When 3-year-old Frank Torres was returned to the custody of his mother four months ago, long after his broken leg had healed, a battery of child-welfare experts agreed that he was in good hands.
His mother, Veronica Diaz, 21, had attended parenting classes. She was an active participant in a support group for battered women. And, officials say, she had been making progress in both individual and family counseling.
She also visited regularly with the toddler, who had been placed temporarily in the foster care of his paternal grandparents. And, perhaps most important, she had moved away from Frank’s father, Constantino Torres, 26, who welfare authorities said had admitted in counseling that he abused both Diaz and their child.
The Cook County juvenile court judge who gave Frank back to her ordered that Torres have no contact with the boy, and Diaz seemed intent on making an independent life for herself and her son.
But despite all these efforts, Diaz and Torres on Thursday were facing first-degree murder charges in Frank’s drowning death. And, according to prosecutors, it was Diaz who had repeatedly held the child’s head under water in the bathtub, killing him.
Diaz was ordered held without bond; Torres was scheduled for a bond hearing late Thursday or Friday.
The death of Frank Torres once again raises difficult questions about when a child in state custody should be returned to his home, and how caseworkers make these critical decisions.
“Where did we blow it?” asked Jess McDonald, director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. “Was it predictable, or was it unavoidable human error?
“We’ll be second-guessing ourselves for a long time. This is the kind of case that haunts you for the rest of your life.”
Adding to any second-guessing is evidence that Torres was living with Diaz and Frank and that the boy had recently been beaten. Although the cause of death was listed as drowning, the autopsy report also cited fresh bruises, lacerations, bite marks and cigarette burns, as well as old fractures.
Diaz held the boy’s head under water because she wanted to teach him not to be afraid of water, prosecutors said. In her bond hearing, prosecutors said Diaz submerged him for two to three minutes, three separate times.
Torres, too, was charged with first-degree murder, police said, because he admitted seeing Diaz beat the child on a daily basis and did nothing to stop it. Police did not say how long the beatings had been taking place.
More Top Picks How To Dim Screens To Reduce Eye Pain
State officials and Lifelink/Bensenville Home Society, the private agency hired by DCFS to oversee Frank’s care, were hard pressed to explain the violent ending to a case that began before the child’s first birthday.
Frank was taken into state custody in January 1995, after the then 9-month-old infant showed up in the emergency room at the University of Chicago Children’s Hospital with a broken femur. DCFS determined the injury indicated abuse, but caseworkers didn’t conclude which parent was the perpetrator until Torres admitted the abuse months later, officials said.
DCFS placed Frank in the temporary custody of his paternal grandparents, and Diaz and Torres were referred to Lifelink. Cleo Terry, vice president of child and family services at Lifelink, said both parents received psychiatric evaluations and began counseling. But although Diaz attended treatment sessions consistently and also joined a support group for abuse victims, Torres stopped coming to the meetings.
In April, more than a year after she left Torres, Diaz’s caseworkers recommended that Frank be returned to her custody.
Three months later, after at least three home visits, the court agreed–on the unanimous recommendation of all the experts–that no further state intervention was required. The case was closed on July 8.
Lifelink, however, decided to continue to monitor the case, Terry said, and Diaz’s caseworker tried to set up a home visit on July 22 or 23.
“But Veronica said she was moving and would get in touch when she had the new address,” Terry said.
What troubles officials about this case is that–at first glance–all the professionals involved in Frank’s care may have done what they were supposed to do.
Lifelink/Bensenville Home Society, a 102-year-old social service agency connected to the United Church of Christ, is well respected in many quarters, as are the agencies that provided support and counseling.
The case illustrates the double bind of the child-welfare system, which is always trying to weigh the risk of returning an abused child to his parents against the trauma of leaving him in foster care. “Everyone is terrified of the potential for mistakes,” said McDonald.
Patrick Murphy, the Cook County public guardian, put it this way: “If you send 1,000 kids home, odds are 150 will be back in the welfare system, worse off than before, and one will be dead. So do you not send the 1,000 home? That would be a disservice to 850 children.”
Terry says the case “defies understanding.” There had never been any indication that Diaz was an abusive mother, she said; her whole treatment program was based on the assumption that she, like Frank, was a victim of domestic abuse.
“Perhaps the answers lie in the dynamics of domestic abuse,” she said.
The case is currently being reviewed by the inspector-general of DCFS and by an internal quality assurance panel at Lifelink.
“If there was something we did or didn’t do,” said Terry, “we need to know.”
If the welfare authorities failed to understand the danger Frank was in, the family’s neighbors were in the dark too.
In a Northwest Side neighborhood where Diaz lived earlier this year, one woman said she remembered Diaz as a caring mother, who often played with Frank on the steps of their home.
“She took care of the boy,” said Cynthia Avery. “She showed him love. I saw her.”
Neighbors there also recall seeing a man they thought was Frank’s father hanging around outside Diaz’s apartment.
More recently, Diaz apparently lived with Torres in an apartment in the Little Village neighborhood, according to police and neighbors.
Guadalupe Salas, who lives upstairs from Diaz and Torres in a red-brick bungalow in the 3100 block of South Hamlin Avenue, said the boy always seemed well cared for and she never saw or heard anything unusual.
Salas said Diaz, Torres and the boy moved into a basement apartment five or six weeks ago. That would have been just about the same time the juvenile court closed the family’s case.
Salas said the only times she saw the boy outside was when he was walking to the corner store with his father.
The child was “very shy, very quiet,” she said, but seemed well cared for. “He’d always be wearing nice shorts and a T-shirt, and he looked pretty clean.”
Child welfare officials familiar with the case said it was unclear if Torres and Diaz ever were legally married, though they often referred to each other as husband and wife.
Salas said she had a few conversations with Torres, who told her recently that Diaz was four months’ pregnant. “I thought that she might have been feeling sick because she was pregnant, so that’s why she was never out.”
Monday afternoon, Salas was making an early dinner when she was startled by Diaz’s screams.
“She’s carrying her baby, dripping wet,” said Salas. “She’s crying and screaming, `Lady, lady, could you help me? My baby’s dying.’
“She mumbled something about giving him a bath, but I couldn’t really understand her because all she could do was scream,” said Salas.
More Top Picks Msi Titan 18 Hx Ai Review
As Salas spoke, she gestured to the foot of the short stairwell where Diaz had placed her unresponsive son.
“She said, `He’s dying, help me,’ and I told her to hold on,” Salas said. “He looked purple to me. . . . I saw her push on his chest (as an attempt to revive him).”
Salas said that as Diaz left with the child in the ambulance around 4 p.m., Diaz asked her to call Torres at work.
“He asked, `What’s wrong’ (with the child) and I said, `I don’t know,”‘ said Salas, explaining to him they were on their way to the hospital. “He said, please ask my wife to call me.’ “
`Was it predictable? . . . We’ll be second-guessing ourselves for a long time. This is the kind of case that haunts you for the rest of your life.’
Jess McDonald
director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services