Objection! (31 page)

That’s the least of his problems. The Grammy Award winner has several charges leveled against him for having sex with underage girls. In February 2002, the
Chicago Sun-Times
gave Chicago police a videotape that authorities claim was made between 1998 and 1999, allegedly showing Kelly having sex with a fourteen-year-old girl. Kelly was charged with twenty-one counts of child pornography. He denies the charges.

When you don’t know a horse, look at his track record. Kelly was the focus of four lawsuits accusing him of sex with underage girls. He tried to explain this away during an interview on BET, when he told interviewer Ed Gordon that he’d settled two of those suits only because his lawyers had told him to do so. There’s also a dancer who says Kelly failed to mention that their sexual encounter was being taped. In August 1994, Kelly married the then-fifteen-year-old singer Aaliyah. Her O B J E C T I O N !

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age made the union illegal, and it was annulled. Kelly won’t comment on his relationship with the late singer, he says, “out of respect for her parents.”

How often do you hear the argument, “What do you want? A video of the crime?” Well, in the case of R. Kelly, there
is
a video. Enter the parents. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services is reportedly investigating whether the parents of the girl knowingly allowed her to have sex with an adult. Look for the blame-the-parents defense somewhere in the defense attorney’s summation when the case comes to trial.

With Michael Jackson, it is arguable that his lyrics generated a picture of wholesomeness. The public—and a jury, for that matter—

may very well construe Jackson’s credibility issues as more a personal hypocrisy. With R. Kelly and the sexual nature of his music, his criminal charges may be interpreted as much more realistic and more believable. But we cannot ignore the power of popularity. Director Roman Polanski pled guilty in 1979 to drugging a thirteen-year-old girl so he could have sex with her, then fleeing the country right before sentencing. When Polanski won an Oscar in 2003 for his film
The Pianist,
even in his absence he got a standing ovation. History does repeat itself.

Kelly was nominated for an NAACP Image Award in January 2004. Incredible. As of this writing, R. Kelly still awaits a trial date for his child-porn case in Illinois.

S T A R V I N G T H E C H I L D R E N —

L E G A L L Y

While thousands of criminal
cases involving child abuse come into court each year, some of the most tragic involve foster children. We have come to know these defenseless children through some of the most shocking headlines in recent memory. They live in horrific conditions and suffer at the hands of monsters who routinely go undetected by the system.

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On October 10, 2003, before the bombshell dropped that foster children in the community were actually starving, Collingswood, New Jersey, police responded to a neighbor’s late-night call that a “little kid” was eating out of an outdoor garbage can. The “little kid” weighed only forty-five pounds and stood just four feet tall. He was actually nineteen years old, stunted by years of abuse and malnourishment.

Bruce Jackson, who lived with foster parents Vanessa and Raymond Jackson, had three little brothers at home just like him—starving. Department of Youth and Family Services workers had been in the home on visits at least thirty-eight times since 1999 and seemingly didn’t notice the children were starving. Many now doubt the DYFS visits ever took place.

It pains me to even write this: A 1994 entry in a caseworker’s notes reveals that Bruce Jackson begged the caseworker just to take him to McDonald’s, to Dunkin’ Donuts—anywhere at all the boy could get something to eat. She refused. The “boy” was so starved he found a cookie in the car’s glove compartment and ate it, then begged the social worker not to tell his foster mother. Caseworkers chose to believe the foster parents instead of the boys’ doctors when it came to the truth about their health. The “mother,” Vanessa Jackson, told caseworkers Bruce was so small because he had “bulimia and depression,” writes Kevin Ryan of New Jersey’s Office of the Child Advocate. Doctors disagreed.

Although the Jacksons received around $28,000 a year from the state for the children’s care, Bruce and his little brothers, ages fourteen, ten, and nine, were kept locked out of the home’s kitchen and lived off nothing but a diet of uncooked pancake batter, peanut butter, jelly, and cereal. The boys chewed on wallboard and insulation to live.

A blistering report by the above-mentioned Office of the Child Advocate cited sloppy casework, an ignorance of the rules specifically passed to protect the innocent, and a shocking lack of internal communication as the unacceptable reasons the state’s child-welfare agency had allowed four “intentionally malnourished” adopted children to live in near starvation for almost a decade.

O B J E C T I O N !

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The Jackson parents were actually praised for “doing an excellent job” and being “very consistent on doctor’s appointments” in one 1997

foster-home evaluation. In reality, the four boys suffered painfully, both emotionally and physically, for years on end. Doctors’ reports—that DYFS had full access to, had they bothered to read them—showed that in no uncertain terms. For example, one doctor, during a routine physical on one of the boys, wrote that he was “markedly underweight, un-dersized and presented with failure-to-thrive syndrome.” At three years old, he weighed only twenty-one pounds. Shockingly, just one year later, the department approved his adoption by the Jacksons, with no concern or even mention of his disturbingly poor health. With full approval of DYFS, judges, and special law guardians assigned to the

“family,” the other boys’ adoptions by the Jackson “parents” were a breeze. There was just one problem no one mentioned—the children were being systematically starved to death.

As of this writing, the Jacksons stand charged with child endangerment and assault. Bruce Jackson is still living in a hospital but doing well on a “normal diet,” gaining thirty-seven pounds and growing six and a half inches in just three months. He and his brothers appear to be recovering. Each one of them weighed less than fifty pounds when removed from the Jackson home. Their adoptive parents, Vanessa Jackson, forty-eight, and Raymond Jackson, fifty, have been arrested and formally charged with four counts of aggravated assault and fourteen counts of child endangerment. Nine child-welfare employees were fired, including one caseworker who was supposed to be visiting the family regularly.

