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 with a woman and her young children, where he videotaped himself sexually assaulting a 3-year-old girl.
These children and many others have been killed or seriously injured despite the intervention of the Department of Children and Family Services, whose investigators form the state's primary defense against child abuse.
An Illinois Times review of public records issued between 2010 and 2024 shows that 176 children under the age of 13 have been killed after coming under the care of the department. Another 272 child deaths of children under the care of the department have resulted from undetermined causes. Abuse and neglect have been rampant, even though 174 watchdog investigations of death and serious injury cases were opened during this period by the Office of the Inspector General for DCFS.
The OIG is the legal overseer of the department. It has repeatedly criticized child protection workers for not following their own rules and for making highly questionable decisions that imperiled children. These investigations generated more than 750 recommendations from the OIG to DCFS on how to improve child safety, most of which have been adopted. DCFS also launched a statewide error reduction program in 2008. In 2019, a child protection think tank at the University of Chicago urged sweeping reforms.
And yet in the 2023 OIG overall assessment of DCFS performance, an annual "Report to the Governor and General Assembly," homicides of children under 13 spiked at 20 deaths, the highest single-year total in a decade. These children died during the previous fiscal year that ended June 30, 2022. Children continue to die at a steady rate in cases where state child protectors are blamed for mistakes.
For instance, the 250-plus-page 2023 OIG report included an account of a 5-year-old girl who was dropped from the top of a six-story parking garage. In February 2021, she fell 50 feet and slammed onto frozen ground. She survived, but suffered brain and spine injuries and a fractured skull. Her facial bones were smashed and her arms broken.
A 2021 DuPage County indictment charged her mother, Jerica Crawford, then 28, with dropping her daughter. Crawford herself jumped and was also severely injured from the 50-foot drop. She pleaded not guilty and was jailed. A status hearing on the case is set for Jan. 30.
However, according to an OIG investigation, the tragedy could have been prevented if DCFS child protection staffers had followed a crucially important regulation: always check for mental health records. OIG obtained Crawford's records a year after the child was injured. They revealed that the young woman had been psychiatrically hospitalized 11 times over six months just a year and a half before she came to be investigated by DCFS for alleged drug abuse.
According to the OIG report, the mental hospitalization records showed that Crawford had "suicidal ideation and had thoughts of killing her then 3-year-old child." It continued, "Child protection staff did not interview medical or mental health providers, nor did they obtain the mother's mental health records, which documented a significant history of mental health concerns."
DCFS investigators let her keep custody of her child after Crawford agreed to drug counseling. She later denied that she said she would hurt her daughter, the OIG report stated.
Failure to follow their own rules and lapses in judgment "show an agency in deep dysfunction," said Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert in a written response. His office provides legal representation throughout Cook County to thousands of neglected and abused children.
"It also speaks volumes about the devastating impact of DCFS's vacancy rate for critical need investigators, which has been in violation of a federal court order for many years," he wrote. "Its investigators labor, not only in an inept bureaucracy, but under untenable caseloads."
Golbert was referring to a child protection investigator vacancy rate that in April of 2022 stood at 21%, with 651 on the job statewide. The current vacancy rate for child protection investigators is 10.8%, with 750 working, according to Heather Tarczan, communications director for DCFS. She said that 85 positions remain unfilled.
"DCFS does all that they can with the resources and the laws they have available to them to make the best decisions they possibly can to fulfill their mission of protecting children," she said. "No one wants to see a child die or become injured, no one, especially not the agency that is protecting them."
But the department has been under fire regularly for years for failing to protect children in its care. The turnover in the department's top position reflects the recurrent problems that plague DCFS.
Marc Smith is the 10th director or acting director to hold the job since 2013. Last year, he was personally cited for contempt of court 12 times for failing to remove children from psychiatric hospitals long after they were cleared for release. While the contempt citations were dismissed on appeal, an appellate court termed Smith's response to the issue as "woefully short."
Smith has resigned, effective Jan. 31. He did not respond to a request for an interview. Heidi Mueller, director of the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, will take over DCFS on Feb. 1.
Senator Dan McConchie, R-Lake Zurich, a longtime critic of DCFS, was asked about persistent mistakes by child abuse staffers.
"It is clear to the people of Illinois and anyone following, there are still significant issues at DCFS," he stated in a written response.
He added, "Although the administration has made some improvements to DCFS, this is not an area where the children in need should continue to wait to see significant progress. We need action, not more patience."
DCFS handles nearly 95,000 cases in a year, according to Tarczan, but only a small percentage come to the attention of OIG overseers.
