Failure to follow strict rules and regulations, even when a child dies or is seriously injured, does not necessarily subject the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to legal liability.
That's because a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decision based on a Wisconsin case -- DeShaney vs. Winnebago County -- found that the county's failure to take 4-year-old Joshua DeShaney away from his abusive father did not violate the boy's constitutional rights.
Joshua suffered severe brain damage, even after state caseworkers learned the boy's father was beating him.
The Supreme Court ruling generally means that only children who become wards of the state, usually through foster care, can sue for injuries. This leaves children who remain with their parents virtually without legal recourse.
"When you lose the ability through the law to hold people accountable for bad decisions, I think it clearly takes away a powerful tool," said Bruce Boyer, a law professor at Loyola University in Chicago and director of its Civitas ChildLaw Clinic.
"You're less likely to make sure that you have qualified, trained and capable people going out on these investigations," he said.
Despite the DeShaney decision, Belleville attorney Gregory Shevlin won a judgment in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis for the brother of 4-year-old Jimmy Novy, whose 1989 beating death at his father's hands drew widespread publicity.
Although he managed to win, Shevlin said the Supreme Court decision "has put a big damper on a lot of these situations."
The St. Clair County grand jury that indicted Jimmy's parents, Keith and Kimberly Novy, for murder also issued a report slamming the DCFS for its handling of the child abuse investigation and asked whether it could indict a child protection investigator who failed to take the boy into protective custody after examining him on the night before he died.
Under an Illinois law that protects state employees, the investigator was not charged.
Instead, the DCFS switched her from investigator to caseworker. Today she makes $59,160 per year in the East St. Louis office, where she still is involved with child abuse monitoring.
