In April, an investigator for the state’s child-welfare agency visited the South Side home of 5-year-old Clifford Triplett after receiving a phone call alleging that one of the boy’s siblings was being abused.
The investigator for the state Department of Children and Family Services confirmed that the child had been abused and also reported seeing whip marks on Clifford, sources said Friday.
Despite the findings, DCFS did not take any of the four children in the home into protective custody.
Two months later, a DCFS investigator again came to the home, 6161 S. Michigan Ave., this time responding to a report that Clifford was being abused. But the investigator determined that there was no evidence of abuse or neglect and left without removing Clifford or any of his siblings, sources said.
Thursday morning, Clifford’s mother’s brought him to St. Bernard Hospital and told physicians that the boy appeared to be sick. Doctors were shocked by what they found.
Clifford was severely malnourished and dehydrated, and bruises and burns-some apparently from cigarettes-covered his body, physicians and Chicago police said.
The boy weighed only 18 pounds, a normal weight for a 1-year-old. He also was only 35 inches tall, the normal height of a 2-year-old.
This time, police charged Clifford’s mother, Aretha McKinney, 25, and her boyfriend, Eddie Lee Robinson, 34, with felony cruelty to a child.
“There wasn’t a half-inch (of Clifford’s body) without a bruise,” said Officer Antonio Artis of the Englewood District, who arrested McKinney. “I couldn’t believe it. It sickens me right now.”
Artis said McKinney immediately told him that Robinson had abused the boy. And an assistant Cook County state’s attorney said Friday that Robinson has given police a statement admitting to some abuse of the boy.
Robinson, who is not Clifford’s father, has a 16-year history of criminal convictions for battery, burglary, rape, theft and resisting arrest, police and the state’s attorney’s office said. He is being held in County Jail on $100,000 bail.
Robinson told police that he beat Clifford two times with a radio cord in late October or early November because the child would not obey, Assistant State’s Atty. Neera Walsh said at Robinson’s bond hearing Friday.
But Robinson’s public defender told Judge William Wood that Clifford was so emaciated and short because he is a dwarf who has Down’s syndrome.
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“What about the marks on the child? You have nothing to say about that?” Wood asked.
“No, judge, not at this time,” Robinson’s public defender said.
McKinney, who police said has no prior criminal record, did not appear in court. She was admitted to Roseland Community Hospital early Friday after complaining of shortness of breath while in police custody. Physicians determined that she is 5 months’ pregnant with her fifth child. Wood set her bail at $75,000.
Clifford remained in serious condition Friday at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center. A hospital spokeswoman said the boy is not a dwarf, rather he has not developed normally because of long-term malnutrition.
The hospital has taken blood tests and will not know for several days whether Clifford has Down’s syndrome or any other diseases, the spokeswoman said. Dr. Christopher Clardy, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the hospital, said Clifford is expected to survive.
“He could still have a setback, but we’re optimistic,” Clardy said.
DCFS has taken Clifford’s two Chicago siblings into protective custody and placed them with relatives, agency spokeswoman Martha Allen said. The two other children lived at least part of the time in their grandmother’s apartment upstairs from McKinney’s, relatives said.
DCFS also is checking the condition of a third sibling whom relatives said now lives in Mississippi, Allen said. It was an abuse allegation involving this child that first brought a DCFS investigator to the home in April, sources said.
DCFS has opened an internal investigation into why the agency didn’t take any of the children into state custody after the April abuse finding.
And agency officials want to know why the investigator who went to Clifford’s home in June concluded that the children were fine, in light of the April report and Clifford’s condition five months later when he arrived at St. Bernard Hospital.
“It doesn’t look like it was well-handled,” one source said.
Even though the DCFS investigator who came to the home in April found evidence of abuse, the agency apparently never brought the case into Cook County Juvenile Court.
County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy, whose office represents abused and neglected children in Juvenile Court, said he could find no records showing that the April report had been brought to court.
DCFS brings abuse and neglect cases to court to formally remove children from their parents or to obtain court orders protecting children if they are allowed to remain at home.
“It doesn’t look like DCFS ever brought it in,” Murphy said. “DCFS apparently knew what was going on. It should have come down here (to court). I just don’t understand.”
But DCFS is not always required to bring cases to court when it finds abuse or neglect in a home.
Often, when DCFS thinks there is little risk that children will be harmed again, it will leave youths with their parents and provide in-home services, such as housekeeping help and caseworker monitoring, to try to improve the living conditions.
That is apparently what happened with McKinney following the first abuse finding in April. But it was unclear Friday what, if any, services DCFS provided.
McKinney, however, was not participating in a controversial DCFS family-preservation program called Family First, sources said.
Some children left at home under Family First have been further abused or neglected and even killed, prompting DCFS to announce that it will scrap the program in Cook County at the end of this year.