These OIG death and injury reports do not become public for up to two years following a child death or injury, long after media attention has faded. Because of privacy laws, all victims' names and the locales where abuse or death occurred are left out. As with this article, news reporters sometimes are able to link the anonymous reports to identifiable events. But without further publicity, the OIG investigations go virtually unnoticed by the public.
In her preface to the 2020 annual report, then-acting OIG director Meryl Paniak wrote, "I am disheartened that many of the problems I identify here have been identified before."
Paniak, then in her second and final year with the OIG, identified two particular dangers to child safety: Children killed after DCFS left them with abusive parents and investigators who take shortcuts leading to tragedy. Paniak declined to comment for this story.
Denise Kane, who held the job of OIG director for more than two decades, wrote in the preface of the 2018 annual report, her final year, "Investigative and intact family services workers' caseloads were dangerously high – in some instances 50-100 percent above the prescribed limit." Limits were set by a federal consent decree.
She added, "In some overloaded offices, investigators were actually offered incentives to close cases." In a telephone interview with Illinois Times, Kane said incentives included $25 gift certificates to Applebee's restaurants.
Referring to a current 60-day goal to close cases, she said gift certificates "do not guarantee the integrity of an investigation. Not when you have 15 or 17 cases or more...you are likely then to be putting kids in danger."
A critical delay
A special report in the 2023 annual OIG assessment of DCFS listed 24 cases where investigators failed to interview children reported to the hotline as abused or neglected within the state's strict 24-hour rule.
It stated: "The OIG identified a systemic pattern in child protection investigations where there was a significant delay in child protection investigators making initial contact with children after a hotline call." However, the OIG did not respond to a request to answer how many cases overall were checked for delays in the 24-hour rule.
Tierney Stutz, deputy director of DCFS, said 95% of calls to the state abuse hotline that are referred for investigation result in a face-to face-interview with a child within seven days.
"DCFS looks forward to our continued partnership with the OIG and will work closely with them to implement all recommendations with expediency," Tarczan, the spokesperson, said in a written response to a question about the department's reaction to the 24-hour rule.
One case of delayed initial contact in the report ended in the suffocation death of 8-year-old Amaria Osby in her bedroom in Chicago on May 25, 2022. The OIG special report listed a hotline abuse call to the girl's home 62 days before she died. Nevertheless, no DCFS investigator contacted her until the day before her mother, Andreal Hagler, allegedly suffocated her.
The family had come to the attention of DCFS in March of 2022 after police were called about domestic abuse by Hagler against the girl's father, Demarcus Osby. A DCFS case was opened against the mother and the next day, on March 23, the investigator rang the doorbell. No further attempt was made to contact the girl until the day before she died, more than two months later.
The OIG 24-hour rule report stated that when Amaria was finally interviewed, a DCFS investigator found "that the child appeared happy and comfortable in the home with her mother."
Amaria's mother has been charged with her murder. She pleaded not guilty.
The OIG found 24 cases in seven counties where the 24-hour rule was not followed. Delays ranged from 29 days to over 10 months.
The OIG investigated each of these cases and presented summaries of what was found without including victims' names nor identifying the county. Of the total, 17 cases were "unfounded," meaning no abuse or neglect was found. Seven cases were "indicated," meaning that abuse or neglect was found.
Of the 24 cases, six children died, two in unfounded cases and four in indicated cases. One child drowned. The cause of death for four of the children was not specified, although none of these resulted in a criminal charge.
"The OIG found that this occurrence (of failing to follow up within 24 hours) was statewide and included both abuse and neglect allegations," the report stated. The OIG recommended that police be called to help locate hard-to-find families and conduct wellness checks.
Defies common sense
OIG oversight investigations include DCFS decisions that defy common sense.
In the 2017 annual report, an infant was reported to have died one hour after birth. While investigating the premature death, "Investigators discovered that several years earlier, "...the father had taken the mother into the basement of the family home, forced her head through a noose affixed to the ceiling and left her hanging for approximately one minute." The father and mother denied the attack, but the report stated the mother later "... confirmed to officers she had in fact been hung by the neck."
However, the DCFS child protection investigator and the case supervisor decided "that while they believed the hanging incident" occurred, "the children could not be considered at risk since they had not witnessed the attack." Two children, age 9 and 12, lived at the home.
Despite the attempted hanging, DCFS "determined the children were safe in the custody of the father." A local court agreed, but when the OIG recommended DCFS appeal the ruling the department refused, according to the report.
The OIG's last words in the matter were, "The father's sociopathic behavior presents a risk to the children."
