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2:34 am UTC Dec. 17, 2020
Marion Phillips outside her home in Bradenton, Fla. in late 2019.THOMAS CORDY, PALM BEACH POST
They came on a sweltering August evening in 2015, to Marion Phillips’ first-floor apartment in Bradenton, past the sanitation department, the juvenile detention center, Ramirez Auto, and a soup kitchen named Our Daily Bread. Four cops and an investigator with the Florida Department of Children and Families.
They were there to look at Abby’s leg.
Someone, maybe a teacher, had noticed it earlier that day: A multicolored bruise stretching across the back of the 6-year-old’s left thigh. Pablo Torres, Marion’s boyfriend, admitted he had spanked Abby with a belt while Marion was at work.
Everyone has power in the process except the parent.
National figures show that Black and Native American children are disproportionately removed and placed in foster homes, according to numerous reports cited by the Child Welfare Information Gateway, an information portal operated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In Florida, Black children make up 20% of the child population but 30% of kids in foster care, state data shows.
But it is poverty that experts believe has the greatest impact. Poor children are far more likely to be taken from their homes, in part because they are more likely to experience abuse and neglect. It s also because parents without money have fewer child care options and can’t afford private attorneys to advocate for them, experts say. Some are uneducated or illiterate yet are expected to understand case documents and legal agreements.
I never had a good experience with a caseworker. Never.
The system is built on lies, said Jaquetta Johnson, an attorney who represents biological parents in the Panhandle. “When they realize it’s OK (to lie), that’s when the level of services start to get dropped because now they know they can get away with it.”
Former investigations supervisor Beverlie Hyacinthe signed paperwork falsely claiming that investigators had assessed the safety of all the kids in a home after receiving a hotline call when they hadn’t. As a result, a third child was left in the home and was abused over the next 10 days until DCF received a second hotline call.
2:34 am UTC Dec. 17, 2020
Marion Phillips outside her home in Bradenton, Fla. in late 2019.THOMAS CORDY, PALM BEACH POST
They came on a sweltering August evening in 2015, to Marion Phillips’ first-floor apartment in Bradenton, past the sanitation department, the juvenile detention center, Ramirez Auto, and a soup kitchen named Our Daily Bread. Four cops and an investigator with the Florida Department of Children and Families.
They were there to look at Abby’s leg.
Someone, maybe a teacher, had noticed it earlier that day: A multicolored bruise stretching across the back of the 6-year-old’s left thigh. Pablo Torres, Marion’s boyfriend, admitted he had spanked Abby with a belt while Marion was at work.