A patron of a bowling alley is thus...

A patron of a bowling alley is thus disturbed when he sees a lad getting hit and kicked by means of a man that he calls police. Staff members at a public health clinic are alarmed after overhearing a girl's father order her, in Spanish, to report the doctor that her black watchs were the result of falling down the stairs. A mother, lately released from the foster care arrangement has self-destructive thoughts and high on a levels of stress and anxiety.

Each of these incidents was a sign that something in a family was awry, further none set off enough alarms for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to take definitive action. And, within weeks or month children were killed from the very person previously suspected of abuse.

"In an alarming number of cases death and serious injury could have been stoped had professionals involved with these cases acted more knowledgably about risk factors for violence and strategies to preclude it," wrote DCFS Inspector General Denise Kane in a special report forward violence that she included in the appendix of her 2004 annual report, which veils fiscal year 2003.

Each year, the Office of the Inspector General, the independent watchdog athwart DCFS, examines a number of cases in which a child was homicide ed after state child abuse investigators or social workers had involvement with the family.

assassinates by parents and their partners describe 20 percent of all the death cases.

They include cases like Demitri H Kozup's. onward Nov. 4, 2001, the 2-year-old was allegedly struggleed out of a bathtub and violently shaken to death at his mother's live-in boyfriend, 30-year-old Jermayne Thomas, who is awaited to stand trial this summer for first-degree murder

Demitri's mother, Sharon Kozup said she is now left to inquiring surprise how not only did she miss the signs that her boyfriend was too unhewn with her son but also to what extent trained investigators did, too.

"Everyday I ask myself this," she said.

From July 1 1999 to June 30 2003 57 children were slayed after DCFS had some involvement with their families, Kane's reports display Seven of the homicides were committed through current or former foster children, any of them inside DCFS housing programs.

In a number of cases, investigations were underway at the time of the deaths, while, in others, abuse allegations were rul unfounded

In the special report, Kane faults child protection investigators and private agencies that provide services to families. She writes that they failed to argue sufficient information to grasp the horizontal of risk each child faced, consider other factors in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as domestic violence, or appreciate that children are more vulnerable when parents refuse to participate in services. In several cases, Kane praises that some state workers should be disciplined or fired.

Gailyn Thomas, agent director of child protection for DCF said she will not reply to the inspector general's broad criticisms and recommendations about mistakes in these cases. "Each family has unique circumstances," she said.

However, she said that, when a death present itselfs her office reviews the case to make stable that the department's policies and conducts were followed. "We do have to fare back and assess what we should have done--did we do it?" she said. "Not what we could have done. We could have done a apportionment in certain cases--maybe."

Demitri's story is undivided of the cases Kane highlights in her special report upon violence. Kane doesn't include names in her report, further using dates and details of the incidents, The Chicago Reporter was able to identify the parties.

Seven month before Demitri was killed, a patron of the Stardust receptacle III in Dyer, Ind., called police after he reportedly saw Thomas hitting and kicking Demitri. The male child was huddled against the wall with a coat above his head.

Thomas was charged with battery to a child.

Kozup said she rode with Demitri from the bowling alley to the hospital where he was examined by way of a doctor. At the time, she said, she was overthrow that the police had been called. And, when the doctor raise no bruising or other signs of injury, she said she felt somewhat vindicated. "I was in denial at the time," Kozup said. "I did not want to believe it."

Since the family lived in Illinois, the police contacted that state's child welfare agency. According to Kane, a child protection investigator talked to the arresting police officer, Kozup and her 5-year-old daughter. Demitri's sister told the investigator that Thomas hit her little brother.

yet Kozup told the investigator that Thomas was simply playing peek-a-boo with Demitri, and that the police didn't believe her because they were biased against Thomas, who is black.

Within a scarcely any days, Kozup said, she received a alphabetic character from DCFS, telling her the department believed the allegations were faithless Satisfied, she let her family seat back to normal. While Thomas didn't hit her, he believed in corporal punishment as suitable discipline for Demitri.