[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 20 (Monday, February 24, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1431-S1432]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         SAFETY OF OUR CHILDREN

  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise today to thank President Clinton 
for lending his voice to one of the most important efforts underway in 
this Congress. On February 14, the President unveiled a proposal that 
would help provide children with safe homes and loving families, 
something that every child deserves. This is a victory for America's 
children, and I believe a victory for good common sense. It recognizes 
that the safety of our children must always be our most important 
consideration.
  Mr. President, let no one doubt how important this issue is and why 
action by this Congress is so necessary. On a number of occasions over 
the last year, I have come to the floor of the Senate to discuss a 
provision in Federal law, that has tragedy in it, which has proven 
dangerous to the safety of America's children. I have on those 
occasions discussed the fact that too many children are spending their 
most important, most formative years in a legal limbo, a legal limbo 
that denies them their chance to be adopted, that denies them what all 
children should have: the chance to be loved and cared for by parents.
  Mr. President, we are sending too many children back to dangerous and 
abusive homes. We are sending them back to the custody of people who 
have already abused them, already tortured them, and we do it, 
tragically, knowing that that has already taken place.
  The statistics are frightening. Every day in this country, three 
children actually die of abuse and neglect at the hands of their own 
parents or caretakers. That is over 1,200 children per year. Almost 
half of these children--almost half of them--are killed after their 
tragic circumstances have already come to the attention of local 
authorities. That means 600 children die every year in cases where we, 
as a society, already know that they have been abused, already know 
that they may have been tortured, already know that they really should 
never go back into that home again.

  Mr. President, some of the tragedies in the child welfare system are 
the unintended consequence of a small part of a law passed by the U.S. 
Congress in 1980--basically, Mr. President, a good law. Under the 
Federal Child Welfare Act--the law I am referring to--for a State to be 
eligible for Federal matching funds for foster care expenditures, the 
State must have a plan for the provision of child welfare services 
approved by the Secretary of HHS. The State plan must provide--here I 
quote from statute--``that, in each case, reasonable efforts will be 
made (A) prior to the placement of a child in foster care, to prevent 
or eliminate the need for removal of the child from his home, and (B) 
to make it possible for the child to return to his home.''
  In other words, Mr. President, no matter what the particular 
circumstances of a household may be, a State must make reasonable 
efforts to keep it together, and to put it back together if it has 
fallen apart.
  There is strong evidence, Mr. President, strong evidence to suggest 
that, in practice, reasonable efforts have become extraordinary 
efforts, efforts to keep families together at all costs, efforts, I 
might add, to keep families together that are families in name only and 
to put children back in homes that are homes in name only.
  As a result of this, Mr. President, children have died. That law 
simply has to be changed. One of my first legislative acts of the 
Congress was to introduce a bill that would accomplish this.
  My bill would change the law to make it absolutely clear that the 
best interests of the child have to come first. Pretty basic, pretty 
simple--best interests of the child, safety of a child. You would not 
think we would have to clarify that.
  I tell you, Mr. President, based on my experience in talking to 
judges, prosecutors, in talking to children service advocates, children 
service caseworkers across the State of Ohio, and from talking to some 
of my colleagues from other States, and from hearing testimony in our 
committee, it is abundantly clear to me that we have to spell this out, 
that it is being misinterpreted, that reasonable efforts to put 
families back together many times take precedence over the best 
interests of the child and the safety of the child.
  As I said, Mr. President, my bill would change the law to make it 
clear that the best interests of the child must come first. We do this 
by enacting the following simple, straightforward amendment to the 
Child Welfare Act. And this is what language I would add, not taking 
anything away, just add this:

       In determining reasonable efforts, the best interests of 
     the child, including the child's health and safety, shall be 
     of primary concern.

  Pretty simple, Mr. President, pretty straightforward, pretty basic, 
but darn important.
  In November, Mr. President, I chaired a hearing of the Senate Labor 
and Human Resources Committee on this issue. I assembled some of 
America's chief experts on child welfare. And I was encouraged by what 
they had to say.

