Boy smothered after Florida, California both fail to protect him

By B y Carol Marbin Miller and Audra D.S. Burch

cmarbin@miamiherald.com

Two states, on opposite sides of the country, had a chance to save 16-month-old Daymeon Chrystopher Wygant. Both Florida and California child welfare administrators expected the other state’s agency to protect the boy, whose parents had a well-documented history of sexual battery, mental illness, weapons possession, homelessness and neglect.
Neither state did.

Last week, police say, Daymeon’s father smothered the toddler with his hands, then wrapped him mummy-like to stop his fussing. Cody Eugene Wygant then left the boy to die while he resumed an online Xbox game — and watched three episodes of the science fiction TV show Fringe.
Daymeon and his infant sister were under the supervision of the California Health and Human Services Agency in January when social workers in the Sacramento Valley city of Redding, in Shasta County, placed the boy and his parents on an airplane bound for Central Florida, nearly

3,000 miles away. They asked their counterparts in Florida to look in on the boy’s family. The investigation that followed was superficial, a top Department of Children & Families administrator acknowledged Friday.“It is deeply troubling that the department failed to truly understand the import of the extensive needs of the family and the high risk of these children,” said DCF Deputy Secretary Pete Digre. “I feel if both California and Florida had used the established child protective systems and process, a better outcome would have been achieved. This would have required more through and transparent communication from Shasta County and a comprehensive assessment in Florida.”
California child welfare administrators released a short statement Friday to the Miami Herald: “Any time a child is hurt or harmed in any way, it is a tragedy and that is what we work to keep from happening. Unfortunately, we cannot comment on any specific case,’’ said Tim Mapes, community education specialist with the Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency.
About three months after Daymeon arrived in Homosassa, a tiny hamlet north of Tampa Bay, the boy died. Family members initially told police they discovered Daymeon in his playpen no longer breathing. Hours later, Wygant told the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office he suffocated the boy because he was “very frustrated” that Daymeon was crying uncontrollably — preventing the father from focusing on his Xbox.
Following the smothering, a police report says, Wygant wrapped him in layers of bedding, preventing him from “receiving fresh air.” In his death, police said, Daymeon may have saved his 3-month-old sister, who was later found to have been so severely neglected that the rear of her skull had become flattened, the result of seldom being moved. The newborn also had a severe rash on her neck, armpit, back and leg, causing tissue loss. She is now in state care.
The Wygant home, the police report said, “was heavily infested with bugs, insects and contained a very foul odor, which could be smelled from the street.”
Daymeon joins more than 477 Florida children — whose stories are detailed in the Miami Herald’s Innocents Lost series — who died of abuse or neglect since 2008 after members of their family had come in contact with DCF.
“It is inconceivable that a father could kill his infant son — it just baffles the mind,” Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy said in a statement April 17. “We did exactly what we needed to do to bring justice to him swiftly.”
Wygant, 24, faces charges of murder and neglect causing great bodily harm, and he remains in jail with no bond. He tested positive for marijuana following his son’s death.
Wygant’s 22-year-old girlfriend, Jessika Lynn DuFour, and her mother, 55-year-old Geneva May DuFour, also have been charged with child neglect. The day Daymeon died, Jessika DuFour tested positive for illegally obtained prescription drugs.
Neither authorities in Florida nor California would discuss the family in detail Friday. But several letters sent between the two states, obtained by the Miami Herald, show that California social workers contacted their counterparts in Florida on Dec. 30 to inquire whether Geneva DuFour and her adult son had a history of arrests or child abuse. Workers were considering sending the Wygant family to live with DuFour.
After DCF told them Geneva DuFour and her son had a clean record, the Wygant family was flown to Florida, with California paying the bill. Then, on Jan. 6, social worker Tammy Maxey told DCF the family had arrived three days earlier. Maxey requested that investigators in Florida make “a follow up visit...to assess the safety and well-being of the children, and to link the family with community resources.”
“The mother and father have a history of marijuana use. The mother has a history of mental health concerns. The father is said to have anger management issues,” Maxey wrote, adding the family also had been homeless.
“Our agency is concerned that the parents’ homelessness may have caused the child, Daymeon Wygant, to have some developmental delays,” Maxey wrote.
Here is what Maxey did not tell Florida authorities, according to a DCF administrator: Wygant’s and Jessika DuFour’s history in California included “a substantiated finding of child neglect, several other child maltreatment allegations, a history of criminal activity, including crimes involving weapons and sexual battery, mental illness, homelessness and basic neglect of the children’s health and cleanliness.”
The parents, DCF’s Digre said in a letter Friday, had been assessed to be at “very high risk” of harming their children while they remained in Redding.
“Without a full understanding of the history of this family, we were unable to take the necessary steps to protect these children,” Digre wrote. “In the future, we will expect to receive more transparent communication from California counties if they intend to send very high-risk families to our state.”
“Frankly,” Digre added, “it is impossible to understand why Shasta County did not move to shelter these children.”
From the records DCF provided to the Herald, it is difficult to determine what measures the agency undertook to determine whether Wygant’s children were safe.
A DCF spokeswoman said Friday that all notations arising from the agency’s assessment of the family were contained within the margins of Maxey’s Jan. 6 letter. The notes comprise about four handwritten scribbles, including: “no pediatrician,” “no daycare,” “Cody is going to work [and] not using,” “Daymeon teething,” and “don’t trust random people.”