Golbert, the public guardian in Cook County, said, "You cannot make workers wise. But you can ensure that investigator and worker caseloads are consistent with national norms and in compliance with court orders. You can also give workers the tools, resources and supports that they need."
He added, "Reform must be data-driven. But frankly, you don't need a Ph.D. in social work to know that you don't keep kids with a father who hangs his wife."
A similar incident is described in the 2023 OIG report involving the suicidal behavior of the mother of 7-year-old Nathaniel Burton. She was charged with murder in her son's suffocation death.
Before her son died, Sarah Safranek, now 36, had been investigated by DCFS 15 times. She was allowed to keep her children 13 of those times. Twice she was allowed to keep them after she agreed to counseling. Complicating the case, the OIG report stated, were Safranek's multiple suicide attempts, although like the previous case involving hanging, DCFS child protection workers downplayed their importance.
Once Safranek took pills trying to kill herself, the report said, but: "The child protection supervisor agreed with a recommendation to dismiss the child abuse case finding, noting that the mother took the pills knowing the father would be home soon." The supervisor claimed Safranek knew rescue would soon be at hand "and that the children were unaware of the overdose."
Two months later Safranek tried again, taking an overdose "after her children were asleep," according to the report. However, "Thirty minutes later she became scared and woke up her husband, who called 911," the OIG investigators reported.
She was psychiatrically hospitalized after both attempts, but OIG overseers found that DCFS workers did not obtain her mental health records. She was still allowed to keep her children. In both suicide incidents and after her two psychiatric admissions, according to the OIG report, Safranek was cleared by DCFS of potentially harming her children. "In both incidents, it was reasoned that the children did not know of her attempts, rather than the actual risk her behavior created," the OIG concluded.
Safranek repeatedly told investigators that she was too stressed to handle child care and asked for help. Still, abuse and neglect reports against her were dismissed.
Five months later, her 7-year-old son, Burton, who was found to have a lacerated liver, was found dead of suffocation. Safranek was charged with his murder in Ogle County. She pleaded not guilty and remains in jail awaiting a status hearing this month.
Egregious errors
This newspaper's review found dozens of flagrant errors by DCFS workers in OIG reports of child deaths and serious injury. The death of 4-year-old Christopher Valdez stands out as an example of how not to conduct child protection.
Christopher died on his birthday a day after Thanksgiving in 2011 when repeated beatings left him too ill to eat. His mother, Crystal Valdez, was convicted of murder and sentenced to 35 years. Her boyfriend got 75 years.
Numerous headlines reported the boy was tortured, but the state's negligence in the case never became public until Jan. 1, 2013, when that year's "Report to the Governor and General Assembly" was published. As usual, the anonymous account failed to generate public outrage.
But it should have. The OIG death report found that the child protection investigator falsely claimed to have conducted numerous interviews and interventions that never really happened.
She did not keep required case paperwork and her supervisor never asked for it. And his boss, the case manager, did not intervene. The OIG report said: "By not requiring the investigator to produce required documentation of her work on the case, he (the case manager) allowed the investigator's fictional account of events to become the narrative of what had occurred."
As a result, the case was "unfounded," or dropped. Christopher, who remained with his mother, died three months after the case was closed.
However, the OIG review noted that the investigator "had been assigned an extraordinarily high volume of cases and was responsible for servicing an unreasonable amount (sic) of clients." The investigator was fired and the supervisor and manager were suspended.
In September 2012, Nathaniel Beller, 29, lifted his 9-year-old son into a bathtub filled with four gallons of gasoline, walked to an open second floor window, lit a cigarette, and called out to Cicero police below.
The incident followed a dispute with his girlfriend, Taniya Johnson, who had calmed him down that morning and then left for work where she called police. Beller refused to let them in. Officers could hear children coughing inside but couldn't convince Beller to let them go. He threatened to burn them.
After several hours, Beller released his son, along with his 3-year-old daughter. Police found the boy's socks were wet with gasoline.
Beller was arrested and hospitalized for psychiatric treatment. His two children were removed by court order to the care of a maternal aunt.
In the weeks that followed, DCFS workers, counselors and staff at the state-operated psychiatric hospital failed to communicate. Beller was never charged with any crime and was free to leave.
According to an OIG report, "No coordination existed between DCFS and the Illinois Division of Mental Health to ensure that the father complied with his aftercare program" upon release from the hospital. A hospital administrator interviewed by the OIG stated that "since the father's participation in services had not been ordered by the court, they were powerless to compel him to comply with the discharge plan."
Beller appeared in juvenile court two days after release from the hospital seeking visitation with the children he had threatened to burn. The judge granted supervised visits. The DCFS investigator did not interview Beller in court and was unaware "he had been referred to aftercare services and had failed to attend," according to the oversight report.
