As far back as 2011, Miami
Herald reporter Carol Marbin Miller was scapegoating efforts to keep
families together for child abuse deaths.
The headline on a story that year summed up Miller’s false claim
perfectly: “State steps in less and more kids die.”
That also was the claim throughout Miller’s 2014 series, Innocents Lost.
After that series was published, the Herald got exactly what it wanted: The state stepped in far
more. The number of children torn from
their parents soared. So problem solved,
right? No more child abuse deaths. Or at least, now that the state is stepping
in more, fewer kids are dying, right?
But that’s not what happened – according to a story in
the Miami Herald, by Carol Marbin
Miller.
The story, published on August 10, looked back on the tenure
of DCF Secretary Mike Carroll, who had announced plans to resign effective
September 6.
Carroll took over after the publication of Innocents Lost in
2014 – and he did exactly what the Herald wanted – oversaw the removal of
far more children. But, according to the
Herald’s own story, Carroll
…was unable to stem
the tide of high-profile calamities, especially the deaths by abuse of
vulnerable children,
Missteps by the
department often made state and national headlines: a youngster whose father's
mental deconstruction was well-known was tossed into Tampa Bay; an adolescent
foster child suffering a long-documented emotional collapse hanged herself from
a Miami Gardens foster home while livestreaming on Facebook. …
Back when Florida was emphasizing safe, proven approaches to
keeping families together, under the leadership of Bob Butterworth and George
Sheldon, Florida made a very different kind of national news – as in this assessment
from The New York Times. But
thanks to the Herald, and Carroll’s
willingness to pander to the Herald,
all that was wiped out.
And again, the Herald itself
says that didn’t work out too well:
…When Carroll took the
top slot, he stated that any child's death was "unacceptable" and
that the department needed to improve.
But under Carroll's
tenure, the agency continued to struggle with high-profile child deaths. In
2015, an agency report documented missed opportunities in the case of
5-year-old Phoebe Jonchuck, who was killed after her father dropped her from a
St. Petersburg bridge into Tampa Bay.
That same year,
Carroll also acknowledged "system failures" in the brutal deaths of
two other Tampa Bay-area children. As recently as May, a scathing report
faulted several — including agency investigators — in the January scalding
death of 1-year-old Ethan Coley of Homestead.
So, now that the state is "stepping in" so much more and, the Herald itself admits, kids are still
dying at such a rate that Carroll couldn’t even “stem the tide,” maybe it’s time to finally reconsider why this
keeps happening – and stop scapegoating the only approach that ever actually
made Florida children safer and Florida child welfare better.
The real reasons children known to the system sometimes die
are the same as they always were – caseworkers overloaded with so many false
allegations, trivial cases and cases in which family poverty is confused with
neglect, that they don’t have time to investigate any case properly.
But don’t take my word for it. Innocents Lost actually said
as much – well, sort of. The series cited Alabama as a success story, without
telling readers that Alabama created this success by emphasizing family
preservation – and taking away children at a far lower rate than Florida. Here,
again, The New York Times got the story right.
It is not clear, however, who is going to challenge the Herald, and the way that newspaper has
hurt Florida’s most vulnerable children.
It’s unlikely that Carroll’s replacement will be any more willing to
stand up to the Herald than Carroll
was.
And with all the cutbacks in news gathering, the Herald and the Tampa Bay Times which is, if anything, even more extreme in
advocating a take-the-child-and-run approach to child welfare, have a virtual
monopoly on child welfare coverage.
So Florida’s most vulnerable children still have no
champion. And after Mike Carroll’s
successor leaves the job, the Herald
can write the same story all over again.
