- Twelve-year-old Prentiss Rachal is supposed to be under
the legal care of the state's child welfare agency.
-
- But the agency has no idea where he is.
-
- Prentiss is just one of 189 abused and neglected children
from Wayne County -- and a total of 302 statewide -- whom the state has
lost track of, according to the Michigan Family Independence Agency.
-
- Officials believe he may be in Georgia with his biological
mother, whose rights had been terminated by Wayne County Juvenile Court
in 1998.
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- "I just pray to God that this child is safe because
I don't have any indication that he is," a Wayne County Juvenile Court
referee said during an emotional Aug. 20 hearing on Prentiss.
-
- FIA spokeswoman Karen Smith said the "vast majority"
of the missing youths are older than 14 and that many of them are runaways
from foster care.
-
- Teenage girls, especially those who come from homes where
they were abused or neglected, often run off with boyfriends they think
they're in love with, Smith said.
-
- Missing children aren't just a problem in Michigan.
-
- In Miami last April, Florida authorities discovered that
a 5-year-old foster child named Rilya Wilson had been missing for 15 months.
That state's Department of Child and Family Services came under intense
criticism after reports that 500 foster children were missing.
-
- After a newspaper in Ft. Lauderdale quickly found nine
of the 24 children listed as missing in its area, the Florida Legislature
this week began debating a law that would require the DCF to publicize
the names of the missing children to get the public's help in finding them.
-
- In the wake of Florida's problems, Smith said, the Michigan
FIA began reviewing the placements of all 19,000 abused and neglected children
under its charge. Caseworkers are checking with relatives of the 302 missing
children for any leads, she said.
- Mark Jasonowicz, FIA's deputy director, said the agency
has procedures to notify local police and juvenile courts immediately when
a fosterchild is missing.
-
- Police agencies handle such reports by waiting for a
child to turn up in a traffic stop or other action. But not by conducting
door-to-door searches, officials said.
-
- The fact that hundreds of Michigan foster children are
missing disturbs some child advocates.
-
- "How can you have a system in place and not know
where 189 children are?" said Nannette Bowler, director of the Chance
At Childhood Program at Michigan State University and the Detroit College
of Law in East Lansing.
-
- Sharon Claytor Peters, executive director of Michigan's
Children advocacy group, said the child protection system is not funded
well enough to provide adequate supervision for children in its care.
-
- "We have unbelievably unmanageable workloads that
we're putting on these people providing oversight," Peters said.
-
- Prentiss Rachal entered Michigan's child welfare system
in 1996 because of neglect and his mother's drug abuse, according to court
records. Prentiss was placed into foster care while social service workers
tried to help his mother overcome her addiction to crack cocaine.
-
- But his mother, Gwendolyn Rachal -- now known as Gwendolyn
Pickett -- failed to seek treatment and missed visits with her son. Because
of those lapses, Wayne County Juvenile Court Judge Freddie Burton Jr. terminated
her parental rights in April 1998.
-
- Pickett eventually moved to Georgia where she married
and had two other children, both girls, according to court records. The
girls later were temporarily removed from her care because of drug abuse,
the court records said.
-
- Authorities in Georgia returned the girls to their mother
after she got treatment and a job that paid $60,000 a year, according to
reports from Georgia obtained by the Free Press.
-
- Meanwhile, Prentiss was having a difficult time in foster
care and workers at Orchards Children Services, a private agency doing
foster care and adoption placements under contract with the state FIA,
placed him with his aunt, Jennifer Rachal, in June 1999.
-
- Although court records said Jennifer Rachal told Orchards
she was interested in adopting Prentiss, things didn't work out. In November
2000, Prentiss was temporarily placed with his grandfather, Willie Rachal,
a retired auto worker and part-time auxiliary police officer in Inkster.
-
- In October 2000, Michigan authorities asked officials
in Georgia to investigate Pickett as a possible adoptive placement for
Prentiss. Prentiss had been asking to be reunited with his mother, who
was living in Jonesboro, a suburb of Atlanta, according to court records.
-
- After getting permission from state officials, Prentiss'
grandfather took him to his mother in Georgia last September.
-
- Georgia's Division of Family and Children reported things
were going well in Pickett's home until Pickett told a substance abuse
counselor that she had smoked crack again.
-
- Child Protective Services workers went to check on the
child and found the family gone. No social worker has seen Prentiss since
last April, authorities said.
-
- According to court reports from the Orchards agency,
a previous referee had authorized Prentiss' placement with his mother.
But a tape recording of the Aug. 20 hearing showed that the referee now
handling the case, Kathryne O'Grady, was angry at the placement and the
boy's disappearance.
-
- "It seems to be a complete circumvention of the
system and a total travesty of justice," O'Grady said. "We don't
know if this child is alive, do we, at this point?"
-
- Contact JACK KRESNAK at 313-223-4544 or kresnak@freepress.com.