Ryan’s report on the foster-adoptee program is a real-life horror story, if anyone cares enough to read it. It’s all about bureaucratic dysfunction, detailing how the Jacksons became foster parents in 1991

and, since that time, DYFS did practically nothing to help the boys.

The scariest part, aside from the fact of children starving under the noses of visiting social workers, is that the report suggests that 2,500 of 14,300 other “safety assessments” DYFS workers claimed they made were nothing more than reviews of notes taken during alleged visits 2 1 2

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months earlier. How many other children are starving, molested, and abused with the sanction of the government? This is a real problem, and our government, our laws, our system are not just allowing it but perpetuating it.

There are solutions. Ryan sets forth several that I back completely.

The Department of State Human Services must require in-person safety assessments of all children adopted and/or fostered out by the state, as well as interview all members of the household during the in-person visits. No relying on months-old “notes.” Another great idea is to coordinate medical care for these children by creating and funding medical offices there at DYFS offices. This will prevent kids from getting lost in the shuffle between physicians, caseworkers, and foster and adoptive parents. The right hand must observe the left hand when it comes to these precious children. Further, the state must require foster and adoptive parents to show proof that their child has at least an annual physical as a condition of getting state money. The federal government pays adoptive parents several hundred dollars a month. When did raising children turn into a moneymaking proposition?

In addition to the improvements listed above, and contrary to what many supporters of the current system contend, I firmly believe that child caseworkers who make bad decisions regarding our country’s lit-tlest victims must be prosecuted criminally. Show me you visited. File the paperwork. Show me that the children went to annual doctor visits, had their shots and weigh-ins as normal, and aren’t covered with welts or bruised black and blue. Show me that there have been counseling visits. We are the richest country in the world, and the government already takes at least a third of what we bring home. This problem is too important to remedy with a simple reprimand or a firing where the individual goes on to another job, possibly to cause the pain and suffering of some other innocent child. No way. In my mind, it’s off to jail for such people, with a guarantee they will never work with children again.

Why are children suffering? If the state’s child-care system can’t handle the problem, maybe the criminal-justice system can.

O B J E C T I O N !

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C A N Y O U H E A R M E N O W ?

Another tragedy occurred in
New Jersey within months of the Jackson debacle. A seven-year-old boy, Faheem Williams, was found dead, and his two brothers were found emaciated and locked in a basement filled with feces and rodents. Social workers had also supposedly paid multiple visits to that family, investigating allegations of abuse and neglect. Now the man suspected in the child’s death, Wesley Murphy, will not be charged with murder, even though the autopsy showed that Faheem had died of blunt-force trauma and starvation.

Murphy’s mother, Sherry Murphy, forty-one, was taking care of the boys for their mother, Melinda Williams, while she served time in jail on an assault charge. Police rescued Faheem’s brothers after Murphy’s boyfriend found them living in their own feces, vomit, and urine. He reportedly had lived in the house for two weeks without even knowing that the children were there. Police later found Faheem’s body in the basement with his brothers, hidden in a plastic container. He had been dead for more than a month.

Wesley Murphy was charged with assault and child endangerment.

Sherry Murphy, whom police found sleeping in a Newark apartment, was charged with child endangerment, but she has not been charged in Faheem’s death. Reports have come to light that the boys’ natural mother may have abused them as well. There is also suspicion that her boyfriend had molested one of the children. As if that’s not enough, here’s the rest of the story: New Jersey’s Division of Youth and Family Services had received ten complaints over ten years about Williams’s abuse of her children. An October 2001 report accused Williams of beating and burning them.

It was widely reported that three of the reports were substantiated, but the state agency closed the case in February 2002 because it could not find the children. That month, Williams was jailed for child endangerment. She entrusted the boys to Murphy, a go-go dancer. Police say 2 1 4

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Murphy has a crack problem but no criminal record. Ten complaints in ten years. Can they hear you now, Faheem?

F A L L E N A N G E L

Lisa Steinberg was illegally
adopted along with another child, a baby boy, by a New York lawyer, Joel Steinberg, and his enabler/lover, Hedda Nussbaum. This little girl had the smile of an angel. Now she
is
an angel. How these two ever got children in the first place, I don’t know. Why the state of New York didn’t seek the death penalty on these two child killers will also forever remain a mystery in my mind. Lisa’s cold little body was found by police in November 1987. She was covered in welts, her body was black and blue, and she was lying on the floor of the family’s Manhattan apartment. She died three days after she was brutally beaten in the apartment Steinberg shared with his lover.

The little boy, tethered at the waist and lying in his own urine, naked, was found nearby. At least he lived.

The children were tormented, abused, beaten, and mistreated their entire lives. No one ever came to their aid: not the state, the neighbors, or the police. The government used Nussbaum’s testimony to get a conviction on Steinberg. She claimed that because he beat her, too, she wasn’t responsible for the death of Lisa, nor for the years of torment these two helpless children endured. In my mind, she is a modern-day Pontius Pilate. She just stood by and watched two innocents be merci-lessly destroyed and did nothing. Check again, Hedda, there’s blood on your hands. Lisa’s blood.

As for Steinberg, he was released from jail in the summer of 2004.

A long white stretch limo picked him up to usher him to freedom. In an interview with
New York
magazine, the convicted child killer says he’s

“a good father” who only pushed his six-year-old adopted daughter but did not hit her. Steinberg showed up on the streets of Manhattan, care-free in Times Square and at the USS
Intrepid
’s Sea-Air-Space Museum, O B J E C T I O N !

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ambling along without a care in the world. He was kicked out of the halfway house where he lived following his release from jail because administrators there were livid after Steinberg told
New York
magazine that he shouldn’t be blamed for Lisa’s death. Ever concerned only for himself, Steinberg complained about his time behind bars, “I went from a middle-aged millionaire to a penniless old bum!”