Good parents only in AZ (part 4)
Apparently, being a drug addict isn't enough to have your children taken from you in Arizona.
CPS couldn't save infant from crack addicts
Carlos Miller
The Arizona Republic
Aug. 22, 2002 12:00 PM
Child Protective Services knew Demitres Robertson was a crack addict who had used cocaine the morning she gave birth last year.
It knew the baby, Anndreah, was born with cocaine in her system and had to stay in the hospital three days until the drugs cleared her system. And it already was investigating allegations that Robertson and her mother smoked crack cocaine every day in front of her other two children, both boys.
Despite all this, CPS said it had no legal authority to keep Anndreah from going home with her mother and grandmother.
Anndreah died a week later after she was exposed to a steady stream of secondhand crack cocaine smoke, police said. She was 10 days old.
On Wednesday, after a nine-month investigation, Robertson was charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of child abuse. Butler was charged with two counts of child abuse.
"We cannot take children away based on parents using crack cocaine or any drug," said Dolores Reid, deputy assistant director for the state Division of Children, Youth and Families, the agency that oversees CPS. "We have to have evidence that the parent is not feeding the child, not keeping the child clean or not supervising the child."
CPS had been referred to the family's cramped apartment on Oct. 4, 2001, less than a month before Anndreah was born, after Phoenix police saw conditions at the apartment, according to court records.
CPS learned that Demitres Robertson, 23, and her mother, Lillian Ann Butler, 44, were smoking crack cocaine almost daily.
On Oct. 19, 2001, Solomon Butler, Lillian Ann Butler's husband, told a CPS investigator that he believed "the boys were inhaling the smoke because their behavior changed after the women started smoking," court records state.
Anndreah was born Oct. 30, 2001, and three days later was handed over to Butler and taken to their central Phoenix apartment. She died Nov. 8, 2001, her intestines destroyed by the secondhand crack cocaine smoke. Her death was ruled a homicide.
CPS couldn't save infant from crack addicts
Carlos Miller
The Arizona Republic
Aug. 22, 2002 12:00 PM
Child Protective Services knew Demitres Robertson was a crack addict who had used cocaine the morning she gave birth last year.
It knew the baby, Anndreah, was born with cocaine in her system and had to stay in the hospital three days until the drugs cleared her system. And it already was investigating allegations that Robertson and her mother smoked crack cocaine every day in front of her other two children, both boys.
Despite all this, CPS said it had no legal authority to keep Anndreah from going home with her mother and grandmother.
Anndreah died a week later after she was exposed to a steady stream of secondhand crack cocaine smoke, police said. She was 10 days old.
On Wednesday, after a nine-month investigation, Robertson was charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of child abuse. Butler was charged with two counts of child abuse.
"We cannot take children away based on parents using crack cocaine or any drug," said Dolores Reid, deputy assistant director for the state Division of Children, Youth and Families, the agency that oversees CPS. "We have to have evidence that the parent is not feeding the child, not keeping the child clean or not supervising the child."
CPS had been referred to the family's cramped apartment on Oct. 4, 2001, less than a month before Anndreah was born, after Phoenix police saw conditions at the apartment, according to court records.
CPS learned that Demitres Robertson, 23, and her mother, Lillian Ann Butler, 44, were smoking crack cocaine almost daily.
On Oct. 19, 2001, Solomon Butler, Lillian Ann Butler's husband, told a CPS investigator that he believed "the boys were inhaling the smoke because their behavior changed after the women started smoking," court records state.
Anndreah was born Oct. 30, 2001, and three days later was handed over to Butler and taken to their central Phoenix apartment. She died Nov. 8, 2001, her intestines destroyed by the secondhand crack cocaine smoke. Her death was ruled a homicide.
posted by Jenn @ 09:25
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