Objection!: How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System

by Nancy Grace

  As of this writing, the Jacksons stand charged with child endangerment and assault. Bruce Jackson is still living in a hospital but doing well on a “normal diet,” gaining thirty-seven pounds and growing six and a half inches in just three months. He and his brothers appear to be recovering. Each one of them weighed less than fifty pounds when removed from the Jackson home. Their adoptive parents, Vanessa Jackson, forty-eight, and Raymond Jackson, fifty, have been arrested and formally charged with four counts of aggravated assault and fourteen counts of child endangerment. Nine child-welfare employees were fired, including one caseworker who was supposed to be visiting the family regularly.

  Ryan’s report on the foster-adoptee program is a real-life horror story, if anyone cares enough to read it. It’s all about bureaucratic dysfunction, detailing how the Jacksons became foster parents in 1991

  and, since that time, DYFS did practically nothing to help the boys.

  The scariest part, aside from the fact of children starving under the noses of visiting social workers, is that the report suggests that 2,500 of 14,300 other “safety assessments” DYFS workers claimed they made were nothing more than reviews of notes taken during alleged visits 2 1 2

  N A N C Y G R A C E

  months earlier. How many other children are starving, molested, and abused with the sanction of the government? This is a real problem, and our government, our laws, our system are not just allowing it but perpetuating it.

  There are solutions. Ryan sets forth several that I back completely.

  The Department of State Human Services must require in-person safety assessments of all children adopted and/or fostered out by the state, as well as interview all members of the household during the in-person visits. No relying on months-old “notes.” Another great idea is to coordinate medical care for these children by creating and funding medical offices there at DYFS offices. This will prevent kids from getting lost in the shuffle between physicians, caseworkers, and foster and adoptive parents. The right hand must observe the left hand when it comes to these precious children. Further, the state must require foster and adoptive parents to show proof that their child has at least an annual physical as a condition of getting state money. The federal government pays adoptive parents several hundred dollars a month. When did raising children turn into a moneymaking proposition?

  In addition to the improvements listed above, and contrary to what many supporters of the current system contend, I firmly believe that child caseworkers who make bad decisions regarding our country’s lit-tlest victims must be prosecuted criminally. Show me you visited. File the paperwork. Show me that the children went to annual doctor visits, had their shots and weigh-ins as normal, and aren’t covered with welts or bruised black and blue. Show me that there have been counseling visits. We are the richest country in the world, and the government already takes at least a third of what we bring home. This problem is too important to remedy with a simple reprimand or a firing where the individual goes on to another job, possibly to cause the pain and suffering of some other innocent child. No way. In my mind, it’s off to jail for such people, with a guarantee they will never work with children again.

  Why are children suffering? If the state’s child-care system can’t handle the problem, maybe the criminal-justice system can.

  O B J E C T I O N !

  2 1 3

  C A N Y O U H E A R M E N O W ?

  Another tragedy occurred in New Jersey within months of the Jackson debacle. A seven-year-old boy, Faheem Williams, was found dead, and his two brothers were found emaciated and locked in a basement filled with feces and rodents. Social workers had also supposedly paid multiple visits to that family, investigating allegations of abuse and neglect. Now the man suspected in the child’s death, Wesley Murphy, will not be charged with murder, even though the autopsy showed that Faheem had died of blunt-force trauma and starvation.

  Murphy’s mother, Sherry Murphy, forty-one, was taking care of the boys for their mother, Melinda Williams, while she served time in jail on an assault charge. Police rescued Faheem’s brothers after Murphy’s boyfriend found them living in their own feces, vomit, and urine. He reportedly had lived in the house for two weeks without even knowing that the children were there. Police later found Faheem’s body in the basement with his brothers, hidden in a plastic container. He had been dead for more than a month.

  Wesley Murphy was charged with assault and child endangerment.

