CONTACT: Rich Gehrman, Executive Director, Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota
(651) 303-3209; gehrm001@umn.edu
Report documents multiple systemic failures in cases
Of Minnesota children killed due to maltreatment
8 YEAR OLD AUTUMN HALLOW’S MURDER (KSTP video)
Minnesota Child Fatalities from Maltreatment 2014 – 2022 Executive Summary
From the report;
This study of children who died in Minnesota because of maltreatment was undertaken to identify opportunities for constructive changes to the philosophy, policy, practices and management of Minnesota’s public child protection and foster care programs, known together as child welfare.
1 The project collected data and reviewed documents from Minnesota counties and courts related to 88 children who were killed between October 2014 and May 2022. The analysis by the authors was augmented by case reviews performed by fifteen Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in six fields that regularly interface with county child protection programs. The report is presented in two sections, one focusing primarily on state and county child protection agencies, the other on the court system.
An average of two children per month were killed in Minnesota by their caregivers during the report period. Our analysis demonstrates that many of these deaths were preventable and were due to a child welfare philosophy which gave such high priority to the interests of parents and other adults in households, as well as to the goals of family preservation and reunification, that child safety and well-being were regularly compromised.
The findings from this study include:
• Fifteen cases included signs of child torture and five unambiguously met the definition of torture across three different national and state standards. • Nearly half of children (48%) died due to actions of someone other than a biological parent, including particularly domestic partners and kinship foster parents. • The quantitative data and case narratives we assembled raise questions for further study of whether counties may have left Black children in high risk settings more frequently and for longer periods of time than children of other races and ethnicities.
• Seven children were killed in foster care including six in kinship placements.
• Both nationally and in Minnesota over 70% of child fatalities are children under three, but a higher percentage of these children were previously known to child protection in Minnesota compared with other states. The core mission of child welfare is to protect children, yet it frequently left them in situations where they experienced life-altering neglect, repeated physical and sexual abuse, and sometimes torture, often over long periods of time. In many cases a number of individuals in multiple institutions knew about ongoing maltreatment but failed to act.
The eleven children’s stories used in this report portray a system that seems to have become inured to dangerous levels of abuse and neglect of children, the majority whom were infants and toddlers. In this regard it is important to remember that timelines for children and adults are not the same. While the system may give parents years to stop harming children, virtually every month that infants and toddlers continue to be traumatized by physical abuse or lack of nurturance causes further damage and often permanently diminishes their life prospects. We believe this report will demonstrate that the system’s tolerance for violence against children and its lack of urgency regarding its youngest victims are out of alignment with overall community norms.
The following are a few brief examples of these children’s stories. While the authors recognize that not all readers may agree with using the names of those who were killed, we believe that the child victims deserve to be remembered, and that their suffering and often unnecessary deaths may help spur a re-evaluation of current practices, and help save the lives of children in the future.
• Two-week old Anthony Herkal was killed by his father after he was served by the court with seven no- contact orders, and was charged and convicted of five domestic violence related felonies and misdemeanors. The family was also investigated twice by child protection. The final maltreatment report before Anthony’s death was treated as low risk.
• Eight-year old Autumn Hallow was starved and tortured to death over a period of six months, despite frantic pleas by neighbors to local police and by her mother to the courts and child protection, each of which appeared to have sufficient information to intervene.
• Five-month old Aaliyah Goodwin was smothered to death following eight reports to child protection over seven years documenting that both parents were chronically incapacitated by drugs and unable to take care of her and her older siblings.
• Over a period of twelve years, eight year old Tayvion Davis and his siblings were sexually assaulted by four family members, beaten with hammers and belts, burned with boiling water, and deprived of food and sleep as a form of discipline, until Tayvion was locked in a garage overnight in subzero temperatures and froze to death; despite additional reports to child protection, Tayvion’s siblings remained in their mother’s care for five more months, and charges were not brought against her for his death a year and half later.
• Custody of six-year-old Eli Hart was returned to his mother after two inpatient psychological evaluations for delusional behavior; despite ongoing concerns expressed by the child protection caseworker and the Guardian ad Litem about her chronic mental illness, they recommended that her case be closed; nine days after the court terminated her case she killed Eli with nine shotgun blasts.
• Two-month old Eli Hentges and four-month old Kamari Gholston were both sent home with their mothers after presenting at well-baby checks with injuries which could not be self-inflicted by infants; shortly afterwards both children were killed by their mothers.
• Layla Jackson, a Black/Native American toddler was placed in kinship foster care with a relative who recorded himself screaming racial epitaphs at her and writing “loser” on her face; according to the Scott County Sheriff’s Office the complexity of the child’s injuries, necessitated additional examination by specialists, prolonging the autopsy results.
KARA reports on the issues of child abuse and child protection
This article submitted by CASA volunteer Mike Tikkanen
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KARA Signature Video (4 minute)
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All Adults Are the Protectors of All Children