Thank you Star Tribune and Brandon Stahl for your in depth reporting on the awful state of child protection in Pope County MN.
A few months ago Brandon Stahl presented Star Tribune readers with the sad fact that four Minnesota counties screen out 90% of child abuse calls. Today, you have shown us how a child can be reported to Child Protection Services fifteen times with egg sized lumps, multiple bite marks, broken arm, swollen cheeks, black eye, facial scabs and puncture wounds and have those reports screened out as unimportant fourteen times.
Eric’s death was as violent and tortured as his life was. Eric’s day care providers tried again and again to report to Pope County Child Protection the bleeding and bruises that had been visited on a helpless child but even these mandated reporters finally gave up when they realized that the County had no intention of taking any action to save this child.
This story has been repeated 54 times in Minnesota since 2005 (children that have been murdered by their caregivers after being reported to child protection).
29% of abused MN children are sent back into the abusive conditions they were rescued from.
MN now ranks 47th among the states on the amount it spends on children in child protection
30% of Minnesota families reported for abuse receive services
The waiting list for subsidized daycare in MN is over 8000 names long (people just quit signing up)
80% of Minnesota’s abused children are abused again while under court supervision (this data from
U of M CURA Reporter Summer Fall 2013).
For all the talk about how precious children are, some Minnesota children are more precious than others. This is how Minnesotans value other people’s children.
As a longtime CASA guardian ad-Litem, I have seen horrific things done to very young children and feel compelled to repeat their stories. We need to have this conversation if anything is going to change.
I know what abuse and violence does to children – and the effects of abuse and violence are with that child forever.
These terrified and tortured children have no rights, no lobby to be heard at the State House, and with no CASA guardian ad-Litem, no voice to describe what it’s like to be tortured to death as a three year old in your own home.
Think about just how lucky you were to be born into a family that loved you (or at least didn’t beat, neglect, or molest you).
Minnesota’s under-funding of programs that could provide reporting and services to at risk children is a moral failure.
If it were not for Brandon Stahl’s reporting on Eric Dean’s very avoidable senseless death, just the few people who had him in their daycare center would know about this tragedy. There is something amoral in community that allows three year old children to be tortured to death and then forgotten about.
At times like this, the path of least resistance is to hate and blame Pope County and their Child Protection Services.
I argue that it is us, as a State and its voters, that have just not deemed these children important enough to make the reporting and investigation of child abuse a priority and mandate standards to insure that 3 year old children are not tortured to death in the presence of Child Protection Workers.
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