  Sherry Murphy, whom police found sleeping in a Newark apartment, was charged with child endangerment, but she has not been charged in Faheem’s death. Reports have come to light that the boys’ natural mother may have abused them as well. There is also suspicion that her boyfriend had molested one of the children. As if that’s not enough, here’s the rest of the story: New Jersey’s Division of Youth and Family Services had received ten complaints over ten years about Williams’s abuse of her children. An October 2001 report accused Williams of beating and burning them.

  It was widely reported that three of the reports were substantiated, but the state agency closed the case in February 2002 because it could not find the children. That month, Williams was jailed for child endangerment. She entrusted the boys to Murphy, a go-go dancer. Police say 2 1 4

  N A N C Y G R A C E

  Murphy has a crack problem but no criminal record. Ten complaints in ten years. Can they hear you now, Faheem?

  F A L L E N A N G E L

  Lisa Steinberg was illegally adopted along with another child, a baby boy, by a New York lawyer, Joel Steinberg, and his enabler/lover, Hedda Nussbaum. This little girl had the smile of an angel. Now she is an angel. How these two ever got children in the first place, I don’t know. Why the state of New York didn’t seek the death penalty on these two child killers will also forever remain a mystery in my mind. Lisa’s cold little body was found by police in November 1987. She was covered in welts, her body was black and blue, and she was lying on the floor of the family’s Manhattan apartment. She died three days after she was brutally beaten in the apartment Steinberg shared with his lover.

  The little boy, tethered at the waist and lying in his own urine, naked, was found nearby. At least he lived.

  The children were tormented, abused, beaten, and mistreated their entire lives. No one ever came to their aid: not the state, the neighbors, or the police. The government used Nussbaum’s testimony to get a conviction on Steinberg. She claimed that because he beat her, too, she wasn’t responsible for the death of Lisa, nor for the years of torment these two helpless children endured. In my mind, she is a modern-day Pontius Pilate. She just stood by and watched two innocents be merci-lessly destroyed and did nothing. Check again, Hedda, there’s blood on your hands. Lisa’s blood.

  As for Steinberg, he was released from jail in the summer of 2004.

  A long white stretch limo picked him up to usher him to freedom. In an interview with New York magazine, the convicted child killer says he’s

  “a good father” who only pushed his six-year-old adopted daughter but did not hit her. Steinberg showed up on the streets of Manhattan, care-free in Times Square and at the USS Intrepid’s Sea-Air-Space Museum, O B J E C T I O N !

  2 1 5

  ambling along without a care in the world. He was kicked out of the halfway house where he lived following his release from jail because administrators there were livid after Steinberg told New York magazine that he shouldn’t be blamed for Lisa’s death. Ever concerned only for himself, Steinberg complained about his time behind bars, “I went from a middle-aged millionaire to a penniless old bum!”

  Not only should Steinberg and Nussbaum be facing the death penalty right now, social services in New York should be ridden out of town on a rail. Two children were handed over to a sadist like Steinberg and no heads rolled? An illegal adoption? What rules were bent so this child could be tortured and ultimately die a painful death? As in so many other child-abuse cases, a wall of silence protected the state, and no one listened.


  A C A L L T O A R M S

  According to a report presented to the House Committee on Ways and Means by Representative George Miller of California, the story of suffering of state-protected children is an old one. These tragedies are symptomatic of a chronic failure of our nation’s child-welfare systems to care for our children. There are more than 550,000 children in foster care nationally, taken by the state out of dangerous homes and supposedly placed in safe, nurturing environments where they will receive the services they desperately require. The reality is very different. And New Jersey is not alone. A recent Health and Human Services report assailed California’s system of care for abused and neglected children.

  Michigan officials recently admitted that they had lost track of 302

  abused or neglected children. An audit of Maryland’s child-welfare system revealed that the state had lost track of some foster children for months, had failed to ensure proper health care, and, in at least one case, had entrusted a foster child to a known sex offender.

