Teen starved to death in spite of state's involvement

[Jim54]

n2doc (22,293 posts)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021052393

Teen starved to death in spite of state's involvement

By Craig Schneider and Katie Leslie
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Huddled overnight beneath the shopping carts at Walmart, Markea Berry confided in her journal that she would rather live at the store than at home.

The next day, after store employees found her wandering among the produce, the Smyrna teen told police she had run away because she didn't want to be a burden on her mother. She was 14, but she was so small and skinny that she looked five years younger.

Now, less than two years later, Markea is dead; at the time of her death in June she weighed 43 pounds. The mother she wanted not to burden, Ebony Berry, is charged with murder. She is accused of starving her daughter to death despite multiple investigations over nearly 10 years by child protection workers in Michigan and later in Georgia.

The last time the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services had contact with the family — a couple of months after Markea's Walmart escapade in 2010 — the caseworker and supervisor noted their concerns that Markea was undernourished. But the agency closed the case after Berry sidestepped efforts to compel her to get medical attention for Markea and her siblings.

more

http://www.ajc.com/news/cobb/teen-st...h-1487836.html

reflection (3,452 posts)

1. Some stories just destroy my faith in humanity.
This is one of them. How utterly heartbreaking.

get the red out (5,719 posts)

2. The mother was certainly determined
to torture that child as long as she possibly could. Sounds like she would do anything to be able to continue to torture her.

I certainly hope she spends the rest of her life in prison. Obviously the state was worthless in this case. They need to do an overhaul in their proceedures and we need to spend some money on social services. Children being starved by their parents is unacceptable.

We need to make the rich pay taxes for God's sake.

Her mother killed her. The state let it happen. Let's blame the rich.......ooooookaaaay.

[Odysseus]

n2doc (22,293 posts)

Her mother killed her. The state let it happen. Let's blame the rich.......ooooookaaaay.

The rich could have paid a 100% tax rate on all assets and there's no guarantee that this wouldn't have happened. Her mother deliberately starved her to death. The state was paying her welfare and investigating, and it still happened. The only thing that would have prevented this was taking her children away from her, which has nothing to do with with the rich paying taxes.

DUmmies are beyond parody.

[Apache]

You can throw money at a "problem" all day long, it won't do any good. A little common sense would have saved this girl's life far better than the "rich" guy's taxes....

[LukeEDay]

What does the rich paying taxes have to do with that? They are such douchebags.

[Apache]

What does the rich paying taxes have to do with that? They are such douchebags.

Have you ever thrown a PENNY? IT HURTS!!!!

[noonwitch]

If you are a caseworker, you can't let crazy parents push you around. If you are new or timid, you bring someone out with you who isn't either of those things.

They mentioned Michigan, but it sounds like most of the involvement was in Georgia. People do move out of state to get away from us.

One point should be made about CPS policy in general-abuse cases are taken more seriously than neglect cases. This is one of those things that if a worker is strictly going by policy and not by skills that one gets from working a while in the field, people who are apt to neglect their kids to death slip through the cracks. The assumption is that most people would not neglect their children if they have the resources to take proper care of them. And, most people who are neglecting their kids who don't have a drug or mental health issue do respond to that kind of assistance. Drug and alcohol problems are more easily detectable by an inexperienced worker than mental health issues.

I was lucky when I was a new worker in that I had a supervisor who was very experienced, as was his boss, and so on.

[Janice]

The family's last contact with DFCS came at a time when agency policy was to trim caseloads. It did so, in part, by referring hundreds of troubled families to community resources such as social services or medical providers rather than taking children into custody.

Markea's case is a tragic outcome of that strategy, known as "diversion,"McQuade said.

"Obviously Markea Berry was not a case appropriate for diversion. Clearly she should have been removed," she said, adding that she fears there are other stories like Markea's that have yet to surface.

>>>

In Markea's case, he said, agency workers "went in and saw red flags and did nothing about it."

AtlantaUrinalConstitution

Sounds like the State which is supposed to be the last bulwark against child abuse sort of admits culpability (via bad policy and poor supervision) but has decided the supervisor at the time is going to remain unscathed. Guess we better circle the wagons around the bureaucracy. Oh... and blame the rich.