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/25/4080975/boy-smothered-after-florida-california.html

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/25/4080975/boy-smothered-after-florida-california.html#storylink=cpy

OC Public Schools, Sheriff’s Office, DCF Knew Of Teacher’s Alleged Misconduct

 

ORLANDO, Fla. —Officials from Orange County Public Schools, the Department of Children and Families and the Orange County Sheriff’s Office knew of Jennifer Fichter’s alleged misconduct, but state education officials were not notified, allowing Fichter to teach in Polk County.

Jennifer Fichter's

Fichter was arrested last week after she admitted to a sexual relationship with a child in Polk County. Fichter allegedly admitted that she became pregnant with the child’s baby, but had an abortion, officials said. She was arrested at her home and charged with six counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor. Fichter is an English teacher at Central Florida Aerospace Academy.
Prior to her alleged romance with the Polk County student, Fichter taught language arts at Robinswood Middle School in Orange County from August 2007 until Dec. 19, 2008. Orange County Public School officials started investigating Fichter after a teacher filed a complaint accusing her of discussing her feelings for an eighth-grade male student and texting the student.
According to a Sheriff’s Office report, deputies interviewed the eighth-grade student who said Fichter had texted the student about her feelings about 40-50 times. School officials notified DCF officials, according to the Sheriff’s Office report.
Fitcher reportedly told that teacher “she felt as though the student was her boyfriend and that he made her melt.”
Video: Polk teacher who had sex with student accused of misconduct in Orange County
According to the report, both the teacher who filed the complaint and the eighth-grade boy told school investigators Fichter “texted a student a message that said that she ‘was going to smash’ the student,” and that “Fichter had asked a student if he wanted to be her baby.”
Public Schools Spokeswoman Kathy Marsh said Monday that the county “did not report the case regarding Fichter to the state Department of Education.”
Since the county did not inform state officials, Fichter was able to get a teaching job in Polk County, Florida Department of Education officials said last week.
Following the allegations made against Fichter, public school officials in Orange County told all employees that “No employee of the Orange County Public Schools should engage in any texting or other social media with any OCPS student,” unless the student is the employee’s child or the information is related to a class, athletic or extracurricular activity, Marsh said.
Polk County school officials said last week that they expect Fichter to be fired this week.

http://www.wesh.com/news/oc-public-schools-sheriffs-office-dcf-knew-of-teachers-alleged-misconduct/25586706#ixzz2zbwYBfWi

Money's Not Everything When It Comes To Child Welfare

Jeff Burlew, News-Press Florida media 8:59 a.m. EDT April 14, 2014

Tricky Ricky

Everybody loves children — and Florida lawmakers are ready to spend record amounts on them.
But improving the lot of children will require tough political decisions on top of cash.
Gov. Rick Scott is proposing record spending on K through 12 education and a nearly $60 million increase in early education and care, and he has already signed into law a package of bills designed to keep child predators behind bars.
Lawmakers are moving forward with a major overhaul of child-welfare laws designed to keep children safe from abuse and neglect at the hands of their parents or caregivers, in part by setting new standards and procedures for state child-protection investigators.
But, as the annual Children's Week concludes at the Capitol, some child advocates and civil-rights leaders say the governor and the Republican-led House and Senate are not doing enough to keep children healthy and safe.
Lawmakers have refused to accept federal help in expanding Medicaid, which would bring health-care coverage to more than 1 million Floridians. They have balked at requests to repeal the state's Stand Your Ground law, which its critics say puts black children in harm's way. And they may be wavering on legislation that would eliminate a five-year waiting period for legally residing children of immigrants to get health insurance through Florida KidCare.

