Child Molesters, Child Abuse Effects: Bulimia, Eating Disorders, Addictions

Gov. Rick Perry has endorsed a $329 million CPS reform plan. Among the reforms is developing a more precise way to investigate for signs of future abuse that would reduce the number of cases occurring after investigations are closed.

“At this point we’re trying to look forward to see what we can do to improve this,” Darrell Azar, CPS’ spokesman in Austin, said Thursday. “We’re trying to do anything we can to prevent the death of a child.”

Since 2002, about a quarter of the 591 children who died of abuse in Texas had a previous referral for abuse or neglect to CPS. In the 2004 fiscal year that ended Aug. 31, the 45 children represented 22 percent of all children who died of abuse and neglect.

The year before that, 28 percent of all children who died had a prior abuse or neglect allegation investigated by CPS. In 2002, that figure was 26 percent.

From Sept. 1, 2003, to Sept. 1, 2004, four Cameron County children died from child abuse. They include a 21-month-old child that died Sept. 14, 2003; a 4-year-old child that died Oct. 9, 2003; a 5-month-old child that died Aug. 9, 2004; and an 18-month-old child that died Aug. 28, 2004

The child that died in October had been previously been suspected of being abused and was a CPS case.

Bexar County led the state in 2004 in the number of children previously reported to CPS who later died with seven. Harris County had six deaths and Dallas County had four.

Agency officials said the deaths occurred before or as Perry, a Republican, launched an investigation into the agency and imposed a series of emergency measures as a string of startling child deaths occurred last year.

“We’re really looking at the pre-reform effort data,” Azar said.

Perry in January ordered that an investigations division be created within CPS and the agency is looking for a person with a law enforcement background to fill the leadership post in that office.

The reform plan proposed by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and backed by Perry also calls for 848 more caseworkers by 2007. It also suggests that investigative techniques used by law enforcement would greatly improve the state abuse investigation system.

“It’s an approach that you take, a little more emphasis on critical thinking skills and a more thorough job of ferreting out information,” said Geoffrey Wool, a spokesman for the Department of Family and Protective Services, CPS’ parent agency.

Brownsville Herald reporter Laura Martinez contributed to this report.