WOODSTOCK — Between 2008 and 2012, staff at the Department for Children and Families paid several visits to a home in Ludlow and interviewed the two children there eight times. But it wasn’t until the local police chief and a social worker stepped in that the children were removed from what they allege was years of abuse at the hands of their father and stepmother.
“It was one of the best days of my life,” the son, now 20, told a Windsor County courtroom Monday, recalling the day when law enforcement officers intervened. “I was so happy I didn’t have to go back.”
Lawyers delivered opening arguments Monday in a two-week jury trial in Woodstock to resolve a lawsuit against DCF for its alleged failure to protect the two children from years of abuse by their parents. The grandparents of the son and daughter filed the lawsuit. The parents are now on parole after serving prison time for a raft of charges, including abuse of the children.
The lawyer representing the children, Sharon Gentry, spent much of her time detailing the children’s living situation. She said they were regularly beaten, looked forward to doing the dishes so that they could eat any scraps of leftover food, were regularly called names like “whore” and “retard”, and threatened with violence if they told anyone about the abuse.
“It is true that DCF took some action to try to help these kids, but they should have taken more,” Gentry told the jury.
She argued that over the course of those four years, required investigations were never completed, reports of the children’s abuse went undocumented, and the department’s own mistakes caused them to underestimate the gravity of the situation.
Gentry said it wasn’t until Ludlow Police Chief Richard King and a social worker assigned to the case “bucked the system” that the children — 11 and 12 at the time — were finally freed from the abuse.
“They were able to do in two hours what DCF couldn’t do in four years,” Gentry said.
The parents were also housing vulnerable adults, whom they allegedly abused and exploited for money. The son was allegedly forced to chase down adults who tried to escape the home, tackle them, and drag them back to the trailer. When the children were removed from the home in 2012, there were nine people and 10 dogs living in the house.
The state’s lawyers argued that DCF’s actions over those four years were in line with its very specific policies about how reports of abuse are investigated and addressed.
Assistant Attorney General David McLean said counselors during that time did not register any concern that the children might be victims of physical abuse at home, despite making almost 397 contacts with the family. Counselors did engage with the parents and children in regular sessions to deal with a “very contentious” divorce.
“You can’t remove a child for concerns about parenting styles,” McLean said, noting that the case was largely seen as a custody dispute, not a possible case of abuse.
He went on to list a number of things that he said are both “bad behavior” and “bad parenting,” but not “child abuse.” The list ranged from being bisexual and having non-traditional relationships to having emotional outbursts and struggling with mental health — all of which the children’s parents did.
McLean said any claim that reports were made that somehow bypassed DCF’s central intake system were “simply not credible.” He told the jury that it wasn’t until May 24, 2012 — six days after the children had been removed from their home — that the children began to make any disclosures about the physical abuse they endured.
McLean noted that DCF made numerous visits to the residence over those four years, several of which were unannounced, and interviewed the children eight separate times, and never found anything that met the criteria of for removing a child from their home.
Then the jury heard from King, the police chief, who talked about the day of the children’s removal. He said the incident began when social worker Jennifer Perkins came to his department requesting a police escort to the residence, so that she could safely remove a different child from the home.
King said he asked her about the other two children, to which she said “DCF doesn’t have enough to remove them yet.”
“Well, I think I do,” King replied.
King had been investigating the case for about two months, he said, and used that information to compile a case for removal, which the state’s attorney quickly approved. Within a few hours, he and Perkins drove to the residence and removed the children for good.
In their testimonies, both the son and King corroborated the stories Gentry told about the living conditions at the residence.
“I just didn’t want to be alive anymore,” the boy told the jury.
He said his stepmother threatened to hurt or kill him and his sister if they ever told anyone about the abuse — so they didn’t.
McLean and his co-counsel, David Groff, questioned the son about the numerous occasions that he told DCF workers, school counselors, and police officers that everything was fine at home, that he liked his parents, and that he was safe.
Groff said the counselors all reported him and his sister’s testimony as seeming “open and honest” — which is something they’re trained to be able to evaluate.
But the boy replied that his stepmother was a master liar — and that he learned from the best. “It’s very hard to tell someone when you’re afraid you’re going to get hurt,” he said.
The trial is set to continue Tuesday with video testimony from the children’s grandparents. It is expected to last two weeks.
