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malq

Veteran Member
Dakotas starving 9 year old thread reminded me of this one. It is from 2005, or pre DD
TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey has agreed to give $12.5 million to four boys allegedly starved by their adoptive parents, state officials told The Associated Press on Friday.

Lawyers for the boys have agreed in principle to the settlement, the largest ever involving the state Department of Human Services, but they have not all signed it and it has not been approved by a judge, department spokeswoman Laurie Facciarossa said.

Authorities found Bruce Jackson, then 19 but appearing to be about 7 years old, rummaging through a neighbor’s trash can in Collingswood in October 2003.
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Three of his younger adoptive brothers were similarly undersized. Authorities said their adoptive parents withheld food and the boys subsisted on gypsum wallboard and uncooked pancake batter.

Child welfare workers had visited the Jackson home regularly to check on the family’s foster child but did not take action regarding the bone-thin adopted boys.

The case was the subject of national media attention and a congressional hearing, and spurred demand for reforms of New Jersey’s child-welfare agency. Nine workers were suspended, and the state initiated proceedings to fire them, but at least one was reinstated.

Facciarossa said that under the agreement, Bruce Jackson will receive $5 million and his brothers — Michael, Keith and Tyrone — will each get $2.5 million.
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The New York-based child advocacy organization Children’s Rights Inc., whose executive director, Marcia Robinson-Lowry, is the guardian of the boys’ legal rights, would not comment.

45 pounds at age 19
Bruce Jackson would get more than his brothers because he was in worse shape, weighing just 45 pounds when he was found, said his lawyer, Michael Critchley, who added that he waived his legal fee in the case.

The boys’ adoptive parents, Raymond and Vanessa Jackson, were each charged with 28 counts of child endangerment and aggravated assault.

Raymond Jackson died after suffering a stroke last year.

A judge has given Vanessa Jackson until Oct. 7 to decide whether to accept a plea deal or go to trial to face the charges against her.

She has denied the charges. Her lawyers have talked of using a defense that the boys had eating disorders.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9547444...grees-pay-malnourished-children/#.Tyf-XoFnCK8
 
Omg. I remember this story. Those kids broke my heart. No amount of money can give them the childhood they lost but hopefully this will help them move on and establish themselves. I look at that picture and wonder how someone could NOT notice or say something for so long.
 
I'll assume an internal secret investigation was done, no information released and all the welfare workers were found to have followed procedure

http://www.childrenintherapy.org/victims/jackson.html
Other personnel changes were being resisted. Officers of the Communications Workers of America, which represents all state workers in New Jersey, vigorously protested the state’s action in firing DYFS workers. “Caseworkers do not kill children,â€￾ said one CWA official at a rally. “We will keep having these tragedies if we don’t deal with the systemic problems.â€￾ Later, before a congressional subcommittee, they identified those problems as understaffing, poor training, lack of computer resources, high turnover, foster-home shortages, and underfunding.

http://thisblksistaspage.wordpress....-jackson-being-kept-from-seeing-his-brothers/
Time and again, authorities and attendants cut off phone calls, deny or shorten visits, and wave the family away from the young man. Why? I think that the more he is allowed in a normal environment, the more he will be able to deal and interact effectively on his own, among the people who love him.

Could it be that it’s Bruce’s $5 million payday that is the real football here? The attorney for Bruce Jackson, Michael Critchley Sr., handles criminal cases. Criminal cases? Of course, Critchley’s waived his fees, but not his expenses. And that guardian ad litem? Someone unnamed in the Department of Health and Human Services. Weird. Nothing here makes any sense at all.

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20148577,00.html

The girls look like your average kids, while the boys were bony and gaunt, with a vacant look in their eyes," says someone close to the investigation. "The difference is striking." What's more, four caseworkers and one inspector from New Jersey's Department of Human Services paid 38 visits to the Jacksons' three-story, five-bedroom home since 1999. Not one "voiced any concern or took any action to follow up on the condition of the boys," the division's commissioner Gwendolyn Harris said last week. "This is unacceptable."

Why they might have starved their sons remains a mystery. The Jacksons received as much as $28,000 a year from the state for taking in the children, including $700 a month toward their $1,000 rent. Still, they owed $9,000 in back rent and had had their electricity cut off in June (their church recently paid their $1,900 bill).
 
I remember seeing that picture on the news back then and wondering how in the hell people would go to the trouble of adopting children and then do that to them. It was the first time I heard of it.

I also wonder how those kids are doing these days--how their health is and so on. Malnourishment affects everything.
 
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