By Henry J. Stern
January 18, 2006

The funeral of Nixzmary Brown took place this morning.  It attracted enormous attention, with thousands seeking to attend despite the driving rain.  The seven-year-old was beaten and tortured by a vicious psychopathic 'stepfather', i.e. her mother's boyfriend.  In death she has become a poster child for the failure of city agencies to protect children from malignant parents and guardians.

An investigation will determine what omissions and misjudgments contributed to the tragedy.  Usually, in cases like this, a number of people will turn out not to have done their jobs properly.  Blame is likely to be diffused, and when responsibility for a death comes up against civil service regulations and union lawyers, one can predict the outcome.

A heavy share of the blame should be placed on the girl's grandmother and other relatives who knew of the situation but failed to notify the authorities, and a lesser share on the neighbors who were made aware that something was amiss by the screams of the victim.  The MTA has made a fetish out of its "If you see something, say something" campaign which has, so far as we know, failed to discover any explosives.  The MTA is not wrong in trying to increase public awareness.  However, the same energy should be expended by ACS in inviting the public to report child abuse.  We know that some reports will be unfounded or spiteful, but if a few children's lives are spared, it will be worth the inconvenience.

Nixzmary is by no means the first child in the last four months to die in a family under ACS oversight (and that word is used with both its meanings).  Let us briefly describe the cases that did not attract city wide attention because they lacked the bizarre element of prolonged, systematic torture and the striking visual of a wooden chair, with ropes attached to prevent the child tied to the chair from moving while being beaten.
 
On October 25, Sierra Roberts, seven years old, of Far Rockaway, died in a hospital of cardiac arrest which resulted from injuries sustained in a beating by her father, Russell Roberts, a drug addict.  Roberts had beaten his daughter for two days, repeatedly kneeing her stomach, and whipping her with a belt.  This ruptured her bowel and caused other internal injuries. The girl was born addicted to cocaine, and was placed in foster care until 2001, when she was returned to her father by ACS.  Since that time, she had been to the hospital three times with a fractured spine and broken leg, but she remained in her father's custody.  The broken leg was reported to ACS, but the agency did not suspect abuse.  

On November 6, Dahquay Gillians, 16 months old, drowned in a bathtub while his mother was in another room, allegedly watching television.  Mom was charged with manslaughter, since leaving the room while a 16-month-old is in the tub is acting with depraved indifference to human life.  This incident occurred 18 months after she pleaded guilty to the bathtub scalding of her older son.  Both children were subsequently returned to their mother.

On December 28, Joziah Bunch's mother, Latifah, squeezed the one-year-old boy's chest until his ribs broke, and then threw him into a crib.  Two other children had previously been removed from the mother's care, one by ACS and one by New Jersey's authorities.

These three incidents, which came at the rate of one a month, preceded the January 11 murder of Nixzmary.  We have now seen four children in the space of four months who have been murdered by their parent or her lover.  These people had been entrusted with their children's lives by lazy, careless, gullible, or doctrinaire bureaucrats, despite evidence that the children were at risk.
 
We do not know how much of this is due to mindless adherence to the "happy family" theory, in which biology trumps the risk of murder in the decision making process.  Hopefully, this tragedy will wake up the Administration for Children's Services and the kindly social workers who run it and alert them to the dangers of real life.  Those of us who have witnessed similar outrages over the years (Lisa Steinberg, d. 1987 and Elisa Izquierdo, d. 1995 come to mind) are less sanguine.  As long as evil lurks in the heart of man and woman, some children will be endangered.  It is up to government to minimize that risk, not to facilitate unspeakable cruelty to innocent victims of parental brutality, relatives and neighbors' neglect, and government inaction or bungling. 


#277 1.18.06 772wds