This is one of the 88 stories of children dying at the hands of their caregivers reported in the recent Safe Passage For Children investigation of child death in Minnesota. The report suggests why this tragedy is happening in our state and how we can make life safer for at risk children (in the read more at the end of the article). Please share this with your contacts and State Representative.
Sophia O’Neill, Hennepin County
Sophia O’Neill was two years old when she was killed by her mother’s boyfriend, who had been watching Sophia while her mother was at work. In his interview with police, the boyfriend described his frustration with attempting to get Sophia to stop crying, and said he just “snapped on her”. The boyfriend said he put her in a corner and kicked her in the back, which he demonstrated using a doll. When police asked how hard he kicked the child he said “…it was bad. It was hard.”
An hour or two later when Sophia was still crying, the boyfriend demonstrated how he laid Sophia face down on the floor and stomped on her back.
Following her death, child protection completed an investigation and made maltreatment findings of physical abuse and sexual abuse of the deceased child by her mother’s boyfriend, as well as a finding of neglect against the child’s mother for failure to protect the child. While attempting to resuscitate Sophia, doctors noted bruising on several areas of her body including her arms, back and abdomen. A CT scan showed that Sophia suffered significant nonaccidental trauma including a left kidney split in half, right kidney hematoma, a pancreas split in two, eight acute rib fractures and at least one healing rib fracture, a collapsed lung, deep bruising to her scalp, and lacerations to her stomach, small intestine, and liver.
Given the child’s age and the fact that serious injuries were inflicted on her over time, it seems that a medical provider might have had the opportunity to observe them at some point, perhaps during a well-baby or well-child visit, or a trip to an Emergency Department.
However there was no information in the court records to indicate if this occurred.
Prior to the fatality child protection received four maltreatment reports related to Sophia, three of which were opened for FA. One of the Family Assessments was in response to a report that Sophia’s mother had a car accident with Sophia in the car, and the mother was charged with DWI.
The final FA conducted on the family prior to the fatality was in response to a report of physical abuse of Sophia by the boyfriend. In that instance Sophia’s biological father created a video showing two bruises on her cheek and records Sophia saying that the boyfriend had punched her in the face. The disposition of this Family Assessment was development of a safety plan requiring the mother to keep the boyfriend away from the infant, which she failed to do.
The record does not indicate whether this safety plan was monitored, and in any event it appears to have included only one of several issues that needed to be addressed. As mentioned previously, coders and SMEs were asked to apply the Department’s 2000 FA Guidelines to each case, but that they were applied so infrequently that we chose not to describe them for each instance.
Instead we use this case to demonstrate a common situation in which criteria from the Guidelines should have prevented this and similar reports from being
assigned to Family Assessment. They include:
• The maltreatment alleged is criminally chargeable.
• There is a potential for serious physical, emotional, or psychological harm.
• The frequency, similarity, or recency of past reports warrants a traditional investigation.
• The child is unable to protect herself for reasons such as age or disability.
• The parent/legal guardian is incapacitated due to active use of dangerous substances.
• The parent/legal guardian does not have friends or relatives that can help care for the child.
SME comments:
“The mother was able to continue leaving a 2 year old child with her abuser. Since the services were only screened in for assessment and voluntary services, there was no oversight of mom and no safety net for Sophia. It’s important to note that the case was closed less than a month after being screened in against the boyfriend.” – GAL SME
Recommendations on Appropriate Assignments to Family Assessment
13. Allow cases to be assigned to FA only once and never if the alleged child
victim is 0-3 years of age.
14. Implement a “no screen out” policy for maltreatment reports of infants and
toddlers ages 0-3, when the child maltreatment report comes from a
mandated reporter.
Inaction Related to Chronic Multitype Maltreatment
The role that repeated use of FA played in enabling chronic multitype maltreatment was shown in our analysis of Juvenile Court case records, which indicated that 71.6% of child fatalities had a history with child protection.
These included two with prior history in another state, and seven who had histories in Minnesota plus one or more other states. There is no federal or
state report with data to compare with this metric.
However, the 2016 federal Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities estimated that half of families and one third of children who die due to abuse or neglect are “involved families known to child protection.
While one data point is not a sufficient basis for drawing conclusions, this raises the question for additional study of whether Minnesota child welfare agencies may be leaving significantly more children than other states in families with multiple child protection reports.
The far-reaching impact of chronic neglect and chronic maltreatment, or chronic multitype maltreatment as it is referred to here, was detailed by one of our SMEs as a lack of commonly accepted parenting practices: “Characteristics of chronic neglect and chronic multitype maltreatment include an erosion of social norms around parenting. For example, it is commonly agreed that preschool age children need to be supervised all the time, but in chronically neglectful families it may become common to leave an infant, toddler or elementary school age child alone for hours or even days at a time. Harsh or non-nurturing parenting practices
also frequently accompany chronic neglect and multitype maltreatment. Over time, other types of maltreatment may become added to neglect, including physical and/or sexual abuse. Chronic maltreatment is exacerbated by poverty, particularly deep poverty, i.e., families with incomes less than half of the federal poverty income standard.
Early intervention is particularly important because once neglect becomes chronic it is intractable and cannot be easily corrected by poverty related services or brief therapy or skill- based parenting programs.”
ALL ADULTS ARE THE PROTECTORS OF ALL CHILDREN
KARA Public Service Announcement (30 seconds)
KARA Signature Video (4 minute)
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