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Monster Mom Arrested
June 24, 2012 permalink
Jacole Prince has been arrested in Kansas City for starving her ten-year-old daughter and keeping her locked in a closet. This sounds like a monster parent story. But based on previous experience, there is a fifty-fifty chance that new facts will come to light changing the interpretation of the story. We will be watching.
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Girl in barricaded closet | Living conditions are called ‘completely atrocious’
Mother of girl found in barricaded closet is charged with child abuse
The emaciated 10-year-old told police she had no room and no bed and sometimes went days without food.
Jacole PrinceIn an apartment that reeked of urine, a Kansas City police officer called out.
“Is anyone in here?”
Neighbors had said not a soul was home. But a tiny voice answered from a barricaded closet.
“Yes.”
Officers pushed aside a crib stuffed with blankets and shoes. Using a pocketknife, they cut open the doors that had been tied shut with a shoelace or rope.
Inside they found a 32-pound, 10-year-old girl surrounded by her own waste.
Hours after her discovery Friday morning, police tracked down her mother, Jacole Prince, 29, at her boyfriend’s place. Her two other daughters, ages 2 and 8, seemed well fed and clean by all accounts. The girls were taken into protective custody and Prince was arrested.
On Saturday, she was charged with assault, abuse of a child and endangering a child’s welfare.
Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker described the child’s living conditions as “completely atrocious.”
“All indicators are she spent a substantial amount of time in that room,” Baker said at a news conference.
The girl — identified only as “LP” — explained to police her appalling living conditions. According to court records, she had no room and no bed and was rarely allowed to leave the closet. And she regularly went for days without food.
She fit into a 2T shirt suited for a toddler. Her pants, a 4T, sagged on LP’s tiny frame.
Children’s Mercy Hospital officials told authorities that LP had been treated there in 2006 and weighed 26 pounds. She had gained only six pounds in the six years since that visit, court records showed.
Longtime neighbors said they had never even seen the child.
LP told officers the day she was freed from the closet that she wasn’t allowed to go out to breakfast with her mother that morning because “she messes herself.” LP told them that when she pees in her pants, her mother strikes her in the back really hard.
The little girl also told detectives that she had not left the closet for two days and does not eat every day. The child said she had not eaten Friday.
In court records, Prince acknowledged that she didn’t allow her daughter to leave the house because she was embarrassed of the girl’s appearance. She admitted that LP was so malnourished that she would probably be in trouble if someone saw her in that condition.
LP remains hospitalized.
The mother’s boyfriend, who has denied knowing that the child was confined to the closet, hasn’t been charged in the case. However, Baker did not rule out further charges because the investigation is ongoing and it is too early to say if the abuse occurred for months or years.
“But amazingly, as children tend to surprise all of us, she had very good spirits. She was very cooperative with police. She let them know she doesn’t want to go back home,” the prosecutor said.
Baker said authorities were trying to determine whether LP had ever attended school. It also wasn’t immediately clear whether LP’s living conditions had been reported to authorities before.
But Baker said an anonymous phone call probably saved the little girl’s life. Someone called the child abuse hotline for the Missouri Children’s Division. The caller said three children lived at the apartment, but one child was forced to live inside a closet.
The state agency notified police. When they arrived at the apartment in the 1300 block of Highland Avenue, Prince wasn’t home.
Authorities asked neighbors about the mother and three girls.
“She only has two daughters that stay here,” a neighbor told police.
After announcing the charges Saturday, Baker urged people to use the hotline whenever they suspect abuse.
“Friday was really a tremendous day where the hotline was used. Law enforcement was engaged and this little girl was literally saved from a horrendous situation,” she said.
Everyone must be vigilant in reporting neglect and abuse, said Roxane Hill, vice president of development at the Children’s Place in Kansas City. The nonprofit agency helps abused and neglected children.
Hill urged people to call authorities even if they are only suspicious a child is being mistreated.
“Call the hotline. Let them know,” Hill said. “It’s everybody’s task in this community to care for children.”
Source: Kansas City Star
Here are more facts. The girl LP was removed from the care of her mother for a year, then returned.
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How a malnourished girl got help from the system, then vanished
The court, social workers, a hospital and a school all tried to help. And still the child called LP vanished for six years, until she turned up locked in a closet.
Veronica Johnson (left) and her Highland Avenue community neighbors held a candlelight prayer Wednesday night for the 10-year-old, 32-pound girl who was found by authorities June 22. “We have to wake up and say something,” she shouted during the vigil. “Closed mouths don’t do nothing.”Susan PfannmullerSix years ago, Jacole Prince admitted that she intentionally withheld food from her 4-year-old daughter to keep her from going to the bathroom too often.
