Massachusetts has got to rank close to New Jersey in the criminal incompetence of its Department of Social Services. New Jersey, that is, before the advocacy group Children’s Rights hauled their sorry butts into court and won a couple of million dollar judgments on behalf of severely abused children who had been in their care and custody.
As was to be expected, the Governor’s investigative panel cleared the DSS of blame and failed to recommend any firings or even reprimands, trivializing the whole sorry affair of Hailey Poutre as due to “ignorance” and “errors in human judgment”.
DSS got nary a wrist-slap from the commission, which is pretty consistent with the tender way that public officials are treated in this state by their peers, whether the matter is an arrest for drunk driving or the attempted murder of a little girl.
This finding is especially incomprehensible when you consider who was on the commission: Christine Ferguson, now the head of First Focus, a children’s advocacy group in Washington, DC and the former commissioner of the Department of Public Health; Dr. Mary Anne Badaracco, chief of psychiatry at Beth Israel; and Dr. Jeffrey Burns, the head of the division of critical medicine at Children’s Hospital and co-chair of the hospital’s ethics committee.
If three professional heavyweights like these are intimidated enough by their fellow community “leaders” to whitewash a high-visibility catastrophe like Hailey Poutre’s, then what chance does an unknown child with no advocate have to gain protection from abuse, both by their guardians and by the system itself?