Others say it's too early to fully assess how well children will fare this session, because key pieces of legislation — including the child-welfare overhaul — have yet to be finalized.
Ted Granger, president of the United Way of Florida, which sponsors Children's Week, said that, in general, the organization was very pleased with the governor's budget proposals, which dovetail with House and Senate priorities.
"Gov. Scott actually started with a pretty good budget for children and families," Granger said. "And the Legislature has pretty much followed his lead in a lot of ways. The House and Senate have two good bills on child welfare and child protection — the real issue is whether or not the Legislature is going to fund those two bills to the fullest extent or not. If they do, then the bills will have a real positive impact. If they don't, they will be just another piece of legislation in the statute book."
David Lawrence Jr., president of the Early Childhood Initiative Foundation and chair of the Children's Movement of Florida, said he was pleased by the attention children's issues were receiving this year.
"I'm frankly to this point encouraged," said Lawrence, former publisher of the Miami Herald and the Detroit Free Press. "Whether it's child abuse and neglect, whether it's early learning or at least a real discussion on the subject of children of immigrants, some real traction is being made. We've got a good shot for some good things to come out."

Ted Granger

Scott, speaking before a group of business leaders during a Children's Week luncheon Monday in Tallahassee, touted his proposal to spend $1.1 billion on early learning, which includes an increase of $100 per child in the Voluntary Prekindergarten program and a $30 million increase to expand the School Readiness Program to 6,500 students.
"That's the right thing to do," Scott said.
Leah Barber-Heinz, CEO of Florida CHAIN and a project manager for Kids Well Florida, said expanding Medicaid is "extremely important" to the well-being of children. Estimates on the number of uninsured children in Florida range from more than 400,000 to as many as 800,000.
"Research shows over and over that, when parents have health coverage and access to care, they're much more likely to make sure that their children see a doctor when they need to," she said. "We also know that, when adults lack insurance coverage, they can put off seeking help for children when they have physical or behavioral health-care needs. And that can lead to delayed diagnoses that leave children suffering."
Child-welfare bill
Lawmakers were prompted to address the child-welfare issue following media reports last year about the deaths from abuse and neglect of children who were known to the Department of Children and Families. Last month, the Miami Herald published an investigation into the deaths of 477 children whose families had interfaced with DCF at least once over the past five years.
Senate Bill 1666, spearheaded by Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, would make numerous changes to statutes designed to improve the quality of child-protection investigations. Proponents say one of its most important provisions is a requirement that 80 percent of all child-protective investigators and supervisors hired after July 1 by the Department of Children and Families have a bachelor's or master's degree in social work.

The bill made it out of its first committee stop April 2, by a 12-1 vote of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services.
On Thursday, however, the Senate Appropriations Committee temporarily postponed it. A House version of the bill is now in appropriations.
Kurt Kelly, president and CEO of the Florida Coalition for Children, said "the jury is still out" on what the child-welfare legislation will look like. But he said the final product will have to have funding of at least $25.4 million for new case-management and case workers and diversion, prevention and intervention services.
"No matter what policy they come up with, they must allocate the necessary resources to provide the services to meet the needs of our children at risk," he said. "We're very supportive of having some positive policy. But at the end of the day, we must have appropriate funding."
Granger said the House bill includes $4.5 million for Healthy Families Florida, a voluntary home-visiting program designed to help parents deal with all of the challenges of parenthood, from preparing healthy meals to disciplining children. He said DCF and third-party evaluators have found that the program eliminated abuse and neglect in more than 95 percent of families that completed the program.
"The child-protection bills try to help children once they've been touched by the system," Granger said. "From the United Way perspective and from a taxpayer perspective, it's much cheaper and better for the child and better for the families to try to address the problems before they are ever touched by the system."
Jim Akin, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers Florida chapter, said the child-welfare bills could bring profound change as long as they aren't "watered down" or inadequately funded.
"It may take a while, but I think you would see a whole change in the environment and the culture of child welfare in Florida," he said. "I really think it would have an impact. Fewer deaths — hopefully that would be the end result."

— Jeff Burlew is a writer for the Tallahassee Democrat

http://www.news-press.com/story/news/2014/04/13/moneys-everything-comes-child-welfare/7683653/