By Henry J. Stern
January 13, 2006

The tragic and sadistic torture and murder of another child by her "stepfather" has shocked every New Yorker with a conscience.  The newspapers, particularly the tabloids, will report extensively on this chilling case, examine the time-line of what happened before and after Wednesday, January 11, at 4:30 a.m. when the police found the lifeless and emaciated body of Nixzmary Brown at Greene Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.
 
We have collected links to many of the news articles about the case, and there will be more to follow.  We have listed below some questions and observations of our own.  As investigations proceed, it is likely that more facts will come to light and some of the questions will be answered.  Other issues are likely to remain in doubt, and some policy questions will never be resolved.
 
1. In prior cases, where there has been misconduct in an agency, citizens and newspapers have called for the commissioner's scalp.  But the head of the Administration for Children's Services, John B. Mattingly, is a highly regarded, nationally known figure in the areas of child welfare and foster care.  He is non-political and fair minded.  However, a Commissioner is only as strong as the thousands of employees in his agency.  Does he need more tools, or do they need more training, to do their jobs properly?
 
2. What different procedures should be followed when the agency is on notice there is a problem in the home?
 
3. If ACS found the door constantly locked, why didn't they ask for a warrant to gain access?  Do they know how to do that?
 
4. What about the "doctor" who found the young girl's injuries not to be inconsistent with the stepfather's explanation?  Whose employee is he?  Did he question the girl?  If so, what did she say?  If not, why not?  Does he speak Spanish?  Should he be allowed to examine other children who have been beaten by their parents?  Is the agency capable of finding physicians with better judgment?  Should this doctor be assigned to giving camp physicals to healthy children, or should he be advised to seek other employment?  Is this a case that should be referred to the New York State authorities who license physicians?
 
5. If and when the responsibility of one or more city employees for this tragedy is established, what action will be taken with regard to those employees?  If a child is beaten to death as the result of an individual's failure to perform his/her statutory duties, or because those duties were performed in a slow, sloppy, lazy or inattentive manner, what should be the consequences of such a conclusion on the employment of the inadequate employee.  Should he/she be permitted to make similar decisions, which may have life or death consequences, for other children?  Would you want your child's life to be subject to the judgment of such a person?
 
6. It is easy to reduce the foster home census and the costs associated with foster care by reuniting children with their families.  This is also the politically correct approach, often advocated by the American Civil Liberties Union (believe it or not) and others who believe as a matter of faith that any decision made by the state which adversely affects any individual is likely to be arbitrary or erroneous.  Some people believe that the state has no right to break up biological families, except in the most extreme cases.  How many children are beaten, starved or otherwise mistreated, particularly by their intimidating mother's boyfriends, but do not die?  It is understandable that men in the throes of sexual coupling do not want the background noise of crying children, but can that justify the beating or silencing of the child?
 
7. We know that we are dealing with a system where decisions are made by individuals, and sometime errors are made which we cannot find a way to have avoided.  Can we, however, see to it that "unavoidable errors" are not made again by the same person?  Are there any consequences of bad judgment, or failure to act on a complaint?
 
8. Despite all precautions, it is likely that some children will be murdered.  These tragedies should be investigated with the same care and thoroughness that the National Safety Transportation Board looks at plane crashes in which an individual is killed.  What investigation will be made of the three other children who have died under ACS oversight (in both senses) since October?
 
9. In foul-ups of this sort, agencies often demand an ever-increasing bureaucracy, so there will be more papers to push and more adults to check on each other.  Is it possible for proposals for re-organization or increased supervision to be judged on whether they increase contact with families, particularly where there are warning signals?  We do not need more people at headquarters, have we learned anything from the scandals of 110 Livingston Street and 2 Broadway?
 
10. Are we going too far in preferring parental homes over foster homes?  Logically, there should be fact situations where each is appropriate.  In past years, there may have been excessive reliance on foster care.  But has the pendulum swung too far the other way, so that children are now being sent into homes with an addicted or otherwise irresponsible adult, usually a male and often not a blood relative of the child.  Will an irresponsible custodian take the opportunity to shake, stomp, kick, beat, whip, rape, stab, punch, burn, scald, drop, choke or smother the youngster who will never be allowed to grow up?  If the thirteen verbs above disgust or enrage you, think of the actions they describe, perpetrated on children more often than we would like to believe.
 
11. Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Mattingly have been forthright in accepting responsibility for the tragedy.  Both men are genuinely deeply disturbed by this case and the facts that have so far been uncovered.  The appointment of Linda Gibbs as Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services may be helpful, she did a good job some years ago at ACS.

Will the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor and the Commissioner see to it that the people they assign to what is now a post-mortem for four youngsters are not diverted or distracted by excuses and evasions by the individuals, protected by their lawyers and their unions?  The teachers in PS 256, Brooklyn, did more to help the girl than ACS.  They deserve credit for their efforts.  But there are others involved in this case who probably did not meet the highest standards of public service, whether in the Agency for Children's Services or the Department of Education.  Whatever action is taken against them is likely to influence the behavior of other employees in similar situations which will inevitably occur.
 
12. The inquiry undertaken should not be limited to city employees.  What about the child's other relatives - the grandparents, for example?  Did they know what was going on and did they do anything about it ?   And the neighbors - did they ever hear the girl's screams - what did they think was happening in the apartment next door, across the hall, or across the airshaft.   Google images display T-shirts now widely popular in the hood.  The shirts show an octagonal stop sign with the caption: "STOP snitching".  Are people subject to this cultural influence less likely to report children being assaulted or murdered?  

We recall a case, eighteen years ago, which had some similarity with this one.  It was the murder of six-year-old Lisa Steinberg of Greenwich Village by her father, Joel, the lawyer, while her druggie mother, Hedda Nusbaum, looked on.  The teachers at PS 41, where Lisa was a student, knew that she was frequently absent, and appeared to be damaged when she returned to school.  They observed bruises on Lisa, and were told by her lying father that they had been inflicted by her 16-month-old brother.
 
The Steinberg-Nusbaum case gained notoriety because the couple were middle-class professionals, whose profile did not indicate a propensity for physical brutality leading to the murder of their own adopted daughter.  (They never hurt their son.)  The current case is distinguished from most situations involving murdered children because of the prolonged and barbaric torture inflicted on the girl, the starvation she endured, and the fact that her final, fatal beating is alleged to have been inflicted because she ate some yogurt which had been in the refrigerator.
 
Hopefully, the uproar over the current series of murders of children will result in changes that will minimize future tragedies of this kind.  But human nature is unlikely to improve in the short term, so the remedy will have to come from more reliable procedures, more vigorous and frequent inspections, and quicker response to complaints.  This is not rocket science, but we seem to find it easier to build rockets to the moon than to protect children in Brooklyn.


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