Poor job performance and lack of supervision by a state agency tasked with protecting children appear to have hindered Maine's handling of a case in which an abused child died.
That's the conclusion of a legislative watchdog report released Thursday. The report focuses on the deaths of 10-year-old Marissa Kennedy in February 2018 in Stockton Springs and 4-year-old Kendall Chick in December in Wiscasset in December 2017.
The report does not say which case suffered from mistakes made by the state Office of Child and Family Services.
The Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, known as OPEGA, released the report. It's a non-partisan office designed to monitor and help improve state government functions. The report was initially expected to be released earlier this month, but the office said it needed time to investigate.
"We observed that the risk of child abuse/neglect, particularly risk of physical abuse, was not necessarily evident without continually putting together many pieces of information held by various parties interacting with the child and/or her parents over time," the report said about one case, noting that certain mandated reporters were sharing information with the child protection system.
The report went on to say that if there was greater information sharing at certain points in the last two months of one of the children's lives could have "prompted further action or reassessment of the risk level for the family."
The day before the report was released, the family of Sharon Carrillo, the mother accused of beating Kennedy to death, told WCSH-TV that Carrillo gave birth to her fourth child on Wednesday.
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The baby's grandfather said the infant boy will stay in the hospital for the weekend before family takes him back to New York where his other siblings live.
Family told WCSH-TV that Carrillo will go back to Two Bridges Regional Jail in Wiscasset.
