Nine Charged in Starvation Death of Disabled, 42-Pound Teen

[bijou]

PHILADELPHIA —  Four social workers were among nine people charged Thursday in the death of a disabled 14-year-old girl who authorities say wasted away from neglect before dying at 42 pounds.

Danieal Kelly's mother was charged with murder; counts against other defendants range from involuntary manslaughter to perjury. District Attorney Lynne Abraham said any of the nine could have foreseen the horrific fate of Danieal, whose emaciated body was found in her mother's squalid house covered with bone-deep, maggot-infested bedsores in August 2006.

Abraham had scathing words for the city's Department of Human Services, calling its handling of the case "callous, indifferent, unconscionable" — and all too familiar.

"Danieal did not fall through the cracks," she said. "It was a failure of institutional inclination. Saving Danieal was just too much trouble."

Two of the social workers are city employees; two others worked for a company hired by DHS. Department Commissioner Anne Marie Ambrose scheduled an afternoon news conference to discuss the case.

Warrants were issued for all nine defendants Thursday. Andrea Kelly, the mother of Danieal was charged with murder, and father Daniel Kelly, who did not live with the family, was charged with child endangerment.

A 258-page grand jury report recommending the charges said not only that Andrea Kelly refused to get her daughter food, water and medical treatment, but that she repeatedly prevented one of her other children from calling an ambulance "for his obviously dying sister."

...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,395643,00.html

This is shocking, the poor girl must have suffered so badly while her parents and the social workers did nothing. 

[Miss Mia]

God that's just horrible.

[Schadenfreude]

Good grief, that makes me ill.

I really hate the fact that the government intrudes but I think I hate government incompetence even more.

on edit: I hope it's obvious that I hold the parents responsible for this horrific crime first and foremost.

[Chris_]

There was a similar story about a 15-year-old boy that was rescued from his parent's house.  I think the parents got jail time for attemtped murder or something similar.

I tried to find the story, but didn't have any luck.  Googling 'abused and starved teenagers' is a depressing experience.

[NHSparky]

For all the useless interference CPS injects into people's lives, and then when a REAL case of abuse comes up and they do nothing?

Time to drop the hammer.  Whoever said it was right--this was a case where the right thing wasn't done because the fatass civil "servants" couldn't be bothered to do the right thing because it might actually require a little WORK.

[bijou]

For all the useless interference CPS injects into people's lives, and then when a REAL case of abuse comes up and they do nothing?

Time to drop the hammer.  Whoever said it was right--this was a case where the right thing wasn't done because the fatass civil "servants" couldn't be bothered to do the right thing because it might actually require a little WORK.

Agreed, while obviously the mother had most responsibility one of the social workers actually falsified his records

Julius Murray and Mickal Kamuvaka were charged with involuntary manslaughter and tampering with public records.

An e-mail sent to Kamuvaka was not immediately returned. Contact information for Murray could not immediately be located.

Murray's "fraudulent nonperformance of a job" — he seldom went to the Kelly house, which he was supposed to visit twice a week — allowed Andrea Kelly to starve her daughter over a period of months, the grand jury said.

After Danieal's death, Kamuvaka directed Murray to fabricate and backdate reports on the family, grand jurors said.

that deserves some jail time right there.

[Schadenfreude]

For all the useless interference CPS injects into people's lives, and then when a REAL case of abuse comes up and they do nothing?

Time to drop the hammer.  Whoever said it was right--this was a case where the right thing wasn't done because the fatass civil "servants" couldn't be bothered to do the right thing because it might actually require a little WORK.

That was what I was trying to spit out last night, but you said it much better.

[Chris_]

I have a friend who worked as CPS case worker while he was in college.  He was only paid about $24,000 a year.  Probably doesn't attract the best people for that kind of money, but that's just my guess.  If you want good people, you're going to have to pay them.

[Airwolf]

Poor kid . Might as well have been in one of Hitlers camps because of the way she died.

[Inga]

How can parents stand by and watch they're child starve to death. I think it should be an eye for an eye. Put them in a closet to starve. For that matter any heinous crime done to a child by parents, they should receive the same.

[mamacags]

What do they care?  To them it is just a really really late term abortion.  The sanctity of life is almost gone in this country.  People no longer care about the innocent but they will wail and throw themselves to the ground over some mass murderer in a heart beat.  I don't know how a person couldn't believe in Satan anymore.

[Ptarmigan]

Hell has a special place for scum like them. They can rot in Hell along side with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Elizabeth Bathory.