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Lost Children
With Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 10, 2002; noon EDT

One in five of children who died after coming to the attention of the D.C.'s child protection system lost their lives after staff failed to take key preventive action or placed them in dangerous homes or institutions, The Post reported in its September series The District's Lost Children. The series won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

Reporters Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen spent months on the four-part series, which resulted in changes at the D.C. Department of Child and Family Services.

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washingtonpost.com: Thanks for joining us today. Where and when did the idea for this series originate?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: The story began with the death of 23-month-old Brianna Blackmond, whose death illuminated a series of problems in the District's child protection system. After we wrote about the failings that led to her death, we began to hear about the deaths of other children.

Centreville, Va.: Obviously there are problems with the D.C. child care system but how does it compare with Md. and Va. and have you heard about anything like this going on outside of our region?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: It's difficult to compare systems for a number of reasons: the secrecy surrounding these cases prevents the public from knowing precisely what is happening and the records that we used in D.C. are still confidential in Maryland and Virginia. Also, in most states, child protection agencies only investigate abuse deaths, which can obscure the true picture of what is taking place.

washingtonpost.com: Brianna Blackmond's Death Ruled Homicide Jan. 9, 2000

Arlington, Va.: Good afternoon! I was wondering if conditions in D.C.'s child protection system have gotten better since completing your research?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: City officials have taken numerous steps to improve the District's child protection system. Mayor Willliams, a former foster child himself, has hired a new chief of the agency, increased the agency's budget and fought to bring the agency back under the city's control after being under a federal court receivership for five years. Also, House Majority Whip Tom Delay has made the District's child protection agency a priority of his, and he and other lawmakers passed legislation that creates a new family court in the city.

Washington, DC: Dear Authors:

I sent the following letter to the Post Editors yesterday, and would like to hear your response to it:

Dear Editor:

I was disappointed to read that Pulitzer Prizes had been awarded to Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham, and Sarah Cohen for their series of articles, as the Post phrases it today, "exposing the D.C. government's role in the neglect and deaths of 229 children placed in protective care."

The articles place the blame for these children's abhorrent deaths squarely in the lap of the D.C. government. An 8-year-old boy stabbed by his mother "so many times that the medical examiner couldn't count the wounds" is presented as a victim not of his deranged mother, but of the D.C. government. A 23-month-old boy, beaten to death by his mother? Not the fault of the mother, but of the D.C. government. An 11-year-old mentally retarded boy punched to death by his father because he couldn't read a clock correctly? Not the fault of the father, but of the government of the District of Columbia.

A city or state government certainly has a responsibility to its children to protect them, and, if need be, to remove them from dangerously abusive homes. The problem in the District is that there are so many of these abusive homes that the system is completely overwhelmed. As the authors noted, social workers have become so overwhelmed and depressed by the problems that they've been resigning in droves, leaving even fewer qualified people to protect these children.

Horwitz, Higham, and Cohen may feel joy at winning Pulitzer Prizes, but they should be advised that their articles are likely to have little positive impact on the lives of these at-risk children, and will quite possibly make their situation worse. Shunting responsibility off the parents who neglect, abuse, and brutally murder their children and onto the hard-working, well-intentioned social workers of D.C. encourages parents to take even less responsibility for their children, and further demoralizes social workers who are trying to address the problem.

If the authors would like to actually help these children and not simply win prizes and feel good about themselves, they might be advised to write a series of articles on the decline of the two-parent family in the District, the high rates of illegitimacy and teen pregnancy, drug use, poor parenting, and a dearth of moral values. When a mother plunges a knife into the chest of her own 8-year-old, these are likely to be the root causes, not the absence of a government official to snatch the weapon from her hand. This is not a crisis of government, but a crisis in parenting, and should have been presented as such.

Matt Gaffney
Washington, DC

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: While it's true that these children come into the system because of serious problems at home, the city and its workers are the last life line for them.

Bethesda, Md: How successful do you think that the DC Department of Child and Family Services in maintaining the new changes?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: It's too early to tell, but new agency chief Olivia Golden has taken a number of steps to keep children safe. She has hired more social workers. She is teaming them up with more lawyers to help them sort through the complicated cases and she has installed a new management team. We plan to continue to examine the performance of the agency in the future.

