I don't usually make threads about child neglect, but ...

[Rain Man]

I was waiting for my wife to get ready this morning and glanced at the paper to see the article below. I usually don't want to read these types of articles, but it kind of jumped out at me, and as I read it, I suddenly had a realization.

I was on the jury for the 2006 case for these people.

When I was on the jury in roughly 2009 they had three small kids, two of whom wandered into the middle of a busy street while unsupervised. Our case involved whether to take the kids and give them to social services. The woman seemed nice, but clearly not operating with a lot of mental capacity. The man was combative, but I kind of assumed that combative is not unreasonable if you're in court seeing whether your kids are going to be taken away from you.

So our jury voted to place two of the kids in the care of the state, but we couldn't see a justification to take the third. Apparently the state ended up taking all three eventually.

But the amazing part to me is that, four years later, they have four more kids? None of those kids seems to be the same three that my jury was deliberating over. That's pretty sad.



http://www.denverpost.com/breakingne...ys-not-rescued



Colorado child ombudsman to investigate why boys not rescued sooner

Colorado's child protection ombudsman will investigate why it took so long for authorities to rescue four small boys from a filthy Denver apartment filled with flies and feces when concerns about the family were registered more than a year ago.

Ombudsman Dennis Goodwin has the authority to review county and state files regarding contacts between the child welfare system and the four children.

"We will look at whether there was follow-through, was it assigned properly and were the rules followed, as well as whether best practices were followed," Goodwin said Wednesday.

The boys — ages 2, 4, 5 and 6 — were not potty trained and spoke only in grunts, according to a Denver police arrest affidavit. They lived in an apartment littered with feces and trash and filled "with the strong odor of a decomposing animal," police said. The boys slept on stained mattresses without any sheets or pillows.

Goodwin said his office is gathering child welfare and police reports and that Denver County child protective services is cooperating.

The ombudsman can make recommendations to Denver child welfare authorities and to the Colorado Department of Human Services. The ombudsman also will make any findings public on its website and in his annual report.

Officials with the Denver County Department of Human Services have declined to discuss the specifics of the case, citing privacy laws. The state child welfare division also has opened a review of the incident, which is done only in cases in which child protection workers had previous contact with the family.

The parents of the children, Wayne Sperling, 66, and Lorinda Bailey, 35, were charged with four counts each of felony child abuse.

New details about the family's visit from a police officer and a child welfare caseworker in April 2012 raise more questions about why more wasn't done to help the children then.

Police were called to the home because neighbors feared the boys would fall out the window with an 8-foot drop to the ground. Authorities interviewed Bailey as she chain-smoked with a 7-month-old baby on her hip, dropping her cigarette twice onto piles of clutter on the floor, according to the police report.

Sperling was so "overwhelmed and flustered" he could not tell the officer how old the boys were or when they were born, but he did tell police he and his wife had previously been involved with social services.

"The children were clad only in diapers and didn't respond when I spoke to them," the officer wrote.

The studio apartment was so cluttered that there was only a small pathway to walk, and the beds consisted of a thin mattress on the floor, a broken crib and a small, torn sofa. Broken plastic and food were scattered on the floor.

Police saw two cats and a litter box, not a floor littered with feces as was recently discovered.

The family was ordered to visit the Family Crisis Center, which provides medical care and therapy for children and parents.

"Upon advise from the caseworker, the children were not removed from the home," the police report says. Sperling was cited for "wrongs to minors."

He was given a summons and eventually received supervised probation for a year and was ordered to take parenting classes and pay a fine of $677.15.

State and county child welfare authorities, citing confidentiality laws, refused to say whether a caseworker was assigned to monitor the family after that 2012 visit. The state team review of the case is expected to take months to complete.

Neighbors reported that after the 2012 incident, they never saw the boys outside. Occasionally, they saw them through the window — usually wearing only diapers and throwing toys onto the flagstone below.

Sperling and Bailey had three other children removed from their home after police responded to calls in 2006 that two of the children were playing in the street. Police found three children, ages 4 and under, had been left alone in their apartment, which was strewn with trash, rotten food and insects, according to police records.

Like their younger siblings who were rescued in September, those children grunted and pointed to communicate. One of the children's diapers was full of feces and urine, and the children smelled "horrid," according to caseworkers.

Those three children were removed and put in the custody of social services after police "declared the residence unsuitable for any child."

In 2009, both Sperling and Bailey pleaded guilty to child abuse and were placed on probation.

In the latest case, their younger siblings were rescued after their mother took the youngest, a 2-year-old, to the hospital Sept. 29 because of a bruise behind his ear. A doctor called authorities.