  Peter Digre, the director of Los Angeles County's Department of 
Children and Family Services--an unbelievably huge department, and a 
man who has to deal with gut-wrenching problems and decisions every 
single day of his life--this is what Peter Digre said. He said that 
``we should emphasize child safety as our first priority.''
  Dr. Digre's department has about 73,000 children under its 
protection--73,000. He sees the real-life consequence of unreasonable 
attempts to reunite families that are families in name only.
  But, Mr. President, I believe our most eloquent testimony that day 
came from Sharon Aulton, a grandmother in Annapolis, MD. Sharon Aulton 
had warned the local children services that her daughter was neglecting 
her children, her grandchildren, but the officials failed to intervene. 
Sharon Aulton's daughter ended up blockading her children in a room and 
setting the room on fire. Both these beautiful young children died.
  Mr. President, this happens too often in this country. Last August a 
4-year-old girl named Nadine was found starved to death in her mother's 
apartment in New York. The mother had kept Nadine in a crib covered by 
a blanket so she did not have to see her. She did not feed the child 
regularly for the year preceding her death. In the last few months 
before the child's death, she did not seek medical help despite the 
fact that the child could not walk, could not stand, could not even sit 
up.
  Apparently, Mr. President, city social workers had visited the 
apartment in May 1995 after an anonymous complaint about the little 
girl's treatment. The commissioner of the Administration for Children 
Services was unable to provide any information as to the conditions 
found in the apartment or what action was taken at that time by the 
city. However, the commissioner did say the city investigators found 
enough credible evidence of neglect to open an investigation after they 
visited the apartment, but yet the case was closed 5 months later. 
Nadine only weighed 15 pounds at the time of her death--a week before 
her 5th birthday.
  Mr. President, I have a daughter who is almost 5, my daughter Anna. 
Those of us who have children, those of us who care about kids, have to 
be heartsick and shocked by the recounting of this poor little child's 
death. According to the ambulance workers, Mr. President, Nadine was 
found in the crib, dirty, with arms as thin as a half-dollar, her eyes 
sunken, her hair in patches, her ribs protruding. Her mother at

[[Page S1432]]

that time, when the emergency folks responded, was sitting on a bed 
near the crib eating a hot dog. That is how they found the mother when 
the medics arrived at the home.
  The New York Daily News obtained secret documents which indicate how 
city child welfare workers and public school officials repeatedly 
ignored warning signals in Nadine's case. That is from the New York 
Daily News.
  School officials never turned in Nadine's mother for not showing up 
for school, nor did anyone report the fact she did not show up for 
medical appointments. Officials did not notify the State child abuse 
hotline when Nadine's siblings were out of school for long periods of 
time.
  In May 1995, the anonymous caller I mentioned earlier reported to the 
State child abuse hotline that Nadine was, in fact, starving.
  Mr. President, tragically, Nadine is far from alone in falling 
through the cracks in our system. In December, a 10-month-old girl 
named Delores died after savagely being beaten by her mother's 
boyfriend; ten weeks earlier, child welfare officials had been warned 
that she and her siblings were in danger.
  Mr. President, let me be very clear--I cannot stress enough that I am 
not trying to lay the blame on children's services officials in these 
cases. I worked with children services officials for many years, going 
back in time to when I was an assistant county prosecutor in 1973. 
These are good people, people who try to do their job. They generally 
are overworked and have too many cases and have many challenges to 
face.
  I think it is clear as we look at these cases of abuse, as we recount 
the fact that we lose at least three kids every day to child abuse in 
this country--and those are just the kids who die, let alone the other 
ones who are savagely beaten or abused--I think it is clear that there 
is one part of this problem that Congress can fix. We cannot fix it all 
by passing legislation. We can try. But one part of the problem can be 
fixed, and that is to move forward in fixing, in clarifying the 1980 
law that I refer to, to make it clear that we want these professionals, 
children's service workers, to have the flexibility to do what we all 
want done, and what they want to do, and that is to save the kids 
first, save the children, to set as a priority the best interests of 
the child and the safety of the child, and that priority has to take 
precedence over everything else.
  These case workers work very hard to meet, many times, conflicting 
mandates. We should make their job a little easier and say to them that 
Federal law from now on will be abundantly clear, that the primary 
mission should always be to save the children.
  Mr. President, some families are families in name only, and simply 
should not, should not be reunited. Mr. President, my proposed 
legislation would change the law to make this the key goal. I think 
Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory made the case in a very 
compelling way in her column of February 9. I ask unanimous consent 
that column be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sessions). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, let me conclude by saying once again how 
pleased I am that the President has joined our efforts. I am confident 
that his proposal will help us speed up the adoption process in this 
country and bring us closer to the day when every child in America will 
be cared for by a loving family. Mr. President, I will continue to come 
to the floor and talk about this issue until we make that change in 
Federal law. It is a change that is urgently needed.
  I simply conclude by saying what I have said many times on this 
floor, and that is that it was never, I am sure, the intent of the 
authors of the 1980 law--which has done a great deal of good in this 
country--it was never their intention to in any way tell case workers 
who are making life and death decisions every day in this country that 
anything other than the best interests of the child, anything other 
than the safety of children should be their primary concern. But it is 
also abundantly clear to me, I have traveled through Ohio and talked to 
people from other States, that this law is being misinterpreted day 
after day after day. We should clarify it. We should make the job of a 
case worker simpler, and by doing that, I believe we will save some 
children.

