The swimming pool drowning death of Barrett Koches, 7, who police say was left at his foster home without adult supervision, has launched investigations by local detectives and state child protection investigators. Barrett, his brother Ryder, 4, and an unrelated 10-year-old boy were alone at a home on Winnebago Drive in Springfield March 16 when […]
George Pawlaczyk
George Pawlaczyk worked as an investigative reporter at the Belleville News Democrat for 24 years covering deficiencies in Illinois state agencies and social justice issues. In 2010 he won a George Polk Award for coverage of extended solitary confinement of mentally ill prisoners at the now-closed Tamms Correctional Center and in 2007 a Robert F. Kennedy Award for a series on failures at Illinois DCFS to protect children. Both awards were won with his former reporting partner Beth Hundsdorfer.
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When DCFS makes mistakes, children die
Over the past 15 years, abused children put under the care of the state of Illinois have been beaten, tortured, starved, suffocated, fatally drugged and burned alive. In one particularly disturbing case, a convicted child abuser who once used a 2-year-old boy as a BB gun target managed to deceive child protection investigators to live […]
