Horrifying ends like this have become far more than dreams under the Florida Department of Children and Families. Losing hold of our most vulnerable has become a regularity. A failure to protect them is systemic. And the results are unthinkable.
Last week, we were forced to think about it. On Sept. 18, in Bell, Florida, a man named Don Charles Spirit shot his daughter and six grandchildren. The tiny Floridians ranged in age from 2 months to 11 years. Spirit turned the gun on himself as deputies arrived — the final act of a depraved and evil man.
But for the state, our greatest shame is that these children could have — and should have — been saved.
According to the Miami Herald, just two weeks prior to the massacre, the DCF “received a report ... that the children of Sarah Spirit, 28, were living with drug abusers... Spirit told the agency she had just been released from jail after violating probation .... At the time, she was living with her father, a 51-year-old man with a record of violence who had once gone to prison for fatally shooting his son in a hunting accident.”
In the records obtained from the DCF, the Herald found all the ingredients for this nightmare. This was not the first encounter the agency had with the monster. Don Spirit’s history with the DCF spanned years with “allegations that he physically abused both his children and grandchildren, as well as at least one report of domestic violence between him and his daughter.”
Furthermore, the records showed that Spirit had been arrested on a slew of charges including “battery, drug possession and depriving a child of food and shelter.” And in 2001 the man had accidentally shot and killed his 8-year-old son on a hunting trip, according to the Herald’s findings. In addition, the story noted that the mother’s history “included arrests for larceny, shoplifting and drug possession” and that the “two fathers of her six children both are incarcerated.”
The state knew all of this — had long known this. Yet these six children were still in the custody of monsters. That has not been an isolated failure with the DCF.
Last year, the Herald chronicled this sad pattern in a series called “Innocents Lost.” The newspaper demonstrated how, for years, our state has continually allowed children to remain in dangerous situations, even after the danger has been well-documented. Too often, it resulted in fatal consequences for the most vulnerable and innocent members of our society.
And now this. The Herald says the killings are “believed to be the largest loss of life in a single family with a child welfare history ever in Florida.” So the nightmare continues. The agency that exists to save is incapable of pulling these children up from the cliff.
Forget the election-year promises that, in Florida, “it’s working.” Gov. Scott must make fixing the DCF his first priority. Because if government’s foremost obligation to protect children’s right to life isn’t working, then nothing in Florida is.
http://www.pnj.com/story/opinion/2014/09/25/editorial-nightmare-dcf/16227011/
