Wow. $75,000 in compensation for CPS allowing the murder of a little girl. Does that even get you a house anymore, expect in downtown Detroit? And notice that CPS is set up as the "bad guy" here when they were not the only f*** ups in this case. This has a LOT to do with the militant fathers rights people in Indiana and the resultant court corruption which has delivered many vulnerable children into the hands of abusive, controlling fathers. Here are some of the background facts, which we have reported on this case before:
October 22, 2003: Judge Loretta Rush orders unsupervised visits between Aiyana and Christian Gauvin, with the intent of transitioning her into the father’s home after fairly minor neglect charges against the mother had apparently been "substantiated."
December 6, 2003: Aiyana moves in with Christian Gauvin based on plan recommended by Aiyana’s court appointed special advocate (CASA) and approved by the court and the Division of Family and Children (DFC). Aiyana apparently loses all contact with maternal grandmother, mother, siblings, shortly after this time, though Judge Rush had specified that she was to have "regular contact" (i.e. custodial father ignores Judge's order with complete impunity).
June 5, 2004: Aiyana’s maternal grandmother contacts sheriff’s department after neighbor sees Aiyana at a grocery story with scratch marks on her face. Sheriff Deputy Glen Keller visits home; talks at the door with Christian Gauvin and Michelle Urbanus. (In other words, Keller failed to examine the child.) Keller reports to radio dispatcher that Aiyana is OK and has no visible marks. No record of visit is filed with CPS. The Tippecanoe county sheriff’s office received 38 calls regarding the Urbanus household from 2000-2004, but this was only one of two that involved a child’s welfare; most were made by Michelle Urbanus herself regarding disputes with neighbors.
February 18, 2005: The father of one of Aiyana’s siblings visits the Urbanus home. Aiyana appears sad and listless; he notices bald spots on Aiyana’s head. He shares this with Cassandra Robinson (Aiyana's non-custodial mother), who contacts Tippecanoe DFC alleging that Aiyana is being abused by Michelle Urbanus. The report is “screened” by a CPS case manager and not investigated because “inappropriate discipline does not meet legal sufficiency for CPS to investigate.”
March 16, 2005: Sheriff’s deputies respond to a 911 call from the Urbanus home and find 4-year old Aiyana dead. Police find bruises all over Aiyana’s body. Michelle Urbanus Gauvin tells police she occasionally struck Aiyana with a broken cutting board and put her to bed bound and gagged. Christian Gauvin admits he did not seek medical treatment for his daughter because he feared being arrested for abuse.
March 19, 2005: An autopsy reveals Aiyana died from a head injury and blunt force trauma.
March 23, 2005: Michelle Urbanus Gauvin charged with murder; Christian Gauvin charged with neglect in connection with a child’s death (a felony).
April 8, 2005: Jim Klusman, President and CEO of the Greater Lafayette Community Foundation, writes a guest editorial in Lafayette Journal and Courier. He cautions against “finger pointing” (in other words, let's not actually hold any governnment officials responsible for their incompetence and/or corruption) and announces the foundation will “seek solutions to the problems of child abuse and neglect in our community.” (i.e. let's make polite, sympathetic noises until everybody forgets this latest outrage, then we'll sweep it under the carpet and go back to business as usual). He asks citizens to write with "their thoughts." The Community foundation sponsors three "public forums on child abuse and neglect" between April and October 2005.
November 2-3, 2005: Sheriff’s Deputy Glen Keller resigns after admitting he never saw Aiyana Gauvin during his June 5, 2004 visit to the Urbanus home, and fabricated his report.
December 21, 2005: Former Tippecanoe County sheriff’s deputy, Glen Keller, pleads guilty to felony perjury; sentenced to six months in jail.
September 15, 2006: Michelle Urbanus Gauvin avoids the death penalty by pleading guilty to murder.
October 26, 2006: Michelle Gauvin sentenced to life in prison without parole.
November 2, 2006: A LaPorte Country jury finds Christian Gauvin guilty of Class A felony neglect of a dependent.
http://www.theindychannel.com/news/28406715/detail.html
Indiana Settles Suit Over 4-Year-Old's Abuse Death
Family To Get $75,000 From DCS
POSTED: 10:30 am EDT June 30, 2011
UPDATED: 10:39 am EDT June 30, 2011
LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- The family of a 4-year-old Lafayette girl who was beaten to death by her stepmother will receive a $75,000 settlement from the state agency that investigates allegations of child abuse.
The Indiana Department of Child Services was one of several defendants in a lawsuit filed by relatives of Aiyana Gauvin over the handling of reports that she was abused in the months before her death in 2005.
A Tippecanoe County judge approved the settlement last week, removing the agency from the family's lawsuit, the Journal & Courier reported Thursday.
Aiyana died from head injuries in 2005 after what investigators described as months of abuse at the hands of her stepmother, Michelle Gauvin, and father, Christian Gauvin. She had been tied to various objects, forced to eat a blended and liquefied mix of foods, and at times beaten with a broken cutting board.
Michelle Gauvin is serving a life sentence without parole after pleading guilty to murder charges in 2006. A jury convicted Christian Gauvin of child neglect resulting in death, and he's serving a 50-year sentence.
A state Department of Child Services review team found in 2005 that case workers mismanaged the risks posed to the girl.
Aiyana's death was one of several child deaths across the state that year that prompted changes in Indiana's child welfare system.
For instance, the Department of Child Services' Tippecanoe County office more than doubled its staffing -- from 13 caseworkers in 2005 to 34 now, county office director Angela Smith Grossman said.
State law now mandates that caseworkers handle no more than 12 assessments and 17 children on average at any given time, Smith Grossman said. The state had no previous limitations.
New caseworkers must now undergo 12 weeks of training and experienced caseworkers have continuing education requirements.
"We have a practice model that's been developed over the past six years that guides how we intervene with families," Smith Grossman said. "Not that it was done in a haphazard fashion before, but it's more concrete."