The girl weighed just 26 pounds, the size many babies reach at 18 months. Already malnourished, and continuing to lose weight, she had to be hospitalized.
The state of Missouri said then, in early 2006, that Prince had neglected to properly care for her daughter. The girl and her younger sister were removed from the mother’s home, according to Jackson County Family Court records obtained by The Star. Before Prince could get her daughters back, she’d have to complete a list of requirements set by the state.
In just over a year, she apparently did. By March 2007, when the older girl was in kindergarten, the state deemed Prince a better mom and returned both girls to her.
A month later, the older girl stopped going to her school and dropped out of sight. It was as if she never existed. Authorities believe now that the girl was locked away inside her mother’s apartment. They allege she was often kept in a closet, struck with a fist when she soiled herself and not allowed to play outside or attend school.
A child whose neglect had brought her into contact with state social workers and family court officials, who had been treated at a hospital for malnutrition and who had attended school, had been all but forgotten.
Until the call.
On June 22, a state child welfare worker and Kansas City police officers followed up on a hotline tip about a little girl locked in a closet who was not allowed out to eat or use the bathroom. The call led authorities to 1318 Highland Ave., apartment No. 11.
Neighbors told them that Prince lived there with two little girls, ages 2 and 8, who were well-fed and well-dressed, who had bikes and scooters and who went to school and played with other children in the apartments at T.B. Watkins Homes. Authorities persisted, though.
Inside the two-bedroom apartment, they found the third daughter, now 10, in a second-floor closet amid her own urine and feces. She had no light, no toys, no bed in the tiny space. The closet’s two doors had been tied with a rope or large shoestring. A portable crib had been shoved into place as a barricade.
“This is one of the most serious cases I have seen,” Family Court commissioner Molly Merrigan said four days after the girl, called “LP” in police records, was rescued.
She weighed just 32 pounds. She had many scars and bruises, evidence of physical abuse, authorities say.
When Prince was arrested, she told authorities that she put her daughter in the closet when she had to leave the house, according to court documents.
LP told authorities that the closet was her room, where she’d be locked in for days at a time. She said she wasn’t allowed to eat every day.
She said she didn’t want to go home again.
Though officials with the Department of Social Services say they can’t confirm that Children’s Division caseworkers ever worked with the Prince family, court records show the extent of involvement the state had in 2006 and 2007.
Once Prince got her children back, there’s no record in the court file of another hotline call or incident that involved the state or family court. As far as child-protection authorities knew, their work was done.
“There’s no system in place for us to watch all children” all the time, said Mary Marquez, juvenile officer with Jackson County Family Court.
“Unless we were to follow every case forever, until every child is 18.”
She said people who ask how these types of tragedies can occur should be putting the question to the adults who were in the house.
Yet many still see LP’s case as one in which a child slipped through the cracks. They wonder how, after being in the system and protected for a year, this girl couldn’t be saved from apparent years of abuse.
They question how a child could vanish inside apartment No. 11.
“Why didn’t anyone go looking for her, check on her?” said Tameika Johnson, who lives across the courtyard from Prince and talked with the mom nearly every day, but who didn’t know about LP. “Why didn’t they look into why she wasn’t at school? … Why didn’t the hospital where she was treated check on her?”
Sitting on the ledge outside her apartment, Johnson looked up at No. 11.
“How does a little girl disappear? I’ve been asking myself that.”
In the system
Prince was 18 when LP was born. Her birth certificate doesn’t name her father.
Two years later, another little girl came along. And by the time Prince was 22, in late January 2006, she found herself at Children’s Mercy Hospital with LP, who was tiny and severely underweight. Many doctors consider a child’s measurements, including weight and head circumference, as important as blood pressure and other vital statistics.
According to court records, the hospital had diagnosed the girl three months earlier with failure to thrive. Children’s Mercy had set up treatment appointments for her, but records show Prince failed to show up with her daughter. She didn’t return to Children’s Mercy until Jan. 31, when LP required hospitalization.
The two children were removed from Prince’s custody and soon were placed in the care of Marcus Benson, her boyfriend and the father of her younger daughter. (The couple would later have another child, who will turn 3 in September.)
During that time, LP started kindergarten. Years later, when authorities rescued her from the closet, she would talk about the times she played on the school playground.
At first, LP and her sister saw their mother only during supervised visits. But by mid-June, Prince was allowed to see the girls without supervision, including overnight visits, records show.
As they lived with Benson, Prince worked with the Children’s Division toward reunification. According to her attorney at the time, Prince was doing everything she needed to do to get her daughters back home.
One of the last requirements she needed to fulfill was finding a place for her family to live, and according to court records she moved into T.B. Watkins in January 2007.
