Nanny State: The law of unintended consequences August 12 2008
Many in the Philadelphia metropolitan area are familiar with the sad and horrifying story of Danieal Kelly:
Danieal, as a recent Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office’s grand-jury report so gut-wrenchingly detailed, died two years ago of starvation while lying in her own feces, with flies buzzing around her mouth and maggot-infested bedsores ravaging her skeletal back.
Her mother, Andrea Kelly, 39, faces the most serious charges: murder and related offenses. It was in her Parkside house that Danieal’s emaciated body was found. Danieal, who suffered from cerebral palsy, was reportedly kept in a dark room because her mother was embarrassed to take her outside.
The father, Daniel Kelly, 37, was charged with endangering Danieal’s welfare and other offenses. He was not living with Danieal at the time of her death.
This story been played in the media as a failure of DHS. There has been virtually no public blame assigned to the two animals who call themselves the parents of Danieal Kelly. DHS is supposed to prevent tragedies like this from happening but the sad fact is that any government agency is going to be a poor substitute for caring parents. Did DHS fail? Yes, miserably. But the media failed as well, by directing the outrage over Danieal’s death solely at social services. In fact, the media was so successful in their assignment of blame in this case that the heinousness of the parents has been all but ignored. Until today:
The civil suit on behalf of the estate of Danieal Kelly was filed in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Aug. 1. The administrators of Danieal’s estate are her parents. The suit, which seeks more than $50,000, has since been moved to federal court.
(…)
The wrongful-death suit seeks more than $50,000 and names as defendants the city, DHS, MultiEthnic Behavioral Health, DPW, and the Commonwealth.
It also names as defendants now-fired DHS caseworkers Dana Poindexter and Laura Sommerer, and two people who worked at MultiEthnic – one of its founders, Mickal Kamuvaka, and Julius Murray. MultiEthnic was an outside agency that DHS assigned to handle Danieal’s case.
These four have also been criminally charged in connection with Danieal’s death.
The suit contends that Sommerer and Poindexter, as DHS employees, and Kamuvaka and Murray, as MultiEthnic employees, handled Danieal’s case “in a dangerous and reckless manner” resulting in her death.
The wrongful-death suit seeks, among other things, “reimbursement for medical bills, funeral and interment expenses, and administrative expenses.”
Because they killed their daughter through their own negligence, the Kellys had to incur funeral, interment and administrative expenses. The heart just bleeds, doesn’t it?
When everyone is responsible for the welfare of a child, no one is. Read the whole sickening story here.
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