  In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 48 percent of families investigated for 2 1 6

  N A N C Y G R A C E

  abuse had prior involvement with the child-welfare system; in the District of Columbia, 32 percent of such families had been previously reported to child-protective services; and in Florida, at least 37 children died of abuse or neglect over the past five years, despite having been the subjects of abuse or maltreatment complaints, says Miller. Of the estimated 1,500 children who die of abuse and neglect across our country annually, the sad plight of more than 40 percent was already known to the child-welfare agencies. This is incredible, shocking, but sadly true.

  Over twenty-five years ago, an investigation into the failures of this country’s child-welfare system was launched by Miller. For tens of thousands of children, foster care was a living horror where services were denied, placements were unsupervised, and legal rights routinely flouted. Simply put, it was no more and no less than “state-sponsored child abuse.” The investigation brought about the Child Welfare and Adoption Assistance Act in 1980, requiring states to improve the level of services and accountability in their foster-care programs, and to promote adoptions for children who couldn’t ever go home again. Yet twenty-three years later, nothing has really changed. Children are still not just abused, they are dying. Today’s headlines are simply rewrites of the ones of two decades ago, all filled with stories of states’ failures to protect foster children.

  In just two years, thirty-two state child-welfare programs have been subjected to federal reviews, and every single one has failed to meet national standards. Miller, along with California Representative Pete Stark, is backing the Child Protective Services Improvement Act, whose aim is to improve outcomes for children in foster care, address substance-abuse problems, update eligibility standards, minimize multiple placements of children in foster care, and move quickly to either return them to their families or find permanent adoptive homes. The bill is designed to enhance caseworker retention by providing grants to enhance social-worker training, raise salaries, and reduce caseloads.

  The federal government spends $5 billion annually to protect O B J E C T I O N !

  2 1 7

  abused children, but the feds must raise serious questions about the adequacy of federal oversight of state child-welfare programs. There are those who propose changes in the child-welfare system that would diminish accountability and grant even greater latitude to the states in managing their federally financed foster-care systems. With thirty-two state agencies failing to meet even basic standards for foster children, it’s crazy to blindly award states a block grant pinned on the groundless hope they’d run their programs any better than they do now. I join Miller in urging Congress to reform the system under the Child Protective Services Improvement Act. Who knows how many thousands of children it might save?

  There is something else we can do to safeguard these helpless children: Add an independent third party to monitor the system that is supposed to do everything in its power to protect them. Our government is choking with bureaucracy. We have departments that monitor virtually every other aspect of our government, but no one monitoring child-welfare cases. An independent body with the investigative powers to oversee child-welfare caseworkers is essential if these heinous wrongs against children that have gone unnoticed and ignored are to be stopped. We can’t afford not to do this in our fight to protect what is our most important resource—our children.

  T U R N I N G T R A G E D Y

  I N T O I N S P I R A T I O N

  There are some victims who somehow manage to take the tragedy they and their families endure and transform some of their grief into the inspiration to help others. I have met many heroes during the course of my career who have selflessly worked to prevent others from suffering the same devastating fate that nearly ruined their lives. Since I have written so extensively about what’s wrong with our system of justice and heaped a big helping of (justified!) criticism on those who I believe are 2 1 8

  N A N C Y G R A C E

  trying to destroy it, I’d like to let the light in. Thankfully, there are those brave souls who refuse to be stopped by the evil in this world.

  Here’s a look at just a few of the people I admire not only for surviving their grief, but for becoming role models in their quest to help other victims.

  M A R C K L A A S

  In a previous chapter, I told you about Marc Klaas’s work with victims’-rights advocate Andy Kahan in championing the Notoriety for Profit Law, designed to prevent killers from cashing in on their crimes.

  Klaas is a tireless voice for parents of missing and murdered children, whose activism has taken many forms.