“… Jacole Prince has actively followed the direction of the Children’s Division since that time,” her attorney wrote in a late February 2007 motion for the case to be released from family court. “There appear to be no further services that the children are in need of from the court … which the mother is not able to provide without jurisdiction of the court.”
In early March 2007, the Family Court ruled that the children should be reunited with Prince and released the family from court jurisdiction.
Generally speaking, observers said, the court often continues to supervise cases for at least a short period of time when a family is first reunited.
The Family Court’s juvenile office didn’t oppose reunification.
“I do believe from the information we had then, we believed the Children’s Division would maintain an open case on the family,” said Marquez, who has been with the Jackson County Family Court since 1987. She said once a case is released from court jurisdiction her office is no longer involved and can’t know what follow-up occurs.
The Missouri Department of Social Services is prohibited from commenting about specific cases, spokeswoman Rebecca Woelfel said. Even though parts of the Prince case file in Family Court are public record, she said, state law prohibits her agency from discussing any details.
She would say only that “the Missouri Department of Social Services strongly encourages anyone who suspects child abuse or neglect to call our toll-free hotline at 1-800-392-3738. The Missouri child abuse and neglect hotline is answered 24 hours a day, every day, all year round.”
In and out of school
At 5, LP started kindergarten at Woodland Elementary School in August 2006, according to the Kansas City Public Schools.
She didn’t finish the school year, dropping off the enrollment list in April 2007.
District officials said they couldn’t say whether calls were made to inquire about the child’s absence or to learn if Prince had made other arrangements for the child.
The district has gone through such massive upheaval since then that there is no one left in administration to explain the practical application of its truancy guidelines in 2007, said district spokeswoman Eileen Houston-Stewart.
This August, a new truancy plan with several layers of checks and balances will go into effect, Stewart said.
“We are tracking students from day one,” she said.
Teams made up of social workers, attendance specialists and truancy officers will follow up with phone calls and visits when children do not have an excused absence. Truancy officers, who are Kansas City police officers, will write tickets to parents who don’t send their child to school.
Typically, school districts put considerable energy into tracking teenagers because they directly affect graduation rates. But the new Kansas City program will target every student in preschool through 12th grade, she said.
Sometimes the best checks fail, said Jim Caccamo, who oversees the Head Start preschool program in Kansas City.
“We are often quick to be negative, particularly with the Kansas City, Missouri, school district,” he said. “But it could be that the kindergarten teacher did follow up and was told something that was very plausible.”
Someone who sets out to deceive won’t be caught off-guard by a phone call, Caccamo said. “ ‘Oh, we’re so glad you called to ask about her. She’s now living in Tuscaloosa with her father,’ ” he offered as one possible fib.
No truancy plan is foolproof, he said.
“If somebody wants to hide a kid in a closet,” Caccamo said, “they’re not going to give you answers to the questions you asked.”
Some residents at T.B. Watkins say Prince told them she had an older daughter who lived with her father. She told others that the girl’s father was dead and the child lived with an aunt.
Maintenance workers at Watkins conduct at least one inspection a year, going through apartments to ensure everything works. That includes opening closets and checking door hinges.
Since November, crews had been inside Prince’s apartment three times, twice for inspections and once in March to replace a water heater in a downstairs utility closet. Each time maintenance workers need to go inside an apartment, residents must receive 48 hours’ notice, unless it’s an emergency such as a fire or burst water pipe.
“Our staff has assured us when they were in the unit, there was nothing to indicate there was anything wrong,” said Edwin Lowndes, executive director of the Housing Authority of Kansas City, which owns and maintains the public housing complex.
Lowndes said the maintenance and property staff had no way of knowing that a child allegedly was being abused.
“It’s a devastating situation,” he said. “The reaction from the staff is like, ‘How could anyone do this to a child?’ … There was never any indication this was happening. Nothing to indicate a child was living in a closet.”
Though her neighbors didn’t know about LP, Prince stated on her current housing application that she had three children.
When the water heater was replaced in March, the maintenance worker did see three children in the apartment. One lay on the sofa, covered by a blanket.
‘Anyone in here?’
Longtime neighbors told police not to bother on June 22.
They wouldn’t find anyone home inside apartment No. 11, the neighbors said, because Prince and her two little girls had left 20 minutes before.
What about her third daughter?
“No, we have lived here for several years and she only has two daughters that stay here,” a neighbor said, according to court documents.
The state worker was insistent. Police officers eventually told the Housing Authority staff to get a key.
They searched the first floor, then started up the stairs. As they reached the second floor, the stench of urine overwhelmed the officers, the prosecutor said later.
One bedroom had no bed — just a portable crib stuffed with blankets and shoes and pushed against the closet doors. They saw the doors were tied shut.
