Danzel Baieley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eleven month old Danzel Baieley weighed only twelve pounds which is the average weight of a two month old. He had wasted away in the child welfare system that was intended to protect him. By the time he died, Danzel Bailey's full cheeks hollowed. His ribs, facial bones and the knobby bones of his spinal cord all protruded. The skin of his buttocks and thighs hung in deep folds. He had bald spots on his head and had no teeth.

 

Danzel’s mother Felicia Bailey, was like many mothers tangled in the county dependency system. She was a high school dropout and addicted to drugs since she was a teenager. By the age of 25 she was pregnant with her fourth child. The first three had already been taken away by the Department of Children and Family Services after allegations of severe neglect due to drug abuse. One of her children was born testing positive for exposer to cocaine. Danzel was born on May 9, 2000 he weighed seven pounds, 1 1/2 ounces he was healthy but just slightly under average. He had no drugs in his system. Bailey wanted to keep Danzel, but Danzel like Bailey other children had been exposed to drugs. Social workers decided he'd be safer in foster care.

 

Danzel was only days old when he arrived at the home of Lee and Minor Hanson. Lee Hanson held Danzel and talked to him through his jittery nights, she took him to the doctor for the slightest problems and she took lots of pictures. Like many babies exposed to crack, Danzel was a good eater. He gulped down formula and, when he started solids, delighted in applesauce and banana pudding. Still, authorities thought it would be in Danzel’s best interest to move him to a relative's home in the belief that children fare better with family than strangers licensed as foster parents. Danzel should have remained with his foster mother. Family is not the best answer when the writing is on the wall from the beginning.

 

The state law requires that welfare agencies looking for suitable homes and give preference to relatives, who, like all foster parents, are paid several hundred dollars a month to care for young children. Finding a relative to raise Danzel was not an easy task. His father was unknown. His great-grandmother cared for his two oldest siblings and, according to a relative, couldn't take any more. Social workers identified his 54 year old grandmother, Sarah Jones, as the most likely relative. Jones initially told authorities she couldn't take a newborn. She was already raising Danzel's brother, who was a little more than a year old. Weeks later, Jones changed her mind and agreed to take Danzel. At first, Danzel's social worker hesitated about sending him to his grandmother. The social worker told the court that Jones' small one bedroom apartment was "not appropriate" for Danzel. Danzel's 17 month old brother and the boys' teenage aunt all slept together in the home's full size bed. The social worker recommended that Danzel stay in foster care. The social workers The social workers recommendations were ignored. Jones was ordered to get a crib for Danzel once she did he would place in her care. Both the court and the Department of Children and Family Services knew Jones had been arrested several times between the 1960s and 1993 on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, battery and robbery. Only one case ended in conviction a misdemeanor battery in 1974. At the time, Danzel was place with Jones a pediatrician used by his foster mother noted Danzel was right on target, weighing 13 1/2 pounds.

 

On Aug. 29, days after Danzel was placed in his new home, the family services agency's child abuse hotline received a complaint that the grandmother abused crack cocaine and alcohol and that for years there had been no gas or heat in her apartment. The caller identified herself as Felicia Bailey, the name of Danzel's mother, who denies making the call. Social worker went to Jones' house and checked the kitchen cabinets and found an "adequate food supply." The grandmother denied using drugs. The social worker did, however, confirm at least one of the caller's allegations was true Jones had no gas, which meant no heat or hot water. Jones told the social worker that the main gas supply line was out, but that the gas company was working on fixing it. The social worker took her word. There was no follow up and in fact Jones had lied. Jones also failed for three months to take Danzel to a doctor. When she finally did she arrived without medical records for Danzel and he had lost three pounds, nearly a quarter of his weight, in the three months since his last checkup. He was severely underweight weighing about 10 pounds, far below the average six month old's weight of 17 pounds. Azad should have examined Danzel to find the cause of his poor growth and immediately hospitalized him. Azad never even asked for health records, which would have shown Danzel had lost about a quarter of his weight in the prior three months. Danzel was still severely underweight when his grandmother brought him for a follow up visit in March of 2001. He was eleven months old and weighed 14 1/2 pounds. Blood test at that visit showed Danzel was anemic, but Azad again failed to treat the anemia or poor growth. Azad did not even examine Danzel during this visit. If he had he would have noticed a number of injuries that were scattered Danzel’s body. These were signs of abuse that were found by emergency room physicians and medical examiners a month later after Danzel died.

 

Danzel's social worker, meanwhile, gave no indication in her brief monthly visitation notes that the baby was malnutrition. She repeatedly referred to him as appearing "healthy and happy." She also noted he was "developing age appropriately and is progressing well." In April social worker walked into Jones' apartment and noticed for the first time that something was very wrong with Danzel. "He did not appear to look right," Armstrong wrote. She asked Jones if Danzel had been sick and was told he had not been. Rather than send him for immediate treatment, Armstrong left Danzel in the home and returned to the office to talk to her supervisor. They decided to refer his case to a public health nurse.

 

April 21 was the last day Danzel was seen alive. Jones feed him a scrambled egg at about 8 p.m., then offer him a bottle of formula, which he refused. She later put him to sleep on a folded foam mattress pad on the floor of her bedroom, under a window. Danzel was crying that night, so Jones spanked him. As she hit his bottom, his head hit the wall and he threw up. Jones' teenage daughter told authorities they cleaned up the vomit and put him back down to sleep. The next morning, about 10:30, the teenager said, she found Danzel with one eye open and one closed, lying in his bed. He was not crying, not making any noise at all. She took him to her aunt, Childs. I said, 'It's time to call 911. He don't look right,' “Childs said during a criminal court hearing. Danzel was "very cold and his mouth looked twisted and he didn't look alive." They waited for 10 minutes to call an ambulance. When Danzel arrived at the emergency room, his right eye was severely bruised and swollen. He had a soiled diaper that seemed as if it had not been changed for a long time. He had dirt between his toes and fingers. Danzel was pronounced dead in the emergency room.

 

A county pathologist described scars and scrapes covering his body on his face, back, upper right and left shoulders, the backs of both arms and the front of both legs. He also had open sores on his genitals, which the pathologist attributed to a diaper rubbing against skin fragile from malnutrition and dehydration. He had no body fat. A Medical Examiner noted that there were fresh injuries to the baby's head and face, but that they were not the direct cause of death. He determined that Danzel died of starvation and pneumonia, which developed in his final hours. Jones pleaded no contest to the lesser charge of child abuse causing death. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to an eight year prison sentence, two years shy of the possible maximum for those reduced charges.

 

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/nov/04/news/mn-73