  When Klaas’s daughter, Polly, first went missing, the police, as is customary, immediately suspected people closest to the victim, including Klaas and his family and friends. Unlike many suspects we have watched over the years, Klaas didn’t shrink from suspicion. Instead he opened his home and vehicles voluntarily for the police to perform an exhaustive search and demanded that the police immediately subject him to a polygraph, which, of course, he passed. Klaas rightly deduced that any reluctance or protests on his part would be a waste of valuable time, time that police needed to find the real perpetrator. When dealing with a child’s abduction, every minute counts.

  Mark Klaas worked side by side with the police in their efforts to find Polly and bring her home alive. When that dream didn’t come true, he worked to make sure other families could retain their hopes for the safe return of their missing children. The KlaasKids Foundation, established by Klaas in 1994, gives meaning to Polly’s death and creates a legacy in which her name will help protect children for generations to come.

  The KlaasKids Foundation acts as a clearinghouse of information related to the protection of children. It distills the best knowledge and information by forming and promoting partnerships with concerned citizens, the private sector, organizations, law enforcement, and legisla-O B J E C T I O N !

  2 1 9

  tors to take responsibility and to become part of the solution to fight crime. Klaas’s mission is a simple yet very important one: to put an end to crimes against children. Take a hard look around, and you will see, as I have, that when there is an injustice, Marc Klaas is speaking out against it.

  J O H N W A L S H

  For more than twenty years, John Walsh has been a tireless crusader for children’s and victims’ rights. Walsh’s knowledge of law enforcement was gained firsthand through personal sorrow. His battle against crime started on July 27, 1981, when his six-year-old son, Adam, was kidnapped and murdered. Adam was taken at a Sears store in a Hollywood, Florida, mall. The child was left alone for only a scant few minutes to play a video game while his mother looked for a lamp.

  Without warning, he was gone forever.

  Walsh and his wife, Revé, battled for the passage of the federal Missing Children’s Act of 1982 and the federal Missing Children’s Assistance Act of 198
4. The statutes created the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which maintains a toll-free hotline number—(800) THE-LOST—to report a missing child or the sighting of one. The Walshes also founded the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to legislative reform, which later merged with the missing children’s center.

  Walsh went on to launch the highly respected television show America’s Most Wanted. The show is dedicated to stopping crime and apprehending violent perpetrators. Walsh brings the nation together to fight against violent criminals every week and has been incredibly successful in bringing some of the country’s most violent offenders to justice. Taking hundreds of thousands of calls, many of them anonymous, America’s Most Wanted has caught so many criminals that the numbers are truly staggering. Since the series began airing in 1988, America’s Most Wanted has helped apprehend more than eight hundred fugitives in the United States and elsewhere. As of September 2004, sixteen of 2 2 0

  N A N C Y G R A C E

  them have been on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Perhaps even more important, the program has helped rescue thirty-nine children abducted by strangers.

  B R E N D A V A N D A M

  Brenda van Dam is another parent who turned her suffering into activism. I interviewed Brenda and her husband, Damon, for a special hour-long presentation on Larry King Live. Afterward, I met them and their two sons for dinner. Brenda van Dam’s composure and her will to make something positive out of Danielle’s death is something that inspired me. I walked out of the restaurant that night humbled.

  After the devastating loss of her daughter, van Dam created the Danielle Legacy Foundation to promote awareness and support new laws aimed at helping protect this country’s children. As of this writing, van Dam was advocating the passage of the Sexual Predator Punishment and Megan’s Law Expansion Act, authored by State Senator Dennis Hollingsworth and Assemblyman Jay La Suer of California. The bill proposes extending Megan’s Law (which states that a community must be notified if a convicted sex offender moves in) so that information on those offenders is made available on the Internet, on a Web site maintained by the Department of Justice. Van Dam believes that this is vital information that must be easily accessible to parents, and I agree. Not everyone is lucky enough to live in exclusive gated communities or penthouse suites, guarded by hired security, doormen, and alarm systems. Everyday people deserve to know if there is a registered sex offender living five doors down, and the Internet provides 24/7 information to all.