Washington, DC: To what do you attribute the problems in the DC Child Services department?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: Many of these problems are not unique to Washington. The bottom line is, unfortunately, poor children are not a high priority in many cities. In D.C., children must rely on many different agencies to protect them and they often times get lost in the system.

Washington, DC: How much reporting did you do off of documents as compared with interviews of sources?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: We spent months examining thousands of documents to create a database and search for patterns in the children's deaths and piece together the once-secret cases. After that, we spent many months more interviewing family members, social workers, police officers, city officials, judges, attorneys and dozens of sources to bring their stories to life.

Springfield, Va.: Congratulations on your Pulitzer!

I saw your response to the confidentiality of records in other areas and child care services. Is it simply a case of workers who are under qualified? This is terrible! How can this type of thing be prevented?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: Thank you. The agency suffers from a Catch-22. They keep losing talented, qualified social workers because the working conditions have been so poor, and that scares away other qualified social workers from joining the agency. The new agency chief is trying to retain the good workers she has, while trying to recruit the best people she can get from around the country.

Washington, DC: Hello,
I thought your articles were searing and disturbing--the stories in them haunted me for days. How difficult was it for you to write about such a heart-wrenching and tragic situation, and what kind of lasting impact did uncovering these situations have on you all?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: It was one of the most difficult things we ever did, particularly since many of the reporters and editors who worked on this story have children of their own. We were able to stay focused by remembering that this was all about these children and telling their stories so this would never happen again. We were angered by what we found in the confidential files, and that anger stays with us to this day.

Washington, DC: How much of what you found can be attributed to the Barry tradition of mismanagement throughout the city?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: This agency had been mismanaged over the course of many years by many different administrations during the past 20 years. While the original lawsuit against the city for the mistreatment of its children was brought during Mayor Barry's tenure in 1989, all of the administrations share in the responsibility of what happened to these children.

Fairfax, VA: When you write stories like these, is it difficult to not step in and help the children and families who are suffering, to leave that up to authorities who have failed time and time again?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: That's a great question and one we always struggle with on all kinds of emotionally searing stories. It is difficult. But the best way we can do our jobs is to tell the stories of these children so our readers will demand change.

Washington, DC: How long have these problems been persisting? How long is a reasonable amount of time for them to be fixed?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: That's difficult to tell. We know from our reporting that these problems date back to the 1980s and it's quite possible they reach further back in time. For a child in the system, a reasonable time would be right now. But, realistically, it could take months, perhaps a year or two to repair all of the damage that has been done.

Corpus Christi, Texas: Your series did a wonderful job of uncovering information that was hidden for years. Government agencies often cite privacy concerns to "protect" children, but that practice also hides mistakes made by officials, as you found. How did you pierce the secrecy? What legal ground did the you have for obtaining the records? Are there agencies elsewhere that are more open yet able to guard the interests of children?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: After Brianna Blackmond died in January 2000, Mayor Anthony Williams said publicly that records relating to child fatalities should be made public and he was "gagged" by a judge's gag order in the case. The D.C. Council also amended the city's laws to make child fatality records public. When we began to learn about the other deaths we filed a Freedom of Information request for the confidential files and the mayor ulitmately released thousands records. Since that time, the Council has voted to once again restrict access to child fatality documents. Currently, Georgia has one of the most open child fatality records laws in the nation.

Harrisburg, Pa.: Isn't a major difficulty that, due to understaffing, it is hard to take the time to develop a proper understanding of family situations to determine whether a child is really in danger or not? There are also complaints where children have been removed from homes based on bits of information which sometimes are inaccurate. Unfortunately, to balance taking such a drastic action as splitting a family, valuable time is lost in building enough facts to decide when a child when should removed from a home.

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: It's a difficult balance to strike. That's why the agency is trying to keep and attract highly trained social workers.

Hyattsville, MD: Does closing DC General make this problem worse, if poor children can't have easy access to medical care when they need it?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: We don't know. But in the cases we examined, the children were relying upon a network of hospitals, including D.C. General, and community based healthcare facilities.

Vienna, Austria: I know that there are many private institutions in D.C. who help the poor, churches, faith-based initiatives, that are having a positive impact on the lives of children and their families through out the city, is there any possibility that city authorities might work more closely with such organizations that have proven themselves effective?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: The agency is trying to do just that through so-called collaboratives, which are community based centers that are designed to team up social workers with private and non-profit organizations to care for kids in trouble. While some of them have worked well, we also found that several of them made significant mistakes in the weeks and months before the deaths of children.

