Warnings of abuse, yet the system fails a child

The nonprofit Healthy Start program alerted Social Services that Keisha L.
Carr might injure her son again. Carr was suffering from severe depression but
often didn’t take her medication. And she was about to give birth to another
child, which her counselors feared could trigger a mental crisis that could
put her 1-year-old son and the newborn at risk.

“We alerted Child Protective Services … and said they need to keep an eye
on Keisha because we couldn’t,” said Maxine Reed-Vance, deputy director of the
Healthy Start program. “There was no reason Keisha had to be left with her
children. … She was a sick little girl.”

Despite the alarm, Social Services failed to protect Carr’s children or
place them in foster homes. And three months later, the counselor’s fear
became reality: Carr’s newborn son, David, was beaten to death, his skull
smashed, at the same age that his older brother James’ arms and legs had been
broken, according to court records and interviews.

Carr was charged with murder, and her trial is scheduled to begin Wednesday
in Baltimore Circuit Court. Although police say she acknowledged killing the
child, she has since said that detectives tricked her into confessing.

The death was a tragedy of a sort that happens with unfortunate but numbing
regularity in the city. Child welfare advocates say that the state’s child
protection system often ignores obvious warning signs, such as past child
abuse in a home or a caretaker’s mental illness, and that children die with
little or no intervention from the juvenile courts or the Department of Social
Services.

“This is a major concern that needs to be addressed, especially when the
safety of children is at stake,” said James E. Craigen, a Howard University
professor of social work who is chairman of the city’s Social Services
Commission.

The number of children who die after entering the state’s child protection
system is unclear, although the city Health Department estimates that it may
be as many as 10 a year.

The factors leading to the deaths are many, including the breakdown of
families burdened with poverty and drug addiction, a poorly funded Social
Services agency with a history of bad management and poor morale, a lack of
good foster homes, and a juvenile court system that is reluctant to remove a
child from a biological parent’s home, say those who push for reform of the
state’s child protective system.

The 274 Child Protective Services caseworkers in the city investigate an
average of 538 new child abuse and neglect allegations every month, with each
worker juggling up to 20 cases at a time. The Child Welfare League of America
recommends no more than 17.

Social services

Stephen Berry, manager of in-home family services for the state Department
of Human Resources, which oversees the city’s Social Services Department and
Child Protective Services, refused to discuss the Carr case, saying he is
obligated to protect the privacy of the family.

But Berry said that, in general, it is difficult for the agency to figure
out which children to remove because almost all the families have histories of
child abuse, but the parents often attempt to deceive caseworkers and the
courts.

“Deaths happen because families can be extremely dangerous places for
children,” Berry said. “Most of our workers are extremely devoted. So the
allegation that they are not doing everything they can to help protect
children is an affront to us. When a child dies, it’s a shock for everyone
here.”

Norris P. West, a spokesman for the state Department of Human Resources,
said most of the decisions in the Carr case were made under a previous
administration. Human Resources Secretary Christopher J. McCabe took office
Jan. 20 last year. McCabe and Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. are proposing to
increase spending on child welfare services statewide by $51 million next
fiscal year, West said.

“We inherited a lot of problems in Baltimore City,” West said. “We also
recognize that we need to do a better job in trying to be attentive to the
needs of children. We are trying to reform the system.”

Two other recent criminal child abuse cases also revealed flaws in the
state’s child protection system.

Ciara Jobes, 15, was whipped and starved to death in December 2002 while in
the care of a guardian, who has been charged with murder. Jobes’ death came
after the juvenile courts and Department of Social Services failed to check
the mental-health history of her guardian, Satrina Roberts, although she had
been receiving federal disability aid for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Travon Morris, 5, died in February from burns that he suffered when his
mother, Sheila Avery, forced him into a tub of scalding water. Prosecutors in
that case, in which Avery was sentenced to 20 years in prison, complained in
court that the system returned the boy from a safe foster home to an abusive,
troubled parent and provided little follow-up care.

Determining the responsibility of Social Services or the courts in these
cases is difficult, because their officials refuse to discuss the deaths or
release records.

But criminal court files and interviews suggest that all strands of the
safety net broke for David Carr, the 2-month-old whose ashes sit in a
container on the shelf of a relative’s worn rowhouse in West Baltimore. He was
abused, and social workers and the juvenile courts failed to save him despite
knowing that he was being born into a violent family.

Criminal courts

Critics also point to the criminal court system. Prosecutors and Baltimore
Circuit Judge Allen L. Schwait decided against a prison term for Keisha Carr
on June 28, 2002, when she pleaded guilty to child abuse for breaking her
first son’s arms and legs.

Instead of sentencing her to 15 years on the abuse charge, the officials
offered a plea bargain that let Carr go home. An assault charge was also
dropped.

Jim McComb, chairman of the Coalition to Protect Maryland’s Children, said
he found it disturbing that the courts and Social Services failed to consider
Carr’s guilty plea to child abuse charges as a reason to put the children in
foster care.