-
- All content © copyright 2002 Detroit Free Press
and may not be republished without permission.
-
-
-
- FOLLOWUP STORY WITH OFFICIAL REACTION
-
- http://www.freep.com/news/childrenfirst/child31_20020831.htm
Foster child is located; 301 left
- Agency director calls the total misleading
- August 31, 2002
- BY JACK KRESNAK
- FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
- There are now only 301 missing foster children in Michigan.
-
- A special police unit within the Wayne County Department
of Community Justice found a missing 6-year-old foster child Friday within
an hour of receiving an official request from the Wayne County Juvenile
Court.
-
- He was playing in the front yard of his mother's Ewald
Circle home in Detroit.
-
- The boy was among 302 Michigan foster children -- including
189 from Wayne County -- that the Free Press reported Friday were under
the supervision of the Michigan Family Independence Agency, but whose whereabouts
were unknown.
-
- The boy, named Malik, had been missing since May 21 when
his mother allegedly kidnapped him after a juvenile court hearing.
- FIA Director Doug Howard reacted strongly Friday to the
Free Press story, which said the state was unable to locate 302 of the
19,000 foster children under his agency's care.
- Howard called the article misleading and incomplete.
He said the children weren't missing, but "absent without legal permission."
- "This is Michigan, and in Michigan we don't lose
kids," Howard said in a statement Friday. "They walk away or
are taken by others without the court's permission, but we don't just lose
them.
- "I take great offense that the article made it look
as if in Michigan we don't care," he said.
- Howard said 90 percent of the youths listed by the FIA
as absent without legal permission were older than 14, and they either
didn't tolerate structure or they wanted to leave and did.
-
- Others are younger children or siblings who have been
abducted by a parent or relative, or whose family simply moved away to
avoid the FIA and juvenile court, he said.
-
- On Thursday, the Michigan FIA said police always are
notified when a foster child disappears from a court-ordered placement.
-
- However, missing foster children are not entered into
the statewide law enforcement computer network because of restrictions
put in place by the board operating the network, said Cmdr. Larry Meyer,
head of the warrant enforcement bureau of the Wayne County Department of
Community Justice.
-
- Meyer said he and other officials have tried unsuccessfully
to get information on missing foster children into the computer system.
-
- The warrant enforcement bureau has a special unit that
works with Child Protective Services to remove children from abusive situations.
Over the past two years, Meyer said, the FIA had requested help finding
about three dozen missing foster children -- far fewer than the 189 from
the county listed as absent without legal permission.
-
- The FIA did not ask for help finding Malik until pushed
by the juvenile division of the state Attorney General's Office, which
represents the FIA in juvenile court, Meyer and other officials saidFriday.
-
- Malik's mother -- a former FIA foster care worker herself
-- had claimed last week that the child was in California with his father,
said Judy Hartsfield, head of the attorney general's juvenile division.
-
- The mother's assertion came during a contempt of court
hearing before presiding Juvenile Court Judge Sheila Gibson Manning.
-
- Hartsfield said she told the Southfield-based Judson
Center -- the private agency handling Malik's case -- not to push California
authorities to find Malik until the warrant enforcement bureau unit had
a chance to find the boy.
-
- A writ to take the child into protective custody was
faxed to the bureau at 9:30 a.m. Friday. The Judson Center foster care
worker arrived soon after.
-
- At 10:30 a.m., bureau Sgts. Mike Duffy and Bill Magee
pulled up to the mother's home and found Malik.
-
- The boy, who appeared well cared for, was immediately
taken into custody by the Judson Center worker.
-
- "The mother was crying her eyes out; she said she
just wanted to keep the boy another week or so," Duffy said.
-
- Hartsfield said she would push to have the woman charged
with criminal perjury for telling the judge under oath that her son was
in California.
-
- Hartsfield said she agreed with the FIA that 90 percent
or more of the missing children were teenagers who had run away.
-
- "The reality is a lot of these kids don't want to
be found," Hartsfield said.
-
- Still missing is 12-year-old Prentiss Rachal. A ward
of the state, Prentiss was placed by the FIA with his biological mother
in Georgia, even though a judge had previously terminated his mother's
parental rights.
-
- All Child Protective Services offices in Georgia were
notified to take the boy into care if he turns up, said Renee Huie, public
relations director for Georgia's division of Family and Children.
-
- On Friday, the warrant enforcement bureau began searching
for Prentiss after a request from juvenile court.
-
- "We have a team out there hunting for him, but the
information we're getting is that he's in Georgia," Meyer said. "We're
going to exhaust all contacts and all leads to locate this individual,
too."
-
- Contact JACK KRESNAK at 313-223-4544 or kresnak@freepress.com.
-
- All content © copyright 2002 Detroit Free Press
and may not be republished without permission.
-
- http://www.freep.com/news/childrenfirst/child30_20020830.htm
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