Learning the Right Lessons from Nixzmary Brown
By now, everyone has heard the story of Nixzmary Brown, the seven-year-old girl who died at the hands of her abusive stepfather, Cesar Rodriguez. After the girl’s death, the news spread that the city’s Administration for Children’s Services had had multiple notifications about her family.
Education and teachers’ union officials said that school staff members had noticed the girl was missing classes, appeared malnourished and suffered an eye injury, and that the staff members had notified state and city child welfare officials repeatedly. In response, the city agency workers talked with Nixzmary and her parents, visited her home and took her to a doctor, who said her injuries were consistent with falling down.
Finally, in the crucial weeks before her death, child welfare workers were unable to get into her home and did not take the necessary steps to get a warrant.
As news about this came out, ACS said it would immediately review the eight to ten thousand open cases involving a child who is the subject of an abuse or neglect complaint. That’s not a bad idea, but it’s only a start.
There are a lot of people in New York City. I get that. There are almost certainly more cases than ACS workers can reasonably investigate quickly, but surely they could pare it down from 8,000 cases? There needs to be a full review of the entire process, and if (as I suspect is probably the case) some stupid politically correct nonsense about not wanting to appear to be focused on mostly poor families is keeping workers from doing their jobs, get over it. I realize that all abuse doesn’t happen in poor families, but I’ve a suspicion that there are cases that are overlooked because workers don’t want to investigate an overly large percentage of poorer families. Maybe I’m wrong. That’s why there should be an investigation: find out where the flaws in the system are, and fix them. Not by simply tossing more money and manpower at the problem (which may, in fact, be a part of the final solution, but it’s not a solution in and of itself), but by actually analyzing the system.
* The girl’s mother is referred to as Ms. Santiago repeatedly in the articles I’ve seen, but she’s apparently known to be married — Rodriguez is constantly referred to as the girl’s stepfather. Is there some rule about when to use “Mrs.” and when to use “Ms.” that I’m not aware of?