“When you have a woman who has admitted to abusing a child and having
mental illness problems, it is really unconscionable and irresponsible that
the system would not follow up and protect the children,” McComb said.

Custody decisions

The juvenile courts – which handled the custody portion of the case – also
made mistakes, according to critics. On Oct. 1, 2002, Juvenile Court Judge
Joseph H.H. Kaplan allowed the abused baby, James Carr IV, to return home to
his parents, provided that his mother’s contact with him was supervised by her
husband or another adult.

James Carr IV was then badly treated by his family, suffering such severe
malnutrition that he had to be hospitalized, according to a source familiar
with juvenile court records, which are sealed.

“I have no independent recollection of it,” Kaplan said of his custody
decision. “There have been hundreds of cases, if not thousands, between
October 2002 and the current date.”

`She went through a lot’

Keisha Carr’s story underscores the difficulties of a life racked by mental
illness and extreme poverty – the kind of desperation that Social Services
workers struggle to deal with every day.

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Carr is a ninth-grade dropout who for a while worked the night shift as a
security guard at a Baltimore-Washington International Airport parking lot.

Her mother and her family live in a red brick public housing rowhouse in
the 800 block of W. Fayette St. on the west side, where gunfire and boarded-up
doorways are common.

A recent visit to the house, where David Carr died in a second-floor
bedroom, revealed walls pockmarked with holes, scuffs and pen marks, but
decorated with a cross. Mounds of dirty blankets were heaped on a couch with
frayed armrests.

A brown baby doll, stripped of its clothes, lay face down on filthy
linoleum, while scores of roaches scurried across the floor, walls, sink,
couches and visitors’ shoes.

Keisha Carr’s mother, Geraldine Bass, 42, a nursing home assistant, heaved
some of the blankets off a sofa so a guest could sit and listen to her
daughter’s story.

She said Carr was a troubled girl who was tormented by her peers because of
her half-white, half-black heritage and light skin color, Bass said.

“She went through a lot of depression growing up because she was racially
mixed in an all-black neighborhood, and they gave her a hard time,” Bass said.
“She thought she was ugly, but she was a beautiful girl.”

At 18, she met a divorced former military man named James Alexander Carr
through a friend. He was 10 years older and liked to push her around and
control her, her mother said.

His family saw the relationship differently, with James Carr struggling to
manage a partner who was disturbed and mentally limited.

“I always thought she was a little off, but I never thought she was
dangerous,” said his father, William Carr. “She was just weird. But how do you
tell your son to get rid of his wife?”

Keisha Carr suffered an emotionally painful miscarriage and was overjoyed
when she finally gave birth to her first son, James Carr IV, on Oct. 26, 2001,
her mother said.

“When she finally had James, she would rub her cheek on the baby’s cheek
and smile and say, `My boy, my boy.’ She loved her son,” Bass said.

Although the couple seemed close, behind the scenes Keisha Carr was
suspicious of her husband, angry and self-abusive, according to a transcript
of a taped interview she later gave to police. She tried to kill herself and
required hospitalization for mental illness in 2000 and 2002, according to
court records.

“I use to throw bottles, glass and stuff at him ’cause I thought he was
cheating on me,” she told police. “I found letters from his old girlfriends.
There were several times I cut my hand up. It was times I scratch my face up,
my arms and pull my hair. I got bald spots cause I keep pulling my hair. …
By hurting myself, just cutting myself up, I want the pain to go away.”

Child abuse case

On Jan. 18, 2002, the couple took their 2-month-old son to Johns Hopkins
Hospital, telling doctors they had noticed a swelling in his left arm.

An examination found that both of the baby’s arms and legs had been broken,
court records said.

On June 28, 2002, Keisha Carr agreed to plead guilty to child abuse if the
judge gave her three years of probation. Two conditions imposed by the court
were that Carr had to take parenting classes and attend individual
psychological counseling sessions at the Healthy Start program at 1622 N.
Carey St., which helps poor mothers, according to court records.

Social Services workers temporarily placed the abused baby with an aunt,
hospital records show. But the juvenile court, on Oct. 1, 2002, allowed the
child to return home to his parents.

Reed-Vance, the deputy director of Healthy Start, said her organization
shared lots of information about Carr’s mental illness problems with Social
Services, including that Carr was hospitalized for depression for five days in
the spring of 2002.

Carr dropped out of the psychological counseling in November 2002 after
fighting with her counselor, and the program immediately reported this to
Social Services, Reed-Vance said.

But the warning passed on to Social Services did not lead the agency to ask
the courts to put Carr’s son and expected baby in foster care.

On Nov. 6, 2002, Social Services workers visiting James Carr IV concluded
that he was underweight and malnourished. The agency filed an emergency court
motion to remove the baby from the home, arguing that the parents were not
feeding him regularly or following through with medical care.

