Chittenden County State's Attorney T.J. Donovan announced there will be no criminal charges against a Vermont Department for Children and Families employee who saw a toddler just an hour before his death.
"Nor should there be," Donovan said. "This is a tragedy."
A Vermont State Police investigation looked at whether the DCF worker neglected his duties in handling the case of Peighton Geraw of Winooski. The probe showed the 14-month-old was reported to DCF in the evening of April 2, after a hospital visit for a stomach bug also found bruising along his jaw. Less than two days later, a DCF supervisor visited Peighton at his home and saw what he believed was a sleeping baby, Donovan said.
The police report showed that within five minutes of the DCF employee leaving the home, the boy's mother called 911, reporting her son was unresponsive. The child was rushed to the hospital and declared dead shortly thereafter.
Donovan alleged the boy's mother, Nytosha LaForce, shook him violently and slammed him against the floor of the home, causing his death. She is in jail after pleading not guilty to second-degree murder.
As for DCF's handling of that initial call about the bruises, Donovan said the worker followed existing protocol when it came to the timeliness of the response and the way he observed the boy, whom he believed to still be ill and napping. "Even if the protocol were different, I'm not sure the outcome for Peighton Geraw would've been different on that date in question," Donovan told reporters Thursday.
The findings are just part of a much larger conversation happening in Vermont around child protection. Recently. Gov. Peter Shumlin, D-Vt., announced the addition of 18 more social workers and six substance abuse screeners to help address caseload concerns. Panels, including one made up of state lawmakers and a citizen's advisory group led by a prominent Burlington-area pediatrician, are discussing how to better handle reports of child abuse.
"If we don't learn from this, then shame on us," Vermont's Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn said of Geraw's death. "We need to get the best results we can for the children of the state."
Deputy Vermont DCF Commissioner Cindy Walcott said the past few months have been very hard on the department's employees, and agonizing for the worker who visited Peighton's home, whom she described as a skilled, knowledgeable, and caring veteran employee. "I'm very gratified to have this outcome for this investigation," Walcott told New England Cable News.
In an unrelated investigation, Vermont's DCF was also recently cleared in another toddler's death. After Dezirae Sheldon of Poultney suffered severe head injuries, allegedly at the hands of her stepdad Dennis Duby, several asked if DCF should have done more to ensure she was in a safe home. Sheldon's mother, Sandra Eastman Duby, had a previous conviction for child cruelty after the child suffered fractured legs.
In that case, Attorney General Bill Sorrell, D-Vt., announced DCF personnel would face no charges for criminal wrongdoing. "Mistakes were made. Information that should have been shared more generally within DCF should have been shared," Sorrell told WPTZ-TV last month. "It wasn't good, but it wasn't criminal conduct. That's a big difference."
Gov. Shumlin recently announced a reorganization of the district office that oversaw the Sheldon case, in an effort to improve communication, he said.
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