Two months after pouring gasoline into the bathtub, Beller was "indicated" by DCFS for risk of injury to his children and the mother, Johnson, was "indicated" for risk of harm, the OIG report stated. The case was then closed, with the children in the care of the aunt.
The OIG investigation included interviews with staff at the psychiatric hospital and a counseling center who said they had tried to contact the DCFS investigator but were unable to reach her "because her voice message mailbox was full."
Eventually, the father's visits migrated to the aunt's home where the children lived. The OIG also found out that officials at the school the boy attended were unaware of the restrictions leveled by the court as to who could pick him up after school. Johnson was supposed to be accompanied by an adult designated by DCFS but instead picked her son up alone.
With the case closed and court-ordered visiting restrictions not enforced, Beller and Johnson moved with the children to the paternal grandmother's home in Lakewood, near Chicago, in violation of a court order.
On Dec. 29, Beller, who had persisted in refusing counseling or to take medication, "lit his family on fire" after dousing them with gasoline. The daughter, then 4, Johnson and Beller died in the blaze. The boy was burned over 35% of his body and hospitalized in critical condition.
Cruelty unchecked
You might not have been able to tell from looking at him, especially when he smiled and wore his U.S. Army uniform, but Joseph R. Sipple was a cruel person.
In 2011, Sipple, then 25, was convicted in Grundy County of aggravated battery of a child and sentenced to two years in an Illinois prison. He was paroled after serving just one year.
Police records show that during the incident Sipple took an ex-girlfriend and her 5-year-old son hostage and held them for 20 hours. During this time, "He engaged in extreme and sadistic abuse of the boy that included repeatedly punching and kicking, strangling him with a cord, pulling on his genitals and stuffing soiled underwear in his mouth." After his release from prison, Sipple was not to contact the ex-girlfriend or her children.
But in 2012, Sipple was pulled over during a traffic stop. The ex-girlfriend was sitting in the passenger seat. The boy who had been tortured was in the back seat.
This resulted in a parole violation and a DCFS child abuse investigation. Police requested that the OIG for DCFS check an out-of-state conviction of Sipple for assault of a child. The state was not identified.
Through the out-of-state check, OIG learned that Sipple had abused another ex-girlfriend's child, a 2-year-old boy who he used as a human target when he practiced with a BB gun. Pellets from these air rifles can penetrate skin or an eye. He also punched the toddler in the genitals and then forced him to engage in abuse of his mother, who Sipple had tied to a chair. But Sipple was not sent back to prison for a parole violation.
Instead, the OIG recommended that a "clinical screener" be brought into the abuse investigation to determine if the ex-girlfriend was capable of protecting and raising her children. According to an OIG report, "The specialist concluded that counseling for the mother, abused son, and the man was adequate to mitigate any potential harm despite the man's history of calculated, sadistic violence..."
OIG called the screener's report "cursory and boilerplate." The screener did not actually interview the mother but relied on caseworker notes.
During the six weeks it took for a supervisor to approve the report, Sipple lived with the woman and her children, although she told DCFS investigators he was not allowed at her house.
In June of 2014, Sipple became the prime suspect in the murders of still another ex-girlfriend, Kelli Denker, 30, and her mother, Donna Denker, 60. They were found shot to death in their Dwight home.
Two weeks later on June 26, police from several agencies chased Sipple's van and cornered him. He committed suicide before he could be arrested. The handgun found with him was later determined to be the same one that killed the Denkers.
After his death, Illinois State Police searched a computer connected to Sipple and found "explicit photos" of him engaged "in sexual behavior with the girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter." This attack had occurred after the traffic stop when the girlfriend and boy were found with Sipple.
During police interrogation, the little girl's mother said Sipple broke her daughter's leg, requiring her to be hospitalized. ISP continued their investigation, according to an OIG report, "and found photos of the man and the girlfriend engaged in sexual acts in the presence of the girl in the hospital room."
The clinical screening that had determined it was safe for Sipple to be around the girlfriend and her children was somehow never turned over to caseworkers assigned to help the family. After Sipple's death, DCFS closed the case for child abuse even though a newly assigned caseworker was unaware of the ISP finding that the woman had continued to live with Sipple.
Finally, according to the OIG report, the caseworker asked that the case be closed but "submitted the request incorrectly stating the mother had no contact with the man for six months prior to his death." The caseworker then mistakenly filed the entire DCFS investigation under the category: service completed successfully.
It was the final mistake in a mistake-ridden case.
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. He can be reached at 618-560-6462 and [email protected].
