Louisiana Voice

The Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has come under a microscope following the death of a two-year-old toddler from “acute fentanyl toxicity” after he ingested pills he found on his mother’s bed. It was the third time the child had swallowed pills and twice before had to be revived by medical workers. The third attempt was unsuccessful.

DCFS had been notified of each incident at the time they occurred but took no steps to protect the child.

LouisianaVoice had a story on Monday about the removal of three children from their parents in Natchitoches after the mother said she was falsely accused of drug use by her in-laws.

Now, a former Department of Juvenile Justice employee, Jerel M. Giarrusso, has come forward with a story of her own experience with the DCFS’s removal of a newborn from his parents, again on the flimsy word of in-laws who claimed in this case the mother failed to take medication during her pregnancy.

Following is her account:

By Jerel M. Giarrusso

Guest Columnist

Several years ago, I was personally involved in a case where DCFS wrongly removed a newborn from his parents in northeast Louisiana.  Let’s refer to the couple as Louis and Anna. The young couple had lived with us for some time and we were like parents to them. 

Anna had a lengthy, nightmarish labor and emergency caesarean delivery, and remained in the hospital for a couple of days after Louis took the infant home.  While she was hospitalized, a social worker accused Anna of being unfit to mother her child after someone (she thinks it was her husband’s mother) alleged she had not taken psychotropic drugs for a mental health condition during her pregnancy.

The hospital staff bought that foolishness, got DCFS and law enforcement involved, and they demanded that she not go home to her own residence with her husband and new baby – and that she have no unsupervised contact with her baby.  Anna’s adoptive father was there and called us repeatedly to keep us apprised of the situation.

To be sure, the meds that Anna did not take had not even been prescribed for her during her pregnancy, as they would have caused severe problems for a developing fetus.  The mental health condition had been diagnosed when Anna was three years old and was probably bogus in the first place. (I have copies of DCFS paperwork regarding her case as a toddler removed from her parents, adopted by another couple, and years later, the situation with her own child.)

Anna went home to her husband and new baby four days after he was born.  Several hours later, three people arrived at their mobile home with a court order, and took the infant away – two DCFS employees and an armed sheriff’s deputy.  The charge for removal of the baby was that Anna had abused him in utero because she did not take certain medications during her pregnancy –  meds that had not been prescribed for her, and would have been dangerous to the baby.  Yep – that’s in writing in the DCFS paperwork – abuse and neglect of the fetus in utero because she didn’t take certain medications.

Anna’s adoptive father hired an attorney to fight this mess. The lawyer was well-intentioned but inexperienced and had no clue how to handle such a case.  I was officially appointed as an advocate for the family under DCFS’s own regulations, so I was supposed to have full access to their records, and could be present and speak for them in court hearings. The one time that I was present in court on their behalf, the two attorneys for DCFS had the judge throw me out.

Louis and Anna did everything the court and the DCFS workers demanded of them.  They took classes on parenting, anger management, whatever they were told.  They were only allowed one visit a month, for one hour each visit.  Although they had moved back to East Baton Rouge Parish, the DCFS staff in Monroe refused to move the case, and the baby, who was in foster care, to EBR, despite the request of the Baton Rouge office supervisor.  Louis and Anna drove to Monroe every month to visit their son, four hours each way.  Sometimes they sold blood plasma to pay for gas for their car.  Several times they were told, after they arrived, that the foster parents couldn’t (wouldn’t) make the child available to them for the one hour visit.  When visits did take place, usually at a McDonald’s restaurant, the foster parents remained present and interfered, until the lawyer intervened and DCFS finally allowed private visits, at the office.

Anna took photos of serious diaper rash and small bruises on her son during some early visits, and complained to DCFS about his condition.  As a result, they were forbidden to have their cell phones in the visits.  The lawyer then made a complaint alleging abuse, with the photos, to the city police.  The baby was then re-assigned to a different foster home. This was about the same time that a St. Tammany Parish foster mother was arrested and charged with the murder of her foster child, after DCFS ignored the birth parents’ repeated complaints that their child was being abused.  The birth parents sued DCFS, of course.  One would think the agency would have taken seriously birth parents’ concerns about abuse of children in their custody.       

DCFS alleged that family reunification was not appropriate because Louis and Anna had not properly bonded with their son.  It’s rather difficult to establish a relationship with a baby when the face time equals 12 hours a year, if that. 

This went on for a couple of years.  I contacted DCFS officials to ask for someone to look into this case and return this child to his parents, taking it as high as the executive office, and I was swatted away.  The family could no longer afford the lawyer, who had been ineffectual anyway.   After about three years, Anna became pregnant again.  Louis and Anna said the DCFS social worker threatened to remove the new baby from them at birth, for no other reason than that their first child was in DCFS custody.  They were finally intimidated into surrendering their son to the state and terminating their parental rights, to protect their second child from the depredations of an out-of-control state agency. 

Throughout this ordeal, Louis and Anna were required to pay child support to DCFS for the privilege of having their child taken from them.  DCFS continued to draft their checking account for child support payments after their parental rights were terminated.  DCFS finally had to refund the money.

Their oldest child was basically kidnapped from this couple.  They have no contact with him.  He is lost to them forever.  Right after the baby was taken from them, I contacted an acquaintance who was a high level DCFS program manager to ask if she could make sense out of the situation.  She looked up the file on the computer, looked me in the eye and said, “hmmm, a healthy white infant…”

 The significance of that remark is that the Children’s Bureau supports programs, research, and monitoring to help eliminate barriers to adoption and find permanent families for children. The Children’s Bureau provides funding to states and tribes to help them support families who adopt from foster care (Emphasis added). “We provide additional funds to states that achieve a high number of adoptions of children from foster care,” its web page says.

I was told that Louisiana has had a very high success rate in achieving adoptions from foster care. The federal government pays state agencies accordingly. The word that came to my mind, not anyone at DCFS, was “bounty.”

There is a ready market for the adoption of “healthy white infants” in all 50 states.  When people adopt from state foster care, they do not wait forever — nor do they pay tens of thousands of dollars to attorneys for private adoptions.