                               Exhibit 1

                [From the Washington Post, Feb. 9, 1997]

                       Save the Kids, Not the Mom

                           (By Mary McGrory)

       Richard Gelles, an authority on child welfare, is boldly 
     intervening in a custody case that may be without parallel in 
     the sorry annals of the Family Reunification Act. Latrena D. 
     Pixley, a District mother who, at 19, killed her 6-week-old 
     baby, is asking to be reunited with two of her three other 
     children--a boy of 6 and another of 1 year. Gelles is 
     volunteering to come at his own expense from Rhode Island--
     where he is director of the Family Violence Research Program 
     of the state university--to offer his view that a woman who 
     has committed infanticide is not a fit mother.
       ``In these cases, we're often too late,'' says Gelles, who 
     wrote ``The Book of David,'' the story of a baby who was 
     murdered by a mother who had abused an older child. Social 
     workers had a watchful eye on the mother all along. ``This 
     time, I'd like to be early. Most of the time the children are 
     dead or greviously injured by the time I get involved.''
       The Pixley case has already attracted major attention 
     because it could answer the question of what limits, if any, 
     there are to the Family Reunification Act, which puts 
     preservation of the family over the protection of children. 
     It could also provide a measure of how far our culture has 
     advanced in victimhood: Can a mother who kills her baby 
     succeed in portraying herself as a victim?
       Gelles knows what it's like to get involved in the Pixley 
     case and with the District bureaucracy. Last year, at the 
     request of Jerome Miller, the receiver in charge of the D.C. 
     Department of Human Services, Gelles did a study of Pixley. 
     He told Miller that he did not think she could then or at 
     ``any foreseeable date'' provide adequate care for her 
     children. He says he was not paid for his work; the receipt 
     of his report was never acknowledged.
       Miller is one of several figures in the Pixley case who 
     believe in her. He hired her as a clerk while she was serving 
     her sentence for infanticide. Social workers were indignant, 
     and Pixley abused his trust by engaging in credit card fraud, 
     but Miller remains a fan. She's still in jail for fraud (not 
     murder). He told the weekly City Paper this week, ``I'll take 
     her back in a minute.'' Social workers who are critical of 
     him, he says, are ``probably lousy social workers.''
       Striking as Miller's tolerance is, it pales beside the 
     mercy shown by Superior Court Judge George W. Mitchell, who 
     seems stricken with sympathy. He accepted Pixley's attorney's 
     plea that she killed 6-week-old Nakya in 1992 as a result of 
     postpartum depression. Pixley has testified that, after she 
     had suffocated the crying baby under a blanket, she stuffed 
     the body in a dumpster and went off to a barbecue with her 
     boyfriend.
       Social workers and therapists speak well of Pixley's 
     cooperativeness and progress. Her lawyer told Judge Mitchell 
     that, apart from the smothering, Pixley had been a good 
     mother to the infant. Gelles observed that she was a quiet, 
     ``compliant'' person but ``seriously damaged.'' Mitchell, in 
     imposing his feather-light sentence--weekends in jail for 
     three years--said he wanted to give Pixley's plea as much 
     respect as that of ``some high society woman.''
       The judge is sending Pixley to a halfway house where she 
     will be joined in time by 1-year-old Cornilius, who is in the 
     care of an acquaintance of is mother. She will be taught 
     ``parenting'' and could eventually get custody of 6-year-old 
     Edward, whom, Gelles thinks, should be made eligible for 
     adoption.
       Gelles says he has no choice but to volunteer as a 
     ``complaining witness' for the two little boys whose lives he 
     feels are in danger. He finds it ironic that this test of the 
     Family Reunification Act comes at a time when so many are 
     trying to undo it. Both the president and the First Lady have 
     held White House conferences about it. Sen. Michael DeWine 
     (R-Ohio) has introduced a bill making the safety of the child 
     the prime consideration--a concept sinking out of sight in 
     our addled, victim-struck culture.

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