not a foster parent. Rather he's a Floyd County commissioner who sells real estate for a living and happens to be on the board of the Open Door Home, a temporary emergency shelter for abused and neglected children.

It was in this capacity that two years ago he met a family of four children - ages 5, 3, 2 and 6 months. Mr. Doss would later learn that the Floyd County Department of Family and Children Services had removed the children from their home 11 times, usually substantiating abuse and neglect reports before returning them to their mother.

"That's an awful lot of times," Mr. Doss said. "At some point, you'd think the light bulb would have turned on in some caseworker's head and they would have said, 'Look, the situation's not going to get any better.' "

The last time the children came through the shelter, Mr. Doss said, they were so filthy that shelter staff had to throw their clothes into the dumpster. When they took them for a routine physical, the doctor extracted a decayed cockroach from the ear of the 2-year-old boy, who had been complaining of an earache.

That time, a Juvenile Court judge ordered the child welfare department not to return the children to their mother until she found a suitable living arrangement. At times the children had slept in a car.

Despite the court order, the caseworker appeared one day at the Open Door Home and announced she was returning the children to their mother. "I made the comment to the shelter director that if something happens to one of those kids, and they're not where they're supposed to be, the state's butt is going to be in a sling," Mr. Doss said.

In less than 10 days - on March 25, 1987 - the mother appeared at the Floyd Medical Center with her 3-year-old daughter, who was bleeding from her vagina.

"The mother said she had fallen and hurt her bottom," Mr. Doss said.

But doctors felt the story was inconsistent with the injuries. In part because the child would not let them touch her, they suspected she had been sexually molested and called child welfare. A caseworker came to the hospital, heard the physician's suspicions and returned the child that day to her mother.

Two days later, the mother brought the child back into the emergency room. She was still bleeding, and this time, after he anesthetized her, Dr. Jack Rogers discovered genital warts and a laceration at the opening of her vagina. He admitted her to the hospital for her own safety.

"Based on my examination and on the reports to me from my consultant, I feel that it is medically certain this child has been subjected to repeated sexual abuse," Dr. Rogers wrote in a letter to the child welfare agency. "I am available to testify to these findings in court."

The letter sat at the Department of Family and Children Services office for more than a week before caseworker Mignon Price took it to the police. The delay "outraged the detectives," said Mr. Doss. "The case is now nine or 10 days old."

According to Mr. Doss, police officers never did find enough evidence to file criminal charges against anyone; the four children are now in foster care.

"This whole thing just outraged me," said Mr. Doss. "I couldn't believe they would continue to put these kids at risk after repeated, substantiated cases of abuse and neglect."

In the months ahead, he went before three grand juries, finally urging jurors to subpoena the case file and get a firsthand account of "the circus of how this child has been treated." "When they got the file, only then did they get behind the smokescreen," he said.

The final grand jury called for a state investigation, which was conducted by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia. The institute's report, according to Mr. Doss, "basically said child protective services was in complete disarray, that caseworkers had little or no training and were delivering below minimally acceptable standards of care, that they continue to put kids at risk and morale is low."

As a result of that report, a number of child welfare officials in the county and regional offices were demoted, transferred or encouraged to take early retirement. Ms. Price, whom Mr. Doss had hoped to have indicted on charges of inte rfering with a criminal prosecution, was promoted to senior caseworker.

Ms. Price said recently that she could not comment on the case and referred questions to Jim Burton, now the county director. He, too, refused to comment.

Dr. Rogers said in general he has found Ms. Price and her colleagues to be "very, very helpful" in "case after case." But he also said that lawsuits such as Mr. Doss's serve a purpose by drawing attention to the problem.

"Child abuse is the most dangerous disease I see," he said. "We see more deaths from child abuse than meningitis . . . ."

Ultimately Mr. Doss blames the fiscal bottom line for the state's readiness to return children to violent homes. It costs nothing to send a child home, but the state picks up the tab for children in foster care.

"So the state says, you keep them at home," he said. "And that's why you get these horror stories."

In April, after failing to convince anyone else to do it, he filed suit, accusing officials of the Department of Family and Children Services of "gross negligence." The suit seeks unspecified damages to be placed in a trust fund for the girl. Mr. Doss says he had no choice; he has a baby daughter of his own. "Every time I looked into that little girl's eyes, I saw my own kid," he said. "It just wasn't anything I was going to drop."