“Is anyone in here?” they called.
A small voice answered, “Yes.”
An ambulance took LP to Children’s Mercy Hospital.
She wears a toddler’s 2T shirt. Her 4T pants sag on her tiny frame. In the six years since her last visit to the hospital, a doctor told the prosecutor, LP had gained just six pounds.
She was diagnosed again with failure to thrive, but this time she also had multiple injuries that were healing, according to authorities. She had sores on her head, scars and bruises across her body from being beaten, according to court documents.
Family Court commissioner Merrigan commended the police officers and Children’s Division worker who found LP.
“She and the cops wouldn’t leave,” Merrigan said. “They saved that child’s life.”
Officials at Children’s Mercy said they could not speak about the case.
But there is clear protocol at the hospital anytime abuse or neglect is suspected. An entire team of social workers, nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians and others works inside a special clinic within the hospital. A back door allows patients to come directly from the emergency room into the clinic, said Amy Terreros, who is the lead nurse practitioner for the child abuse clinic.
The first contact usually is a social worker. They’re the ones who typically make hotline calls because of their ability to more easily track the case.
“They’re just kind of the gatekeepers,” Terreros said.
Medical providers ask the child basic questions to help guide the physical examination. The clinic leaves forensic interviews to others.
Children 2 or under receive a full skeletal X-ray in case they can’t communicate about an injury.
If physical abuse is established, medical providers at the clinic ask to examine their siblings as well.
Should a parent later skip or cancel an appointment at the child abuse clinic, the scheduler automatically notifies the physician or social worker, who follows up. If the problem continues, the Children’s Division is notified.
“Other than that, we can’t do anything to force the parent to bring the child in. That is in the hands of Children’s Division,” Terreros said.
In the end, a survivor
Those who thought they knew Prince best, the other moms living at the housing complex, have spent several days feeling guilty, wondering how they could have missed this.
Should they have asked Prince more about the little girl some thought was living with another relative? Should they have asked to go inside her apartment, even though Prince never wanted anyone inside?
And what about that soft tapping on the wall a next-door neighbor sometimes heard? Was that little LP reaching out?
Some want to see Prince. Tell her that she’s not alone. Ask her why she couldn’t confide in the people who are more like family than neighbors.
“I would love to talk to her, tell her that Miss Cinthea would have been there for her, all the time,” said Cinthea Williams, who lived in neighborhood since 1997 before moving about two years ago. She still cooks for the children at the adjacent Clymer Community Center and calls all the kids at T.B. Watkins “my babies.”
She said she saw LP’s younger sisters twice a day this summer, for breakfast and lunch.
Williams sees the pain inside the housing complex. Women there help each other out, she says. Watch each others’ children, feed them if there’s not enough food at home. They don’t judge, she said, just support.
On Wednesday, as darkness fell, about 50 people gathered at the complex’s basketball courts to light candles for LP.
Randall Gilmore Sr., who said he has raised his own children as a single dad, organized the vigil.
“Hold up your heads knowing you did the best you could,” he told dozens, including some who wiped tears from their eyes. “Keep on doing what you do.”
Finding the girl in the closet has changed many people. Some of Prince’s neighbors have vowed to pay closer attention and reach out to struggling moms.
“We have to wake up and say something,” Veronica Johnson shouted to others at the vigil. “Closed mouths don’t do nothing.”
That’s a point authorities want to emphasize: For all the system’s checks, family members and neighbors are often the best eyes and ears when a child is being abused.
Meanwhile, the investigation is continuing, the Jackson County prosecutor’s office said Friday.
Prince has been charged with three felony counts: assault, abuse of a child and child endangerment. A not-guilty plea was entered for her, and she is being held on a $200,000 cash-only bond.
Benson has been questioned by authorities but has not been charged. He declined to comment.
The process has begun to sever their parental rights.
For their part, members of the Housing Authority maintenance and property staffs have asked for more training. They’d like workers with the Children’s Division to refresh them on telltale signs of abuse and neglect.
“I don’t think they dropped the ball in any way,” said Lowndes, of the Housing Authority. “But you can always improve.”
Others want to help LP, eager to know how she’s doing and where they can send donations. They want her to know that people care.
“We have to stop mourning,” Gilmore told the group. “This should be a celebration. She came out in rags, but she didn’t come out in a body bag.”
Source: Kansas City Star
Addendum: In May 2013 Missouri DSS send a large batch of documents to the press, telling their side of the story. The girl LP was the daughter of Jacole Prince and a father now jailed. The two younger sisters are the children of Jacole and her new partner Marcus Benson. The two younger girls were well cared for, only LP was starved.