Maryland: Do you know who we could contact if we are interested in adopting children in need in DC or Maryland?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: In D.C., you could contact the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency. In Maryland, there is a similar agency. There's also a non-profit agency in Maryland called Adoptions Together, which works closely with cities and counties to find homes for children.

Alexandria: Is there an upper age limit to be foster parents? My husband and I, both energetic and in good health, are in our early 50's, and would be in a position to take in a foster child. Would social workers consider us too old?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: We don't know the age limitations in each jurisdiction, but you might want to contact the child protection agency. The agency is eager to find energetic and caring foster parents so these kids can stay safe.

San Francisco: Congratulations! Herb Caen used to refer to his award as the Pullet Surprise.

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: Thank you. That's very funny.

Washington, DC: While it's true that these children come into the system because of serious problems at home, the city and its workers are the last life line for them.

I'm sorry, but this is a non-answer. Let me restate the question in hopes of eliciting a more substantive response: when will we see a Sari Horwitz article on the real causes of these children's deaths -- illegitimacy, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, dearth of two-parent families -- instead of a narrow focus on the overwhelmed D.C. social services? You do these at-risk kids a disservice by writing articles like you've written.

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: In the articles we've written over the last two years, we have identified these issues as underlying causes for the crisis in child welfare.

Capitol Hill, DC: Re: "Dear Authors" letter
Blaming the parents of these children--people who obviously can't take care of themselves, much less children--serves no purpose. What kind of responsibility is a crack-addicted parent going to accept? Maybe send them off to a session of "better parenting" classes will solve the problem, huh? The whole reason for Human Services is precisely to prevent these children--who haven't messed up their lives and have a chance--in situations like these from falling into the cracks. And when Human Services fails, the results are brutally tragic.

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: This is also a very good point.

Plano, TX: The Right Wing of the Republican party often attacks Child Protection Workers as being too quick to remove children that are only being giving "Tough Love". While I sure that some child welfare workers jump the gun, it seems unlikley that they do so very often. Are there any studies were cases where children were removed have been reviewed in large enough numbers to get an idea about whether this problem is a large one? Have there been studies to determine if the lack of adequate staffing is the primary cause of these problems as well? To me it would seem more likely that a worker that didn't have the time to check up on a family would pull the child too soon, than a "bored" worker would to create more work. That is assuming there are any child protective service workers in the country that have a work shortage.

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: This is a complicated issue. One of the things we've seen is the fear that social workers have that one of the children on their caseloads might die or be seriously injured if they fail to act. There have been studies of what happens in big city agencies after a child dies and that death becomes public. Social workers begin removing children at faster rates, overloading already overburdened agencies and, according to one study on so-called foster-care panic by Richard Wexler, placing children at more risk. In child welfare, there are no simple answers.

washingtonpost.com: Thanks for joining us today. What is the next stage of solutions to watch for in the Department of Child and Family Services?

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: We should be watching on several fronts: whether the newly created family court succeeds; whether the agency is able to hire and retain social workers; whether the police department will improve its investigations of abuse complaints; whether health care workers and others in the community will be more vigiliant when troubled families come to their attention; whether the agency can continue recruiting and keeping foster parents and finding adoptive homes for the city's abused and neglected girls and boys. Thank you all for the wonderful questions.

Maryland: I'm sorry, but I have to disagree wit hthe man who believes that these articles are off-track in blaming only the city. I don't think the post is trying to cover up the problems of drug abuse, teen pregnancy, etc. But the fact is, thsoe things happen no matter how hard we work to combat them. Now, certainly we shouldn't stop trying, but in the meantime, someone needs to protect the innocent children caught in an imperfect world. City agents are being paid to take that responsibility, and in so many cases they've simply failed. Certainly, ideally, no mother would ever abuse her child. But it happens. It will never stop completely, especially since in at least one of these cases it was a result of mental illness - something the mother couldn't prevent. If child protection services had listened to the many reports they received, a mother might have gotten the treatment she so desperately needed and might be able to take care of her little boy. It's not her fault she was sick. But I do fault the city for not stepping in.

Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen: Thank you. The city is required to protect these children. They have both a legal and moral obligation to keep them safe.

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