Oceanan Rodgers spent only a few months of her 3 1/2 years of life with her parents.
The first time she lived with them, right after she was born, Oceanan was shaken so hard that she suffered brain damage, and the state took her away.
But the state returned her to her parents in south suburban Harvey a few months ago, and now Oceanan is dead.
A police investigation is underway to determine how she died on Wednesday. But the circumstances of the child’s death have focused renewed attention on the state Department of Children and Family Services and its effectiveness in protecting children in abusive environments.
DCFS officials lobbied to get Oceanan and her three sisters returned to their parents’ custody despite repeated allegations of abuse and objections by the Cook County public guardian’s office.
The agency also failed to take immediate custody of Oceanan’s two sisters and one brother after her death Wednesday. The children were unaccounted for until Friday afternoon when they were found with relatives.
Oceanan’s death also raises a recurrent question of whether abusive parents should be given a second chance with their children, or whether the children should be placed permanently into foster care.
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Public Guardian Patrick Murphy said Oceanan’s case underscores the need for DCFS and private welfare agencies to scrutinize every abuse case to determine whether the parents are capable of being reformed.
“No matter what they say about child welfare, it’s a pro-parent system,” Murphy said. “They have to realize there are some people who are unfit to be parents, and we should take their kids away.”
DCFS spokeswoman Martha Allen said the children were returned to their parents, Connie Ferba and Lester Rodgers, in April based on the testimony of experts and the decision of Judge Consuelo Bedoya, who was operating under a newer standard that the best interests of the children were the determining factor not the desire to reunite the family.
“We do the best we can, but sometimes it’s just impossible to predict that something like this will happen,” Allen said. “This family showed a great deal of progress and had proven to the experts . . . that they were ready to receive their children back.”
The office of DCFS Inspector General Denise Kane took the records regarding Oceanan’s case Friday to review the agency’s performance, Allen said.
Officials at a private child-welfare agency, Aunt Martha’s Youth Service Center, which provided counseling to Oceanan and her parents, also recommended that the child be returned to her family. On Friday, Jerry Garvey, assistant to Aunt Martha’s executive director, defended their recommendation.
“The parents had been involved in counseling. They had taken parenting classes. (The caseworker) had received good reports about them,” Garvey said. “We have reviewed the case this afternoon, and it appears we have done everything we could have done to protect this child.”
The debate raged while many of the questions about Oceanan’s death remained unanswered. No charges had been filed in the case, and Harvey police provided no details about the investigation.
Ferba, the 22-year-old mother, was taken away by police Friday afternoon, neighbors said. The father, 26-year-old Rodgers, left the Harvey apartment Friday afternoon, neighbors said.
The cause of Oceanan’s death remains a mystery. An autopsy was completed by the Cook County medical examiner’s office, but a determination of cause was withheld pending further testing, officials said.
Bedoya ordered a hearing Monday to investigate the matter and the status of the three other children, ages 2, 4 and 5, who were to be given medical checkups while under DCFS care this weekend.
The parents told hospital officials and neighbors that the child injured herself when she fell off a bicycle several weeks ago.
They first took the girl to Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey two weeks ago. X-rays were taken, and doctors said the child was all right, Allen said. A few days later, Ferba and Rodgers took Oceanan to Wyler Children’s Hospital for a CAT scan, where again doctors said nothing was wrong.
On Monday, Oceanan was rushed to Ingalls and then transferred to Wyler where she was placed in the intensive-care unit, suffering from head injuries and seizures, hospital officials said.
“As of Tuesday, the child was improving and doctors hoped to move her to a regular room and out of intensive care,” Allen said. “However, in intensive care the child suffered seizures and died.”
The DCFS child-abuse hot line was called when Oceanan died Wednesday. “There was no report that there was any suspicion of any abuse” before then, Allen said.
DCFS’ first encounter with Ferba was in 1990, when one of her infant daughters broke her leg, Murphy said. DCFS investigated the incident and cleared Ferba and her then-boyfriend of any wrongdoing, he said.
Two years later, in January 1992, 1-month-old Oceanan was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with shaken baby syndrome, which occurs when a child is violently shaken and which can cause brain damage and even death.
The incident prompted DCFS to remove Oceanan and her siblings from their parents’ custody and place them in the foster care of three different relatives.
Oceanan was placed in the care of her grandfather and step-grandmother, Jeffrey and Francella Ferba. During her first year in the Ferbas’ home, Oceanan mostly slept because she was under such heavy medication for her head injuries, Francella Ferba said.
She was slowly weaned from the medicine and “just popped to life,” Mrs. Ferba said. “They told me she wouldn’t walk, but I told them that with love and God she could.
“And she did,” she said. “She could do everything a normal 2-year-old would do. The only thing she didn’t do was speak well, but we were working on that.”
Meantime, Ferba and Rodgers attended parenting classes, though Murphy said it was on a sporadic basis. Ferba regularly visited Oceanan, but Rodgers stopped visiting six months ago for unknown reasons, Francella Ferba said.
She said she wanted Oceanan returned to her mother because Connie Ferba was “a good mother.” Francella Ferba, 45, also said she was worn out caring for the child.
In April, Ferba and Rodgers successfully won custody of their four children, even though a few months earlier their 4-year-old daughter had accused them of beating her with a belt. The allegation was investigated, but no charges were brought against the parents, Murphy said.
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Allen said her agency was double-checking case notes about the incident, which they learned about from a private caseworker.
Since the children were returned home, neighbors said they always appeared to be clean, in good health and supervised closely by their parents.
Francella Ferba concurred that she never saw evidence of any abuse.
“It’s a mystery because Oceanan stayed with us from 3 weeks old to April 12,” she said. “She didn’t have any seizures or any problems. And then she goes back there, and she’s dead.”
“If I would have known Oceanan was going to end up like this, I would have kept her here,” Francella Ferba said. “I really miss her.”