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The death of a 12-year-old Omaha boy, allegedly at the hands of his mother, is a dramatic example of the need to broaden the state's criteria for investigating a child's welfare, a child advocate says.
The call that Michael Belitz's mother, Angela Manns, made to a Nebraska Health and Human Services worker didn't indicate she was abusing or neglecting the boy. But the fact that she was thinking about putting him in foster care should have prompted an investigation, said Kathy Bigsby Moore, executive director of Voices for Children in Nebraska.
HHS workers analyze whether a child is in impending danger before recommending to law enforcement that the child be removed from a home. The department defines such danger as “threats to child/youth safety that may not be occurring in the present, but are likely to occur in the immediate to near future.”
Moore said children shouldn't have to be in imminent danger before officials intervene. “If any of us tried to define imminent danger, what does that word conjure up in your mind?” Moore asked. “It actually conjures up for me standing on a ledge, about to fall.”
When cases are filed in Juvenile Court or when parental rights are terminated, “you always need to look back to the ‘best interests' of the child,” Moore said. “I think if we have a standard that ties more to the best interests than it does to physical evidence of harm, then we will begin to move in the right direction,” she said.
Manns, 46, was charged last week with first-degree murder in the death of her son, whose severely decayed body was found July 12 in a bathtub in the family home near 28th and Ida Streets. His wrists and legs had been tightly bound with duct tape.
On March 27, Manns left a voice mail message for a Health and Human Services caseworker, inquiring about placing Michael in foster care. HHS officials say the caseworker tried to return the call, but voice mail wasn't available.
Manns made a second call on April 8 and left another voice mail message. The worker called back and left a message instructing Manns to contact the HHS hot line.
Manns never called, and the caseworker never checked back.
State Sen. Gwen Howard of Omaha, a former HHS caseworker herself, said Manns' calls about foster care indicate the woman thought she was in trouble. Had Howard been the caseworker, she said, she probably would have contacted an agency such as the Nebraska Children's Home Society, which allows parents to relinquish a child to its care. Or, she said, she would have asked the Visiting Nurse Association to check on the child.
She said a VNA nurse would be less threatening than an HHS worker or a police officer.
“In retrospect,” she said, Manns' calls “probably should have generated an investigation,” adding that it's easy to say after the fact what should have been done.
Police or sheriff's deputies can conduct well-being checks if someone suspects a problem in a home. The Douglas County 911 center has taken more than 5,000 “check well-being” calls so far this year.
In Omaha, patrol officers who find evidence to back up allegations of child abuse — such as bruising, signs of neglect, or a lack of food, water or heat — immediately contact the department's child victim/sexual assault unit, said Officer Jake Bettin, a police spokesman. Police take photos, write down what they have observed and, if the evidence warrants it, fill out affidavits to remove the children, he said.
Research shows that only about a third of people with suspicions of child abuse report them, “because they don't want to damage the relationship with the family member or the neighbor” they suspect of abuse, said Gene Klein, executive director of Project Harmony, an Omaha child advocacy center. “Or they think that what they see or are experiencing isn't enough to cause a case to be investigated.”
But the information they have, he said, may be the final piece that investigators need to make a case.
Besides, he said, it's the law.
“The statute is simple: If you have reason to suspect a child is being abused, you're required to report that,” Klein said. “We're all responsible.”
World-Herald staff writer Juan Perez Jr. contributed to this report.
Contact the writer:
444-1109, bob.glissmann@owh.com
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