Even more proof the world is going to hell...

[Guest stardust]

from http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/082...agedkids26.html

 

I originally saw the story on CNN...

 

CPS failed to probe family with caged kids

 

Phoenix Police Department

 

Police said two 5-year-old Phoenix brothers were kept in two baby cribs wired together and sealed by plastic crates.

 

Sent abuse report to state program

 

Karina Bland

The Arizona Republic

Aug. 26, 2003 12:00 AM

 

 

Child Protective Services received a neglect report two years ago about the 5-year-old twin boys found Saturday by police in filthy makeshift cages in their parents' Phoenix home.

 

The call to the agency's hotline in September 2001 was, like many neglect reports, referred to Family Builders, a state child-abuse-prevention program. The call was not investigated by a CPS caseworker.

 

Family Builders is a voluntary program, and the family refused all services, save a food box, CPS officials said. They closed the case.

 

Phoenix police went to the home in the 1900 block of North 22nd Street on Saturday night and found the twins wired into two roach-infested cages constructed from cribs and plastic crates.

 

Their parents, Louis and Etelvina Rodriguez, were arrested on suspicion of child abuse and kidnapping and are in jail. The children are in the care of CPS.

 

The discovery of the boys' homemade prison comes not a week after 2 1/2-year-old Charles Young died in Mesa, his body covered in bruises. His family had a history with CPS and was under investigation at the time of the toddler's death.

 

In June, police found Isaac Loubriel, 7, half-starved and locked in a closet in his parent's Phoenix apartment. He, too, was known to CPS.

 

In the past five years, 29 children who had prior cases with CPS died of abuse or neglect anyway.

 

 

'Just outrageous'

 

 

"This is just outrageous," Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley said Monday.

 

He wants CPS made into its own agency, separate from the Department of Economic Security and its social welfare programs, so it can better follow one mission: protect children.

 

"How many more children have to suffer or die? Clearly, the governor's message isn't getting through," Romley said. "We need dramatic change, and we need it now, not later."

 

In January, just days after taking office, Gov. Janet Napolitano told CPS caseworkers that their first priority was to protect children, not keep families together. On Monday, her policy adviser for children's services, Tracy Wareing, said Napolitano is troubled and outraged by this most recent case.

 

Wareing wondered why more calls had not been made to CPS because other people had been in and out of the house and must have known what was happening to the twins. She worries that the public is losing faith in the CPS system.

 

Liz Barker, CPS spokeswoman, said that had the Family Builders social worker seen in 2001 what Phoenix police discovered Saturday, the children would have been removed.

 

 

Worker visited twice

 

 

In the Rodriguez case, she said a Family Builders worker visited the family twice within two weeks of the initial call. The worker reported the children were outside playing and that they appeared clean, healthy and in good spirits.

 

But now, Barker said Monday, "We are glad . . . that we were able to remove the children and place them in a safe environment where they will receive the services they need to recover from such a terrible ordeal."

 

Phoenix police Sgt. Randy Force said the boys' mother, Etelvina, told police she kept the children in cages while she was at work because their father, 69, was not able to keep up with them.

 

Police discovered the children after the boys' older half-brother, Bayron Grihalua, 20, told an officer at a grocery store about their living conditions, Force said.

 

Etelvina said the twins had been locked up for about four months. She would let them out for several hours when she got home from work before locking them in again until she returned the next day.

 

Officers used wire cutters to release the boys from their cells.

 

 

Locked up for 4 years

 

 

But Grihalua and the boys' father, Louis, told police the boys had been locked up for as long as four years. Louis said he modified the two cages each year to accommodate the children's growth.

 

Photographs taken by police show the cages in a filthy blue-painted room and spattered with urine, feces and food.

 

One enclosure was 4 1/2 feet wide, 4 feet, 7 inches high and 2 1/2 feet deep. The other was 2 feet, 3 inches long, 3 feet wide and 6 feet, 5 inches tall.

 

One cage had a dirty mattress in it. The other had only a piece of plywood and a blanket.

 

The boys do not speak and are not toilet-trained, but no one knows for sure if they were born with developmental problems or if they are the result of their mistreatment.

 

 

Got little exercise

 

 

Both are big kids. One child was described as obese. They would have gotten little exercise. The cages gave them only enough room to stand or lie down.

 

An 8-year-old brother slept in the same room but in a regular bed and was apparently well treated. He told police that he had never been locked up like his brothers.

 

As part of Family Builders, social workers from private agencies respond to neglect reports, allowing CPS workers time for more severe cases.

 

Because the programs such as Family Builders are voluntary, they are no good if parents refuse to participate, said Beth Rosenberg of the Children's Action Alliance, a non-profit group.

 

Still, she said, "Somebody should follow up with these families, a month later, three months later. We walk away too quickly."

 

Jesus, what is wrong with people?

 

Furthermore, what's wrong with CPS? I remember when I was like 11 and my younger stepbrother bit my brother's ass and broke the skin while we were at our father's, and CPS was all over that within like, a week. And yet CPS doesn't get all over these parents who've had their kids caged up for the past four years? Jesus...

[Ced 0]

More evidence that there are some people out there that shouldn't be allowed to reproduce.