"Globe reporters receive merit award" by Katie Johnston Chase, Globe Staff | June 25, 2009
The Boston Globe’s account of the life and death of 14-year-old Acia Johnson has won a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.
The Globe story, by Keith O’Brien and Donovan Slack, chronicled the life of Johnson, a rising basketball star at South Boston’s Patrick F. Gavin Middle School who was killed in a house fire with her 3-year-old sister, Sophia.
The story exposed flaws in the state system to protect children who have been neglected by their parents and helped initiate new policies....
--more--"Now if only they could stop some wars and...., oh, right, they lied us into 'em!
FLASHBACK:
They Died in Each Others Arms
Because the STATE FAILED to "protect" them!!!!
Acia and Sophia Johnson, killed in April in an arson fire, weren't even supposed to be living with their mother.
Yet DSS will be knocking at YOUR DOOR if someone makes an anonymous call!
And yet,
"Social workers never realized the children were living at the South Boston house even though the workers repeatedly visited them there, and even though their mother reported they were living there when she applied for food stamps, cash assistance, and housing subsidies."
But they DIDN'T KNOW!! Pfffft!
Oh, this item is a heart-ripper!
"State's errors detailed in deaths of two sisters" by Donovan Slack, Globe Staff | December 19, 2008
The state agency responsible for children failed at the most fundamental levels to save the lives of two South Boston sisters who survived years of neglect in a home torn by drug addiction, violence, and emotional dysfunction only to die in one another's arms in an arson fire in April, an investigation by the state's new advocate for children found.
Oh, the FEAR, TERROR, and HORROR those BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN MUST HAVE FELT!!!!!
Social workers from the Department of Children and Families who visited repeatedly documented neglect of the children, but failed to stop it, the investigation concluded. Caseworkers failed to perform even rudimentary checks with police or other agencies whose information would have clearly signaled trouble. The department's internal records were so poor, the probe found, that officials failed even to "connect the dots" of the information they themselves had collected. Those failures allowed the plight of 14-year-old Acia Johnson and 3-year-old Sophia to go unnoticed, the investigation found.
"By leading lives involved with drugs, crime, and violence, the parents exposed their children to the violence of other people with similar behaviors," Gail Garinger, the child advocate and a former juvenile court judge, concluded in a summary of her report, released yesterday after a six-month investigation. "However, DCF also missed opportunities to recognize the dangers to Acia and Sophia, and to intervene."
The girls died when a fire, which officials say was set in a jealous rage by their mother's lover, swept through the West Sixth Street row house where they lived. The children lived there with their mother, Anna Reisopoulos, even though state social workers had determined five years earlier that she and the girls' father, Raymond Johnson Sr., were unfit parents and gave custody to a grandmother.
Execute him. These are the kind of people we don't need around.
Social workers failed to sufficiently document incidences of neglect by the parents dating back to 1995, the investigation found, and the agency did not interview other people involved in the children's lives who could have shed light on the dangers they faced.
"This was really a systemic failure in this case," Garinger said in an interview yesterday....
***************
Social workers never realized the children were living at the South Boston house even though the workers repeatedly visited them there, and even though their mother reported they were living there when she applied for food stamps, cash assistance, and housing subsidies. The home was also listed at Acia Johnson's school as her primary residence.
The department would eventually document cocaine use, violent domestic fights, and bizarre incidents, including one in which Acia's father left the girl on the side of the road and led police on a car chase after a traffic stop.
In all, social workers investigated roughly a dozen complaints of abuse and neglect in as many years, including two in the months before the fire. Last February, Sophia Johnson was found wandering outside, alone, on a cold winter day.
Excuse me? A BABY was WANDERING AROUND OUTSIDE on a COLD WINTER DAY?!!!! Excuse me?
On March 14, just three weeks before the fire, Reisopoulos chased her son Raymond into the backyard with a hammer. Social workers, notified by police, were called to the scene but took no immediate action....
What, would he have had to bash the kids skull in to get a reaction?
You guys just picking up a check, aren't you?
So WHY the BRIEF in the BUSINESS SECTION, Globe?
Same as the SPOTLIGHT!
They TRULY DO SERVE OTHER INTERESTS despite SOME GOOD REPORTING -- otherwise, WTF?!!!!
