DHS lawsuit

Fri, May 16 2008

— We disagree with the recent U.S. court of appeals ruling that Oklahoma Department of Human Services workers can be sued.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rendered the judgment in a lawsuit that developed out the highly publicized death of 2-year-old Kelsey Smith-Briggs in 2005. The child’s death led to a law bearing her name and requiring greater accountability in child abuse cases.
Kelsey’s case is not only sad and tragic. It was avoidable. She should have never been with her mother and the mother’s ex-husband.
DHS workers certainly made terrible mistakes in dealing with the case. But they are not responsible for the child’s death.
The man who beat her, her stepfather, Michael Porter, is responsible. We should be decrying the plea deal in which prosecutors dropped first-degree murder and sex abuse charges for a conviction on a charge of enabling child abuse by injury, for which he received only a 30-year sentence. Prosecutors balked because Porter and Smith were accusing each other of the abuse.
Suing DHS workers will not create a better agency. In all likelihood, it will create a less effective one.
Lawsuits against DHS workers won’t stop bad workers from being hired, but it certainly will keep good ones from applying.
Oklahoma already has difficulty staffing workers because of low pay and extremely heavy caseloads. They also receive criticism from both sides. They are censured for not taking children out of abusive homes soon enough as well as for being too suspicious of parents and too aggressive in separating children from their parents.
All of these things, no doubt, led to the problems that developed in Kelsey’s case. If those workers shirked their duties or knowingly disregarded warnings of abuse, then they should be fired. And if they are guilty of criminal actions, then they should be charged.
But again, who’s ultimately to blame?
Joe White, the plaintiff’s attorney, said about the appellate decision, “This allows us the opportunity ... to begin questioning those people who we feel are responsible for what happened to little Kelsey.”
The people responsible are the mother and evidently, the stepfather, a man without self-control or conscience.