Windsor County State’s Attorney Michael Kainen testifies Wednesday before the Senate Review Panel on Child Protection. Agency of Human Services Secretary Doug Racine (second from left) also attended. Photo by Laura Krantz/VTDigger
The criminal record of the mother of slain toddler Dezirae Sheldon contains several errors, including the fact that she does not appear on the online sex offender registry as required, a legislative attorney told senators Wednesday.
At a noon meeting of a panel investigating the Department for Children and Families following Dezirae’s death, senators also learned of other errors in the criminal record of Sandra Eastman that have gone uncorrected since her 2008 guilty plea to a charge of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child.
Dezirae Sheldon.
Two-year-old Dezirae died Feb. 21 at the hospital. An autopsy report said she died of blunt trauma to the head. Her stepfather, Dennis Duby of Poultney, is charged with second-degree murder.
The Senate panel is looking for systemic problems within DCF. Senators on Wednesday said they also want to seek subpoena power to examine private records in the Dezirae Sheldon case.
In addition to news about the errors in Eastman’s criminal record, senators heard from a social worker and a state’s attorney about the delicate balance between laws and discretion when it comes to children who might be in harm’s way at home.
DCF is also suffering from a huge caseload and a record number of reports of abuse, witnesses said.
“I think what you have to recognize is that you have a lot of good, dedicated people. Front-line social workers who are working hard, and they’re stretched. They don’t have time to get out to see families as much as they’d like,” Windsor County State’s Attorney Michael Kainen said.
DCF this year expects to receive 17,000 reports by the end of the year, compared with 12,000 five years ago, said DCF Commissioner David Yacovone, who attended the hearing but did not testify.
At the beginning of the meeting, senators learned from legislative attorney Michelle Childs about three errors she uncovered after reviewing public court records concerning Eastman from Rutland Superior Court.
The first was a clerical error that resulted in erroneous subsequent records about Eastman’s 2008 guilty plea to lewd and lascivious conduct with a child.
In that case, Eastman accepted a plea agreement for allegedly having sex with a 15-year-old boy when she was 24.
She pleaded guilty to lewd and lascivious conduct with a child but the crime was mistakenly reported as lewd and lascivious conduct, which carries lesser penalties and requirements under sex offender registration law, Childs wrote in a letter to the panel.
The second issue Childs identified was that Eastman received a lighter sentence for lewd and lascivious conduct with a child than prescribed by law.
The statutory minimum for that crime is between two and 15 years in prison and a fine of not more than $5,000. Eastman was sentenced to 18 months to seven years, all suspended, with probation, court records show.
The third error, Childs said, was that Eastman’s criminal record indicates she is a lifetime registrant of the sex offender registry, but she does not appear in the public online registry database, as required by law. Childs said neither lewd and lascivious nor lewd and lascivious with a child require lifetime registration.
Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, said the errors created “all kinds of ramifications in the future of the case.”
“All the state agencies that are involved followed from the mistaken code,” Sears said.
“Why wasn’t it caught?” asked Sen. Peg Flory, R-Rutland.
Others at the meeting were unsure identifying the errors previously would have changed the circumstances of Dezirae’s death.
Sen. Eldred French, D-Rutland, asked to what extent things would have been different had the charge been listed properly. “Or would they have?” French asked.
In 2010, Eastman was charged with violating probation and spent time in the Northwest State Correctional Facility.
In 2013, she pleaded guilty to failure to provide prompt medical treatment to a child after Eastman brought Dezirae to the hospital with a fractured leg. Eastman was sentenced to one to two years in prison, all suspended, to run consecutive to the 2008 sentence and probation.
State’s attorney Kainen said it is not as easy as some might think to remove a child from his or her parents. Laws make DCF virtually the last place to place custody.
“Absent some danger to the child, the state can’t step in and take a child or tell a parent how to raise a child. So there has to be some kind of danger,” he said. And the state must prove the danger, according to Kainen.
Asking the court to remove Eastman’s 2-year-old daughter because of a prior conviction of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child would be a “tough sell to a judge,” he said.
Kainen, a former legislator and foster parent, described the difficulties DCF workers face corroborating allegations child abuse. For example, the fact that a parent is addicted to heroin isn’t enough to warrant a petition of the court to remove the child from a home, he said.
Proof the parent was using needles in bed and the child was rolling on them might be, he said.
Kainen also explained that DCF is under substantial pressure from laws and court precedent to reunite families. Social workers can become discouraged when they realize how hard it is to remove a child from his or her home, he said.
Sears asked if changes to the law are necessary. DCF social worker Sarah Boardman said the laws are sufficient to keep children safe.
“The capacity of each worker, what we can do, needs to be looked at,” she said.
Kainen recommended several changes that could help the judicial process for custody orders but he said the problem has less to do with the law and more to do with overburdened staff.
“I think looking at the department, looking at the stresses that it’s under is important in terms of having better outcomes,” he said.
The Springfield, Barre and Hartford DCF offices have had “tremendous turnover” of social workers, he said. Reports of child abuse or neglect are up 500 or 600 this year, Kainen said.
“We do have an incredible amount of work to do,” Boardman said.
After the meeting, Yacovone said there are many DCF workers, including front-line social workers, who have been on staff for years. He said the hours are irregular, and the work is onerous.
“It’s got to be some of the most stressful work in state government,” he said.
DCF has added 27 social workers in the past three years, he said, and reduced caseloads to about a 1 to 15 ratio from a prior ratio of 1:20.
He also emphasized that discretion is important and every case is unique.
“There’s a lot of shades of gray, yet laws that are black and white,” he said.
The Senate panel plans to meet again at noon April 2.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Errors discovered in criminal record of slain toddler’s mother.