The court granted the motion, allowing Social Services to put the baby in a
hospital until he gained weight and became healthier, according to the source
familiar with juvenile court records. Then the child returned home.

Second child is born

On Nov. 26, 2002, while Keisha Carr was still on probation for abusing her
first son, she gave birth to her second child, David A. Carr. Keisha struggled
trying to raise David, who was often congested, cried constantly and threw up
after he was fed.

“James and I had a hard time taking care of David. We had a problem getting
a job and Social Services were giving us the run around,” Carr wrote in a
letter in court files. “We had big financial problems.”

The juvenile court took custody of James Carr IV away from his parents on
Dec. 4, 2002. The child was placed with an aunt, but she soon allowed the
child to return to his parents.

A young life is lost

James Carr IV may have been in his parents’ bedroom as his baby brother was
beaten to death Feb. 12, according to witnesses and family members.

About 9:30 that night, Keisha Carr banged on the door of a neighbor’s home,
screaming that someone should call 911 because her baby had stopped breathing,
according to the neighbor, Dawn Mosley.

“I ran back over to her house, and saw the baby was pale white,” said
Mosley, 28. “And it scared me so much because when I touched him he was so
cold.”

The autopsy of David Carr showed that he died of homicide by “blunt force
trauma,” suffering a broken skull, a shattered leg and multiple fractured
ribs.

Some of the bones showed signs of being broken, healed and then fractured
again. This suggested that he had repeatedly been beaten or shaken over eight
weeks, according to court records.

Police said Keisha Carr confessed to smashing the child’s head against the
crib and shaking him as an expression of “extreme emotional distress” toward
her husband, who she suspected was having an affair.

In her defense, Keisha Carr claims that detectives persuaded her to give a
false confession. She said her husband was the only person with the baby in
the hours before his death, and asserted that her husband told her that he
intended to confess to the killing, according to a letter she sent to Circuit
Judge John M. Glynn on Sept. 23.

But Keisha Carr said in the letter that she decided to confess instead
because detectives told her that if she took the blame, she would likely be
put in a mental hospital or given probation, meaning that neither she nor her
husband would go to prison. Her husband has not been charged and could not be
reached for comment.

“The honest to God truth is that I do not know what happened to David,”
Keisha Carr wrote in her letter to the court.

While she was in jail awaiting trial, she gave birth to her third son,
Michael Carr, on Dec. 20. At this point, the child protective system finally
kicked into gear, with Social Services placing Michael Carr in a foster home
with his surviving brother, James Carr IV. But it took a baby’s death, murder
charges and jail to inspire the protective action.

History of a troubled family

1998: Keisha Lynnea Carr, an 18-year-old ninth-grade dropout from West
Baltimore, marries James Alexander Carr, a 28-year-old divorced former
military man, during a small civil ceremony at the Clarence Mitchell
Courthouse.

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Oct. 26, 2001: Their first child, James Carr IV, is born.

Jan. 18, 2002: At age of 2 months, the baby is taken by his parents to
Johns Hopkins Hospital with fractures to both arms and legs. Police charge his
mother with child abuse and assault. The Department of Social Services
temporarily places the child with an aunt.

June 28, 2002: Keisha Carr pleads guilty to child abuse and receives a
five-month suspended sentence and three years of probation, with the condition
that she receive psychological counseling and take parenting classes from the
nonprofit Healthy Start program, which helps poor mothers.

Oct. 1, 2002: Juvenile Court Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan allows James Carr IV
to return to the custody of his parents, as long as the mother’s contact with
the child is supervised by her husband or another adult.

Nov. 6, 2002: The Department of Social Services files an emergency petition
to remove James Carr IV, now a year old, from his parents because he is
underweight and suffering from malnutrition and a lack of medical care. The
juvenile court grants the motion, and Social Services temporarily puts him in
a hospital.

November 2002: Keisha Carr drops out of her psychological counseling
program at Healthy Start, prompting the agency to contact Social Services to
warn that she may be a danger to her children.

Nov. 26, 2002: The couple’s second son, David Carr, is born at Mercy
Medical Center. Social Services does not file a petition with the juvenile
court to take him away from his mother.

Dec. 4, 2002: The juvenile court and Social Services put James Carr IV in
the custody of his aunt, allowing his father unlimited visitation and his
mother visitation supervised by another adult. The aunt, however, quickly lets
the boy return home to live with his parents.

Feb. 12, 2003: David Carr, 2 months old, is found dead in a crib in his
parents’ bedroom in the 800 block of W. Fayette St., his skull broken, ribs
cracked and leg fractured. His brother, James Carr IV, 14 months old, is in
the room when the body is found. Their mother is charged with murder.

Dec. 20, 2003: Keisha Carr gives birth to her third son, Michael, while in
jail awaiting trial. Social Services takes this baby from her and puts him in
foster care, along with his surviving brother.

Jan. 28, 2004: Keisha Carr’s murder trial is scheduled to begin in
Baltimore Circuit Court.